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Sara (00:02)
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Sarah, there's a shift happening in the dental marketing business. Shift happens. Shift happens. And the shift is website traffic reports are down, the visitors to site sites are down, but yet new patients are stable or up and it has a lot of dentist and industry people kinda wondering what's going on.
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Yeah. Our clients are feeling this all across the board. And we've been asked a few times, you know, like it's like what part of my marketing is working? 'Cause it's you know, it feels scary, but your marketing didn't break, just the definition of a click did though. Yeah.
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And welcome to Bisez Dental Marketing. Today we're gonna be digging in the zero click problem. What happens when Google answers the question before anyone reaches your site? Yep, we're gonna cover three things. First we'll look at where all your website clicks really went because your patients didn't just disappear. Then we'll get into what you should actually be measuring now that clicks aren't quite as reliable as they used to be.
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And finally we'll talk through how to actually show up in the spots that Google's handing out versus chasing a click you're not gonna get.
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For the the last couple of decades the logic was pretty simple, right? Like if you get more clicks, that usually means you get more patients. But and then on the flip side of that, if clicks are down, then your revenue's probably down. And that's that's just how it was and until it it wasn't. Yeah, and this has been a gradual change. and this has been happening for years. it it
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And it's just recently reached the critical mass of it. But Google and even Yahoo before them, I mean so so it really is decades is Yahoo. They've been trying to keep your eyeballs within their platforms. Mm-hmm. And
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Primarily the Google business profile for Google was the primary feature of that and then Google snippets and then the questions, you know, like other questions like this they and and it's actually been quite a problem in the SEO world because
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Google has almost been taking over a site's content to reposition it as their some sometimes. Mm-hmm. And SEOs have been very frustrated by that. and this is just the latest round of it. now it has reached the critical mass where Google business profiles are getting more visits regularly than the sites do. Yeah. and it's around that's how Google monetizing itself. and
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Yeah. it doesn't surprise me that especially with the AI overviews, more reviews, the a richer map pack, you can now search in the maps, you know, photos, you can post almo Google Business Promost turned into a social media platform that you can post regularly on. Right. They're capturing more traffic. They are. So I guess let's break it down. What what does zero click mean?
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To a dentist that's out there like, okay, how is this affecting my clicks in traffic? Yeah, it's it's the They're learning about you outside of your website site. And that's rich enough for them to make a decision. So so so you're just not having it you're you're losing some visibility into the consumer behavior. Yeah.
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I see. I thought of something earlier about, you know, the way we use Google now versus you know, several years ago. And it's kind of like a phone book. Like Google used to be like a phone book where you would have to go through like a directory of results and do the work and you know, vet out each source and you're doing I guess all of that work there. But today it's kind of like a personal assistant in a way.
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where Google's going out and and finding all the information and all the answers to your questions and then just handing it to you on a little sticky and then you're like, okay, cool, and you can move on. And so I think that's just fundamentally changing the architecture of the internet. Absolutely. Yeah, when's last time you pushed page on a search result? It's been years. Mm-hmm. And
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You know, even even the ability I think one of the more rich features that is changing the the way results are returned is I love the idea that I can ask a question now and then I can ask ask a follow up to my question while still maintaining the context. Yeah. And I love it. And it's changing the way searches are our return trust. And the it's
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I'm I'm a big believer that market friction is market opportunity and now you gotta adapt your sites. you can't build sites like used to and you shouldn't care about the same metrics you used to. Yeah, so I guess putting myself in a practice owner's shoes, if patients aren't clicking as much anymore, is my website still necessary and should I continue to invest and prioritize that?
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Absolutely, because you have to radiate out who you are and what you do somewhere and and you do want to have some control over your own destiny. So and and we talked last episode about schema markup and some other things that you just have to do well. There was a day in the twenty tens that
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I you wanted as much content as you could get on your site. I I I think that's now gone. Mm-hmm. Y you don't need to educate people what a root canal is on your site. You don't need to talk about certain things. You did need to talk about maybe your approach to dentistry and and yeah. So the scientist role has shifted. It's become, you know, I I'll say
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A collection of who you are. It it it represents you. It's not you're not trying to be a general education place. And that changes how the site's built, it changes what goes on the site and many things about it. But Google's still using that site as well as ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and and you know, all the others to to determine how to best originate results. It is still a a big factor. Yeah. So
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there's less people, I guess, visiting your site maybe. So think of it less like s some kind of storefront, right? Where everyone's passing through and more like your website needs to be the source for Google to pull answers for people that are searching for specific things. So you s it's still very it's critical.
