Will You Help Me Promote My Internet Campaigns?
Absolutely!

The average website designer, while usually a great graphic artist, doesn’t have a clue about how to promote, and continually re-promote, a dental website, let alone a totally integrated and highly targeted Internet marketing campaign. Before IDA posted its first Internet marketing program, we spent 18 months researching and mastering the art of dental website promotion.

The most beautifully designed website is a total waste if potential patients can’t find it. IDA has developed a group of proprietary strategies to promote its members' marketing campaigns. It is based on an integrated strategy using multiple approaches to the market:

1. We Register Your Local Practice Website(s) with the Internet Search Engines

Search engines are where your potential patients go to find a dentist in your area and/or your specific area of dental expertise.

After your initial registration, we check your positions on each of the primary search engines and send you a special report each quarter detailing exactly where you stand on each engine. If we see a problem, we rework and resubmit your local practice website(s). This strategy helps keep your site(s) in the top of the search engine listings for your geographical area of dental expertise.

Website promotion companies charge from $49 to $98 or more for each multiple search engine registration campaign. IDA made a major investment in site registration technology as part of our commitment to your success. As a result, we are able to offer this key promotional strategy as part of your monthly marketing campaign fee.

2. Customized Meta Tag and Keyword Density Development

Once you are registered with the search engine world, these companies send out computerized software robots, or spiders as they are sometimes called. Their job is to look at your site and index its contents so that the search engine can accurately direct queries to your location. To index your site(s) properly, these software robots look for computer “signposts” that tell them the “who, what and where” of your web pages. These signposts are called “Meta Tags”.

Research shows that less than 37% of Internet web pages use Meta tags to help the search engines understand and direct people to your site. The reason so few graphic designers use meta tags is because they're really tough to figure out. The person writing the “signposts” has to understand the intricacies of the client's business.

And that, in a nutshell, is why 95% of all dental websites rarely get any visitors. The typical website designer is a fantastic graphic artist, but doesn’t know a veneer from a perio probe. Your IDA team includes over 50 years of dental management experience and over 1,000 associated dentists. Using this dental experience, we carefully customize each of your primary website page’s key meta tags so they meet the search engines’ requirements and get you the highest possible response rating.

Those same software robots or spiders that the search engines send to review your site also check the Keyword Density of each page. Keyword density is the ratio of keywords or phrases such as “Cosmetic Dentistry Chicago” or “Dental Implants Seattle” that show up on a web page relative to the total number of words on the page.

Getting the keyword density right for your high-value target market is a challenge -- particularly since the search engines regularly change the rules -- and web pages often need updating to get the best results for your marketing campaign.

3. Marketing Know-how

Getting people to your 1stDDS.com Practice Profile or local IDA practice website is just the beginning. Getting them actively involved is the key to capturing them as new patients. While site design is critical, and we will talk about that extensively later, immediate involvement is mandatory.

To do that, we use a time-tested marketing tool that for hundreds of years has never failed. No, not sex. We use the magic word, and that word is "FREE"! Everyone wants something for nothing. So at IDA we have developed a series of dental Internet “freebies”.

We list these freebies on your 1stDDS.com Practice Profile and throughout your local practice website(s) where they will get the most attention. These can range from “White Paper Reports” on Top Ten Things You Should Know Before Selecting a Cosmetic Dentist, to one of my favorites, a “Free Cosmetic Consultation”.

People that sign up for this freebie are scheduling an appointment for you to sell them cosmetic dentistry.

These Internet surfers are raising their hand and saying, “Please let me come down to your office, sit in your dental chair and have you explain to me how you can give me a younger, more beautiful smile.” Does this sound good to you?

This free or reduced fee strategy for a “Special Exam” can be adapted to almost any area of dental treatment. We will help you customize it for your practice.

This is the type of promotional synergy you get with an IDA dental marketing program.

Of course, you are not obligated or required to use any of these promotional strategies in your marketing campaigns. The Alliance’s job is to give you the richest, most in-depth set of marketing options to maximize your return on investment from the Internet.

Further, some states limit the types of offers you can make as a dental professional. (Alabama is especially restrictive regarding all aspects of dental marketing.) Please check with your dental board if you have any concerns about your state’s dental regulations.