How do Dentists perform in their Google Business Profiles? A Study of 212 practices in Canada
Do you think the elite professionals in Canada have set up their Google Business Pages for success?
Let’s explore.
Introduction:
In Canada, the Dental Practice as a business is considered one of the highest profit-making ventures.
The dentists being elite professionals with deep pockets, they are constantly targeted by Digital marketers and agencies alike to be enlisted among their clientele.
Note: The term “Google Business Profile” was earlier known as Google My Business page and continues to be popularly called by the same name by many Dental practices.
In a first of its kind, the PPC Digital Marketer conducted a simple study of the Google Business profiles of 212 dental practices to find how updated are their profiles and to figure out the low-hanging measures available for dentists to self-improve their profiles using simple fixes with the help of the Google Business Profile Manager or Google My Business account that is very intuitive.
Methodology:
The methodology employed was simple and idiot-proof.
The Google Business profile now contains an ever-increasing list of ranking factors like Business name, category, address, pin location, service area, hours, phone number, website, description, images/videos, products, services, etc.
The study was conducted among the following six ranking factors:
1. Status of the Google Business page
2. Business description
3. Videos/images
4. Reviews and Response to reviews
5. Operating hours
6. Categories chosen
The importance of Google Business Profile in SEO:
The growth and the importance bestowed to the Google Business profile (GBP) to evaluate and determine the organic ranking of a brand has gradually increased significantly.
Currently, based on some studies conducted by SEO research tools, the Google Business Page (GBP) is attributed 30-33% importance and hence a strong profile leads to a very high organic visibility of a brand in the Google SERPs.
How were the 6 factors rated?
Infographic showing the top 5 ranking factors of Google Business Profile that was part of the study conducted in 212 Dental Practices.
1
Status of the Google Business Profiles
- Claimed
- Not Claimed
We wanted to focus our study only on the Businesses that were claimed by the owners. Among the 6 elements studied, the status of the GBPs had the most satisfactory result with the highest success rate at 99.5% with 211 of the 212 practices having claimed their Google Business pages.
Want to know how to request ownership of your Google Business Profile? Visit Google’s support page for a detailed description of the process.
2
Business Description
The 750-character limit description is a sufficient space available for businesses to narrate their story and draw attention of the searchers by adding a narrative that includes the relevant keywords.
Do you know the elements that make a great Business description for a Dental practice?
Image showing the location of the Business Description of Google Business Listing under the Knowledge Panel of Google.
Elements that were found in a well elucidated Description
Based on the 212 dental practices studied, some of the well-written descriptions had consistent presence of 4 or more of the following items in their Google Business Listings.
- History of the clinic
- Location, service area
- Names and qualifications of the dentists/dental team
- Unique Selling Point
- Ambience provided for patients.
- Quality of service provided.
- List of dental services offered
- Details about the insurance/financing needs among other things
How was the Google Business Description rated?
Among the 7-8 items listed above, if the business description focused on 2 or less, it was rated as short, less clear while anything more than 2 was rated as a detailed business description.
The following 3 ratings were given:
- No Business description left
- Short, less clear description
- Detailed Business description
While over 72% of the Dental practices in Canada shared a Business description in their Google listings, only 40% out of them shared a detailed one to help Google find and rank the pages based on the services offered.
There is a huge potential to be tapped here to stand out from the rest of the Dental practices.
3
Videos/Images and other Illustrative Assets
Again, the importance of adding videos or photos to your Business profile was discussed several times in different YouTube videos, blogs, webinars and conferences.
A crisp narrative of the importance of photos was shared late last year in Partoo.
Here is brief list of the rationale for uploading more videos/images in the Google Business Listings:
- It gives the business an opportunity to keep their Google Business listing constantly updated.
- An opportunity to interact with the target audience.
- Builds credibility for the business when customers upload these assets.
- Get rated higher for visual searches.
How were the Videos/Photos in the Google Business Page rated?
In our Study, the dental offices were placed in 3 simple buckets based on the number of photos/videos uploaded to their Google Business Profiles. The study did not distinguish between those uploaded by the owner vs. the patients/users. Here are the 3 ratings given.
- Less than 10 photos/videos
- 10-50 photos/videos
- More than 100 photos/videos
Location of the assets: The videos/photos are located right on top of the Google Knowledge Panel.
The bar chart shows the X-axis indicating the number of photos uploaded by Dental Practices while the Y-axis on the right and left represents the percentage and the number of Dental Practices that upload photos/video assets to their Google Business pages respectively.
There is a huge potential for improvement for Dentists in the number of photos uploaded to their Google Business Profiles. Dentists can outrank other listings in their location by the shear volume of photos uploaded.
41% of the Google Business Profiles of Dental practices have uploaded fewer than 10 photos.
With the emergence of visual search, we firmly believe that the number of businesses that will continually add to their collection of assets, especially videos, will likely increase.
Do you want to find out the advantages of adding more assets to your Google Business Profile?
This article from Conscious Commerce covered some of the important benefits.