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Yeah. To have. and then people are still gonna visit your website eventually, you know, when they're getting towards the bottom of that funnel or their, you know, new patient journey, they're still gonna visit your website. It's still very important. Absolutely. Yeah, and you're gonna see your your your probably your most profitable patients, I would say, are still going to hit your site because they're
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They're more informed consumer, they're looking for something specific. they saw a video of you and they want to watch more, things like like that. They're still gonna visit your site. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
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But yeah, well let's get into now, I guess how do we measure what matters today with all of these things changing in the zero click era? and I know you said this is something that's been changing for some time, but we can't attribute weekly patients to just one channel and now things are even messier. So what what do we measure today?
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There's a good answer and a real answer. The real answer is new patients into the practice, production and phone calls. I think that if those are working, that's what you need to focus on. the days of singular channel attribution are so they've been gone for a long time.
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The good answer is you should absolutely be looking at brand mansions, you should be looking at like I said, phone calls, the raw phone calls coming into the practice. And and you have to look in more places. How your social media presence and reach. but a big one is the search console in Google, I think is probably king when it comes to
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the site performance, but you're also your your Google business profile results. And i you you have to
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The friction is you're not going to be able to say, I put a thousand dollars into Google search ads and now I have, you know, X dollars back because we've seen it as we run ads, as we run different campaigns, brand mansions go up, we've seen referrals increase, and and consumers are just consuming there's so many places you are on the internet nowadays that it is hard to measure.
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the path a consumer takes because there's so many different paths. So I I think you have to be listening to those phone calls for reviews, mentions, those things. I I and and truth is winning fixes everything. Yeah. So I guess in if anybody else in marketing promises to you that they can, that's just a flat out lie today. Because it's messy. Absolutely. I I
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You know, and and that's one of the reasons that when we take over an account we tend to want all of it because
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Having Google search ads that drive to an incomplete website or having a video a set of video ads that have a different look and feel than the website does, which has a different vibe than the than the your social media presence, which, you know, outdated or not, photos on Google Business Profiling, i it it gives a very
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you know, dissonant look. You want you want cohesion across those. Mm-hmm. And that's important, but all of them matter. Yeah. And and you know, that and that's the work. it's we've said before, I I don't think it's getting harder to be I don't think dental marketing is getting harder. I think that it's punishing bad dental marketing quicker. Ooh, yeah.
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That's a good way to put it.
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so those things that you were saying, you know, how to what to measure, the phone calls, new patient appointments, just the get directions button, branded searches, I think th those all have in common the their high intent actions. Right. So that's I think something to pay attention to. So like for example, if someone that hits the, you know, get directions button on Google
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that's a lot higher intent than somebody like say clicking if you get a click on your about us page or meet team page, that could be someone just casually, you know, browsing versus someone that hits get directions is probably planning on coming to your your practice in the near future. and then same with branded searches, like that's somebody who has probably seen you, p maybe they got an AI overview.
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With your practice in there. Mm-hmm. And then later on when they're ready ready to take the next step, they searched you directly by your business name. And you know? To even make it more messy when when you see clicks on home pages now, or about us pages, whatever it is, y you really almost have to filter by where they're from. I mean if if your office is in
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you know, Las Vegas, Nevada and you're getting clicks from Texas. Who cares? Who cares? Jinx. Yeah. I mean i you know, n no one in
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you know, a a foreign country is going to go to your practice in Milwaukee. Mm-hmm. i it's just it it's likely to be unless maybe you're s some, you know, critically acclaimed cosmetics. You know what I mean? Like in Saskatchewan is a big deal. yeah. no, I I I y you even a click to the site has been watered down because
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You know, it it's pretty wild when we turn off ads. You know, obviously new patients make up a big bulk of of of calls. Existing patients make up a lot of calls. You know the third most populous type of calls? Hmm. Vendors. Ooh, yeah. Using the Google machine to find practices. So they're going to about those pages too, 'cause they w 'cause you you can infer
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how much production an office does by the size of their staff. Mm-hmm. And that's one of the ways that vendors look at practices that that they're gonna call. Yeah. And try to get the business. So th there's all kinds of misinformation out there, but it it it really is around
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Your site n is now radiating out who you are and you still have people coming to it, but it it's you know, Google's now keeping that click in its ecosystem. Mm-hmm. So it can be easy for dentists and practice owners to panic when when they see the drop in clicks. Yeah, 'cause you don't understand it either. And it is it is more it is more moving parts to understand. Mm hmm. Yeah.
