SEO has become such a huge factor in the dental marketing world that there are myriad companies offering to use their “SEO expertise” help get your practice’s website ranked and drive targeted traffic to your site.
However, just like in almost any market, some companies are more effective and reliable than others. And some companies dental SEO marketing services should NOT BE TRUSTED.
Before hiring a dental SEO Company to take care of your SEO needs here are ten questions that you should ask to avoid lack luster results. 
There is no one formula for SEO. There are a plethora of competing ideas – some have been proven to work and some not so much. And more importantly, there are some techniques that only do not work but they could actually annoy potential customers and ultimately have a negative effect on your business and its reputation. Any company that you hire should be able to easily and convincingly explain what they do – if it seems like they do nothing but spam be wary.
A good dental SEO company should have examples of ways they have helped other businesses that you can relate to your own dentistry practice. If all they can talk about is percentages of web traffic that does not necessarily translate to bringing you new patients. If they have specific examples of helping businesses attract new customers, or better yet medical practices attracting new clients, this can usually be taken as a good sign.
Of course, any company that you hire should have open lines of communication. However, an Dental SEO company should explain upfront not only what they are planning on doing, but how they expect it to work for you, and how they will gauge its effectiveness and communicate this effectiveness to you as it is happening.
It has become an unfortunately common scenario: somebody hires an SEO company based on the professional presentation of somebody they spoke with. However, after hiring the company and spending money, every time they call the company the only person they seem to get a hold of is some intern with a marked lack of communication skills. Make sure you know who your contact will be in the company.
With all of the SEO companies out there, a good company should be able to articulate what makes them distinct. And they should have a good point, not just “we’ll get you good business”.
Most dental SEO companies are going to need something apart from money in order to do their job. Find out beforehand what your role is going to be, and how much time you are going to have to commit. You do not want this to have to cost you more than you expected.
All search engines have sets of rules regarding submissions and ranking. Find out up front if the company plans to work with the search engine or drive traffic by less legitimate methods. Even they use some less than aboveboard methods, hear what they have to say before giving them the boot.
Hiring a dental SEO firm often means having to share the password to some of your accounts – particularly profiles on popular search engines. Make sure you will not be frozen out under any circumstances.
This is a no-brainer, but still important. Do not trust the company’s word alone about their success, get some references.
SEO over the last 5 years has drastically changed. Before the most recent updates your next door neighbor given 3 months of education could be trusted to do your SEO. Post Google’s Penguin update that is simply not the case and if your Dental SEO company doesn’t know all about the Penguin update your they are likely to get your website penalized and/or even de-indexed from the search engines all together so it’s very important to ask the right questions to get your SEO money’s worth for your dental practice.
