Your Dentist website exceeds 500,000 hits a month

If you're serious about attracting new patients to your practice, then make sure you're listed on the Your Dentist website at www.dentist.com.au advises publisher Joseph Allbeury. It's free and the site is now attracting in excess of 500,000 visitors a month who are looking for a dentist and dental information thanks to new work optimising the site's rankings on popular search engines.

"What these exciting figures show is that people who are visiting the popular generic search engines are finding it far more useful to click through to a dentist-specific search engine like Your Dentist," Mr Allbeury said. "Trying to find the dentist you need amongst the 8,058,044,651 web pages¹ currently indexed on Google, for example, is a minefield.

"When you search on these sites, you get all kinds of irrelevant information returned. The optimisation strategy we are continuing to implement is designed to ensure Your Dentist is hopefully on the top of the list when people search on a variety of words relating to dentistry. Once people click through to Your Dentist, the information is delivered in a much more structured and useable format which also increases its popularity. It's a complex process, but so far so good."

As at June 30, Your Dentist had 82 first place rankings on various dental keyword searches across some of the most popular Australian search engines, including Google, Yahoo and NineMSN search. Combined with over 450 rankings in the top 10 results on these engines, Your Dentist is positioned to capitalise on the majority of search-based dental traffic in the country.

"The strategy in place will see these numbers continue to grow and our keyword penetration improves daily to include coverage of geographical search terms including regional dentists, specialist practices and genres such as cosmetic dentistry.

"If you now go to Google, for example, and type in the words 'dentists in drummoyne', or any other suburb in Australia, then typically we will be on the first page of results and in many cases in the number one position."

Mr Allbeury said Your Dentist employed a full time in-house web developer to work on the site plus employed a specialist search engine optimization consultancy to advise on strategies to increase rankings.

"We are investing in increasing visitor traffic to Your Dentist as part of our commitment to everyone who has chosen one of the paid options on the website," he said.

Your Dentist is a free service for dental practices in Australia, however, there are also paid options on the site that allow the inclusion of more detailed information and improves the search ranking. If you're located in a major city where there are hundreds of practices, you can elevate yourself to the top section of the list for as little as $100 a year if you're a paid Australasian Dental Practice subscriber (normally $200).

Every practice in Australia and New Zealand is entitled to a free "Stage One" listing on Your Dentist that includes basic contact details of the practice and the dentists who work there. A paid Stage Two listing adds:

• Expanded information - treatment offered, opening hours, photos, email address, location, parking and more;
• Increased ranking in search results;sup>2
• A web address in the format www.dentist.com.au/yourpracticename
• A quarterly newsletter advising of marketing activities; and
• Your money back off any purchase of the Your Dentist patient newsletters.

See www.dentist.com.au/demo for an example and Stage Three, Four and Five packages are also available.

Mr Allbeury said that the revenue from the enhanced listings helps to fund the search engine optimization process and other marketing activities.

"Your Dentist has grown in popularity because the information it contains is displayed in a very organized manner. One of the major differences between Your Dentist and the Yellow Pages, for example, is that Your Dentist is specifically structured around physical dental practices, not telephone numbers.

Mr Allbeury encouraged all dentists to firstly ensure they are listed on www.dentist.com.au and then to consider the advantages of upgrading.

"Even if you have a website already, Your Dentist will drive business your way. By listing and then upgrading, you may well be on the top of our list2 and we're working very hard to ensure we're on the top of everyone else's."

References

1. Figure correct as at 6:32 pm on Monday 11th July 2005
2. In search results, Your Dentist displays Stages Three, Four and Five listings first, then Stage Two and then Stage One. In each category, listings are displayed in alphabetical order based on practice name.