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The important thing is like are you still getting those new patient calls? Are you still getting those Right. You should still be getting calls into the practice that that hasn't changed. Yeah. Yeah. And and I I do expect you know, one of the next things to fall in this is online scheduling. I I
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I think that there will be a natural evolution to it's already happening now, it just hasn't reached the critical mass, but this is the a natural set side way to online scheduling. You you will see them in the Google business profiles at some point. I thought you were gonna say that
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online scheduling would fall. I was like, ooh. no, I think it would continue to increase. No, okay, I'm with you. And in fact, that would be great. No, I think it's lovely. And in fact, you know what, it it's funny, we used I used online scheduling last night. Me too. Emily was driving
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The girls around and she ended up hitting there was this huge pothole and she hit it and she actually flattened both passenger side tires. Jeez. And we had to call we had to, you know, she she made her way to a gas station. We we had to call a tow truck. But I was Googling around and obviously I looked at reviews and then I went with the one who actually was like we would be there in 25 minutes.
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And I picked the one that offered the ability to schedule right there online. Mm-hmm. And I know that's not the same as dentistry, that's what I'm saying. But Google made it so easy for me to find, review, and make sure I was, you know, not putting Emily in an odd situation. Mm-hmm. And schedule it.
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And it was that easy. Yeah. And I I s I remember thinking l last night, like, this is gonna happen with industry. It's it's gonna be y our next cleaning available is tomorrow at eight AM. Mm-hmm. Do you want it? Yes. Just imagine. Well, if the search results page is the new destination but you don't own that, how how do you show up? Well, to your point, you stop trying to win the click and start trying to win
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those few spots that Google actually features you. So let's get into how you can optimize for your digital presence. Absolutely. You have and that is an understatement. Yeah.
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Everyone I say everyone has a website. Actually, Dr. Robinson in Utah didn't have a website until twenty twenty six. That's funny, but he had a Google business profile. Sure did. And he had good reviews and it had pictures and and it was active and and you know That'd be a cool experiment. Side note. Shut everyone's side down. not only do you want it accurate, it it
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You want new photos, you want to have the services you listed. It it you do need to go make sure your hours are correct. And I the thing that I believe now is the most rich is the ability to have FAQs on there and and I think you need to demonstrate your work. Because the all of the AI you know
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products are leveraging those reviews and Google business profiles because they've known for years how consumers leverage them. And that's the first one. And reviews continue to be
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Incredibly important. And not just the sheer volume. I mean I I I think we have seen a bit of a watering down of sheer volume of reviews, well articulated specific
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Content rich reviews matter. Like I I don't care. Great dentist five five stars. That is that's not as valuable as it once was. I think, you know, you know, my appointment with Dr. Cornelius at Sky Creek Dental was amazing. As soon as I sit down, he made me comfortable and w when they were fixing my Invisalign trays, I I you know, broke one of my
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attachments. The attachments and true story. Yeah. And and you know, every they're always on time. What you know, whatever that is, I want a really rich review because that's what's getting you know, earlier I like the story you said about the AI assistant. That's what's getting back to that's what's getting sent back to the potential consumers is those review snippets sometimes.
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Yeah, exactly. And it's we were talking about this last week, but the review rating is what kind of gets you discovered initially, but the actual content of those reviews is what's gonna get you actually chosen. So like in think about it, if someone's searching a specific question like is doctor so and so so good with anxious kids or, you know, kids that have dental anxiety,
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They're gonna scrape those reviews and the content in them for answers as well. So yeah, it's not about your star rating anymore. It's it's about what's being said, which I guess is another topic that and how to get your patients to say really, really detailed things about you. But that's funny. You've got to ask specifically. That's that's been the secret for years. I not hey Sarah, I I I loved having you in my practice today. One the
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greatest things you can do is leave us a review on Google and tell us about your experience and I'd love you to be as specific as you can like and then you know thinker. Yeah. and the the last thing you need to do to optimize for your presence is you really do have to structure your I won't say service content, which is
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y you know, your crowns and your cosmetics and your your your different products you're offering and the FAQs very well on your site. 'Cause they are they are indexing those. Yeah, because I mean if just compare two situations. If you land on a service page for dental implants and it's this like dense paragraph that's, you know, very well written or creatively written that
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Like AI is gonna have to work harder to find those answers versus if it had several headings and different, you know, bullets and it was more, I guess, easy to digest. It's just making the Google robot AI machines easier. You know, it makes their job easier. Yeah, and there's a bit of a paradox on the internet today in that somewhere around twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen we saw a a shift from the
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It was somewhere around that era that video was watched more than text was read. Mm-hmm. And now we're f so far beyond that. So well, you would think, okay, that that means I can have, you know, a text doesn't matter and you know and pa and patients don't read websites. They they do not read a block of text. no. But we do scan.
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For what you need. For what we need. And more importantly, we do need that structured well because as our eyes go over it, we want the important things and then you have to discern what's important. But you nailed it. I I I think AI's come a long way and it will continue to evolve, but it is hard for it to just take a wall of text and return a cohesive result to a potential patient. So it's just optimizing your content.
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Yeah, and tell your story. Why would why would I trust someone else to tell my story? I should I should tell my story. Yeah. Exactly.
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So to close out the episode, just because you have single channel metrics going down or your you you think your webs website traffic's going down, you're not losing patience. You might be keeping score in the wrong decade. That's so true. Yeah, do not panic. Your patients haven't stopped finding you. They just have to click a little bit less to do so. Yeah.
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I want to talk about AEO in the next episode and how to actually show up when patients ask Chat GPT who the best dentist is. Mm, yeah. Whatever they ask outside of Google. On the Clauds and the Geminis and the Chatty G's.
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Well, that was your bite of dental marketing.
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Sara (00:02)
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Sarah, there's a shift happening in the dental marketing business. Shift happens. Shift happens. And the shift is website traffic reports are down, the visitors to site sites are down, but yet new patients are stable or up and it has a lot of dentist and industry people kinda wondering what's going on.
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Yeah. Our clients are feeling this all across the board. And we've been asked a few times, you know, like it's like what part of my marketing is working? 'Cause it's you know, it feels scary, but your marketing didn't break, just the definition of a click did though. Yeah.
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And welcome to Bisez Dental Marketing. Today we're gonna be digging in the zero click problem. What happens when Google answers the question before anyone reaches your site? Yep, we're gonna cover three things. First we'll look at where all your website clicks really went because your patients didn't just disappear. Then we'll get into what you should actually be measuring now that clicks aren't quite as reliable as they used to be.
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And finally we'll talk through how to actually show up in the spots that Google's handing out versus chasing a click you're not gonna get.
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For the the last couple of decades the logic was pretty simple, right? Like if you get more clicks, that usually means you get more patients. But and then on the flip side of that, if clicks are down, then your revenue's probably down. And that's that's just how it was and until it it wasn't. Yeah, and this has been a gradual change. and this has been happening for years. it it
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And it's just recently reached the critical mass of it. But Google and even Yahoo before them, I mean so so it really is decades is Yahoo. They've been trying to keep your eyeballs within their platforms. Mm-hmm. And
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Primarily the Google business profile for Google was the primary feature of that and then Google snippets and then the questions, you know, like other questions like this they and and it's actually been quite a problem in the SEO world because
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Google has almost been taking over a site's content to reposition it as their some sometimes. Mm-hmm. And SEOs have been very frustrated by that. and this is just the latest round of it. now it has reached the critical mass where Google business profiles are getting more visits regularly than the sites do. Yeah. and it's around that's how Google monetizing itself. and
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Yeah. it doesn't surprise me that especially with the AI overviews, more reviews, the a richer map pack, you can now search in the maps, you know, photos, you can post almo Google Business Promost turned into a social media platform that you can post regularly on. Right. They're capturing more traffic. They are. So I guess let's break it down. What what does zero click mean?
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To a dentist that's out there like, okay, how is this affecting my clicks in traffic? Yeah, it's it's the They're learning about you outside of your website site. And that's rich enough for them to make a decision. So so so you're just not having it you're you're losing some visibility into the consumer behavior. Yeah.
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I see. I thought of something earlier about, you know, the way we use Google now versus you know, several years ago. And it's kind of like a phone book. Like Google used to be like a phone book where you would have to go through like a directory of results and do the work and you know, vet out each source and you're doing I guess all of that work there. But today it's kind of like a personal assistant in a way.
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where Google's going out and and finding all the information and all the answers to your questions and then just handing it to you on a little sticky and then you're like, okay, cool, and you can move on. And so I think that's just fundamentally changing the architecture of the internet. Absolutely. Yeah, when's last time you pushed page on a search result? It's been years. Mm-hmm. And
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You know, even even the ability I think one of the more rich features that is changing the the way results are returned is I love the idea that I can ask a question now and then I can ask ask a follow up to my question while still maintaining the context. Yeah. And I love it. And it's changing the way searches are our return trust. And the it's
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I'm I'm a big believer that market friction is market opportunity and now you gotta adapt your sites. you can't build sites like used to and you shouldn't care about the same metrics you used to. Yeah, so I guess putting myself in a practice owner's shoes, if patients aren't clicking as much anymore, is my website still necessary and should I continue to invest and prioritize that?
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Absolutely, because you have to radiate out who you are and what you do somewhere and and you do want to have some control over your own destiny. So and and we talked last episode about schema markup and some other things that you just have to do well. There was a day in the twenty tens that
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I you wanted as much content as you could get on your site. I I I think that's now gone. Mm-hmm. Y you don't need to educate people what a root canal is on your site. You don't need to talk about certain things. You did need to talk about maybe your approach to dentistry and and yeah. So the scientist role has shifted. It's become, you know, I I'll say
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A collection of who you are. It it it represents you. It's not you're not trying to be a general education place. And that changes how the site's built, it changes what goes on the site and many things about it. But Google's still using that site as well as ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and and you know, all the others to to determine how to best originate results. It is still a a big factor. Yeah. So
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there's less people, I guess, visiting your site maybe. So think of it less like s some kind of storefront, right? Where everyone's passing through and more like your website needs to be the source for Google to pull answers for people that are searching for specific things. So you s it's still very it's critical.
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Yeah. To have. and then people are still gonna visit your website eventually, you know, when they're getting towards the bottom of that funnel or their, you know, new patient journey, they're still gonna visit your website. It's still very important. Absolutely. Yeah, and you're gonna see your your your probably your most profitable patients, I would say, are still going to hit your site because they're
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They're more informed consumer, they're looking for something specific. they saw a video of you and they want to watch more, things like like that. They're still gonna visit your site. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
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But yeah, well let's get into now, I guess how do we measure what matters today with all of these things changing in the zero click era? and I know you said this is something that's been changing for some time, but we can't attribute weekly patients to just one channel and now things are even messier. So what what do we measure today?
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There's a good answer and a real answer. The real answer is new patients into the practice, production and phone calls. I think that if those are working, that's what you need to focus on. the days of singular channel attribution are so they've been gone for a long time.
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The good answer is you should absolutely be looking at brand mansions, you should be looking at like I said, phone calls, the raw phone calls coming into the practice. And and you have to look in more places. How your social media presence and reach. but a big one is the search console in Google, I think is probably king when it comes to
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the site performance, but you're also your your Google business profile results. And i you you have to
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The friction is you're not going to be able to say, I put a thousand dollars into Google search ads and now I have, you know, X dollars back because we've seen it as we run ads, as we run different campaigns, brand mansions go up, we've seen referrals increase, and and consumers are just consuming there's so many places you are on the internet nowadays that it is hard to measure.
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the path a consumer takes because there's so many different paths. So I I think you have to be listening to those phone calls for reviews, mentions, those things. I I and and truth is winning fixes everything. Yeah. So I guess in if anybody else in marketing promises to you that they can, that's just a flat out lie today. Because it's messy. Absolutely. I I
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You know, and and that's one of the reasons that when we take over an account we tend to want all of it because
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Having Google search ads that drive to an incomplete website or having a video a set of video ads that have a different look and feel than the website does, which has a different vibe than the than the your social media presence, which, you know, outdated or not, photos on Google Business Profiling, i it it gives a very
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you know, dissonant look. You want you want cohesion across those. Mm-hmm. And that's important, but all of them matter. Yeah. And and you know, that and that's the work. it's we've said before, I I don't think it's getting harder to be I don't think dental marketing is getting harder. I think that it's punishing bad dental marketing quicker. Ooh, yeah.
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That's a good way to put it.
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so those things that you were saying, you know, how to what to measure, the phone calls, new patient appointments, just the get directions button, branded searches, I think th those all have in common the their high intent actions. Right. So that's I think something to pay attention to. So like for example, if someone that hits the, you know, get directions button on Google
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that's a lot higher intent than somebody like say clicking if you get a click on your about us page or meet team page, that could be someone just casually, you know, browsing versus someone that hits get directions is probably planning on coming to your your practice in the near future. and then same with branded searches, like that's somebody who has probably seen you, p maybe they got an AI overview.
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With your practice in there. Mm-hmm. And then later on when they're ready ready to take the next step, they searched you directly by your business name. And you know? To even make it more messy when when you see clicks on home pages now, or about us pages, whatever it is, y you really almost have to filter by where they're from. I mean if if your office is in
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you know, Las Vegas, Nevada and you're getting clicks from Texas. Who cares? Who cares? Jinx. Yeah. I mean i you know, n no one in
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you know, a a foreign country is going to go to your practice in Milwaukee. Mm-hmm. i it's just it it's likely to be unless maybe you're s some, you know, critically acclaimed cosmetics. You know what I mean? Like in Saskatchewan is a big deal. yeah. no, I I I y you even a click to the site has been watered down because
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You know, it it's pretty wild when we turn off ads. You know, obviously new patients make up a big bulk of of of calls. Existing patients make up a lot of calls. You know the third most populous type of calls? Hmm. Vendors. Ooh, yeah. Using the Google machine to find practices. So they're going to about those pages too, 'cause they w 'cause you you can infer
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how much production an office does by the size of their staff. Mm-hmm. And that's one of the ways that vendors look at practices that that they're gonna call. Yeah. And try to get the business. So th there's all kinds of misinformation out there, but it it it really is around
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Your site n is now radiating out who you are and you still have people coming to it, but it it's you know, Google's now keeping that click in its ecosystem. Mm-hmm. So it can be easy for dentists and practice owners to panic when when they see the drop in clicks. Yeah, 'cause you don't understand it either. And it is it is more it is more moving parts to understand. Mm hmm. Yeah.
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The important thing is like are you still getting those new patient calls? Are you still getting those Right. You should still be getting calls into the practice that that hasn't changed. Yeah. Yeah. And and I I do expect you know, one of the next things to fall in this is online scheduling. I I
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I think that there will be a natural evolution to it's already happening now, it just hasn't reached the critical mass, but this is the a natural set side way to online scheduling. You you will see them in the Google business profiles at some point. I thought you were gonna say that
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online scheduling would fall. I was like, ooh. no, I think it would continue to increase. No, okay, I'm with you. And in fact, that would be great. No, I think it's lovely. And in fact, you know what, it it's funny, we used I used online scheduling last night. Me too. Emily was driving
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The girls around and she ended up hitting there was this huge pothole and she hit it and she actually flattened both passenger side tires. Jeez. And we had to call we had to, you know, she she made her way to a gas station. We we had to call a tow truck. But I was Googling around and obviously I looked at reviews and then I went with the one who actually was like we would be there in 25 minutes.
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And I picked the one that offered the ability to schedule right there online. Mm-hmm. And I know that's not the same as dentistry, that's what I'm saying. But Google made it so easy for me to find, review, and make sure I was, you know, not putting Emily in an odd situation. Mm-hmm. And schedule it.
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And it was that easy. Yeah. And I I s I remember thinking l last night, like, this is gonna happen with industry. It's it's gonna be y our next cleaning available is tomorrow at eight AM. Mm-hmm. Do you want it? Yes. Just imagine. Well, if the search results page is the new destination but you don't own that, how how do you show up? Well, to your point, you stop trying to win the click and start trying to win
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those few spots that Google actually features you. So let's get into how you can optimize for your digital presence. Absolutely. You have and that is an understatement. Yeah.
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Everyone I say everyone has a website. Actually, Dr. Robinson in Utah didn't have a website until twenty twenty six. That's funny, but he had a Google business profile. Sure did. And he had good reviews and it had pictures and and it was active and and you know That'd be a cool experiment. Side note. Shut everyone's side down. not only do you want it accurate, it it
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You want new photos, you want to have the services you listed. It it you do need to go make sure your hours are correct. And I the thing that I believe now is the most rich is the ability to have FAQs on there and and I think you need to demonstrate your work. Because the all of the AI you know
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products are leveraging those reviews and Google business profiles because they've known for years how consumers leverage them. And that's the first one. And reviews continue to be
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Incredibly important. And not just the sheer volume. I mean I I I think we have seen a bit of a watering down of sheer volume of reviews, well articulated specific
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Content rich reviews matter. Like I I don't care. Great dentist five five stars. That is that's not as valuable as it once was. I think, you know, you know, my appointment with Dr. Cornelius at Sky Creek Dental was amazing. As soon as I sit down, he made me comfortable and w when they were fixing my Invisalign trays, I I you know, broke one of my
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attachments. The attachments and true story. Yeah. And and you know, every they're always on time. What you know, whatever that is, I want a really rich review because that's what's getting you know, earlier I like the story you said about the AI assistant. That's what's getting back to that's what's getting sent back to the potential consumers is those review snippets sometimes.
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Yeah, exactly. And it's we were talking about this last week, but the review rating is what kind of gets you discovered initially, but the actual content of those reviews is what's gonna get you actually chosen. So like in think about it, if someone's searching a specific question like is doctor so and so so good with anxious kids or, you know, kids that have dental anxiety,
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They're gonna scrape those reviews and the content in them for answers as well. So yeah, it's not about your star rating anymore. It's it's about what's being said, which I guess is another topic that and how to get your patients to say really, really detailed things about you. But that's funny. You've got to ask specifically. That's that's been the secret for years. I not hey Sarah, I I I loved having you in my practice today. One the
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greatest things you can do is leave us a review on Google and tell us about your experience and I'd love you to be as specific as you can like and then you know thinker. Yeah. and the the last thing you need to do to optimize for your presence is you really do have to structure your I won't say service content, which is
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y you know, your crowns and your cosmetics and your your your different products you're offering and the FAQs very well on your site. 'Cause they are they are indexing those. Yeah, because I mean if just compare two situations. If you land on a service page for dental implants and it's this like dense paragraph that's, you know, very well written or creatively written that
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Like AI is gonna have to work harder to find those answers versus if it had several headings and different, you know, bullets and it was more, I guess, easy to digest. It's just making the Google robot AI machines easier. You know, it makes their job easier. Yeah, and there's a bit of a paradox on the internet today in that somewhere around twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen we saw a a shift from the
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It was somewhere around that era that video was watched more than text was read. Mm-hmm. And now we're f so far beyond that. So well, you would think, okay, that that means I can have, you know, a text doesn't matter and you know and pa and patients don't read websites. They they do not read a block of text. no. But we do scan.
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For what you need. For what we need. And more importantly, we do need that structured well because as our eyes go over it, we want the important things and then you have to discern what's important. But you nailed it. I I I think AI's come a long way and it will continue to evolve, but it is hard for it to just take a wall of text and return a cohesive result to a potential patient. So it's just optimizing your content.
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Yeah, and tell your story. Why would why would I trust someone else to tell my story? I should I should tell my story. Yeah. Exactly.
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So to close out the episode, just because you have single channel metrics going down or your you you think your webs website traffic's going down, you're not losing patience. You might be keeping score in the wrong decade. That's so true. Yeah, do not panic. Your patients haven't stopped finding you. They just have to click a little bit less to do so. Yeah.
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I want to talk about AEO in the next episode and how to actually show up when patients ask Chat GPT who the best dentist is. Mm, yeah. Whatever they ask outside of Google. On the Clauds and the Geminis and the Chatty G's.
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Well, that was your bite of dental marketing.