4
Reviews and Response to reviews:
The focus of the next element was the number of responses made by the Dental offices to the reviews left.
The importance of the number of positive reviews that drive traffic to the business has been shared time and time again by many experts and will be not discussed here.
In the study, we focused on the interest shown by the dental offices to respond to their customer/patient reviews. This study did not go deep into the details of the responses left nor the number of reviews responded to.
The bar chart shows the Y-axis on the left indicating the number of Dental practices that respond to reviews while the Y-axis on the right represents the percentage of Dental practices in Canada (out of 212 studied) that responded to patient reviews.
Bar Chart shows that 34.9% out of 212 Dental offices in Canada leave no response to their patient reviews vs. 36.3% responding to almost all the reviews. Many of the Dental offices that we spoke to also showed great interest in responding to the reviews. This is a promising trend.
How were the Response to Reviews in the Google Business Listings rated?
The number of responses to Google my business Reviews were classified and studied under the following 3 heads:
- Number of businesses that did not respond to any of the reviews – No Response to Reviews.
- Number of businesses that responded on and off to the Google reviews, i.e., businesses that responded to less than 85% of the total reviews received – Sporadic Response to Reviews.
- Number of businesses that responded to most (86% or more) or all of the Google reviews received – Responded to almost all reviews.
Results of number of Response to reviews:
A healthy average of 36.3% of the Dental Offices in the sample responded to almost all the Google reviews (86% or more of the reviews received) received through their Google Business Listings.
This was followed by 34.9% of the sample studied not responding to any of the reviews.
This leaves a huge scope for improvement to rank far better for many Business Listings. According the Promo Republic, “your responses prove to Google that your business is active, which is favourable for your SEO strategy and search ranking”.
To find out the other benefits of responding to Google reviews, check out this article posted in the Promo Republic.
5
Business Categories
Finally, on to Business Categories. Do you know how many relevant business categories are available in Dentistry in GBP?
As of August 2023, there are 17 relevant categories.
Similarly, each industry has its own bunch of categories and businesses should take the time to select the ones which they specialize in. It surely does help businesses to appear on top when a user searches for a service/product that they offer.
The study revealed that majority of the Dentists have not chosen important categories like “Dental clinic” or “Dental Hygienist” and hence lose to their competitors even when they are located closer to the patient’s search location.
To determine the Business Categories of the 212 Dental Clinics studied, we leveraged the Google chrome extension named “GMB Everywhere” which provides a complete list of all the categories (both primary and secondary) chosen by each Google Business account.
To download GMB Everywhere in your browser, click the below link.
How were the Business Categories Rated?
When we spoke to the 212 dental practices studied, we found that almost majority of the Dental offices were not aware of the presence of secondary or additional categories. So, we stuck to the simple classification of three choices while rating Business categories.
PPC Digital Marketer
- Practices that have chosen only one category – Primary category only.
- Practices that have chosen 2 categories. One primary and one secondary category.
- Practices that have chosen 3 or more categories. One primary and 2 or more secondary categories.
Business Categories Results of General Dental Practices
Out of the 190 General Dental Practices in the study, about 46% have chosen 3 or more categories while 43% of the practices were not aware of the existence of additional categories to choose from.
Business Categories Results of Specialty Dental Practices
Out of the 22 Specialty Dental Practices in the study, almost everyone except one stuck to the choice of 1 category that is relevant to their specialty, example, Endodontist, Periodontist or Oral Surgeon.
6
Accuracy of the Operating Hours in Google My Business
The Operating hours in Google My Business refer to the business hours of the establishment. Dental Offices have long established the practice of booking appointments through phone and the internet for treating their patients.
However, the emergence of a lot of walk-in clinics has led to the dependence on the accuracy of the operating hours when patients do not plan their visits in advance.
Out of the 212 Businesses that we spoke to, over 51% said that the only update they carry out in their Google Business Profile is to Operating Hours.
Why is the accuracy and regular update of the Operating Hours important in Google Business Profile?
As said earlier, though Dental Practices follow a robust appointment-booking system to treat patients, the accuracy of the operating hours become really important when customers plan their walk-in visits on specific days of the week based on the operating hours of the clinic.
The personal experience that I had was with a well-established organization such as a bank in Canada. According to their Google profile, they were supposed to work until 7 pm on Friday. Reaching there, I found that they had closed at 5 pm that day and for the past 2 weeks due to some construction activities.
Precious time, energy and money is lost along with the trust on the information found online about the business in general.
This becomes all the more important during the holiday season as most of the businesses work on special hours.
How to check for accuracy of the operating hours in Google Business Profile?
The only way to check for accuracy of the operating hours is by comparing the data with the official website of the dental office. This was the method used in our study and here are the results.
Out of the 212 practices studied, 11 of them did not have a website. Among the 201 dental practices compared, only 60.1% of the business listings had the same operating hours as found in their official websites. The operating hours did not match with that available in the websites in a total of 53 Dental practices.
23 and 4 practices had left no operating hours in their websites and Google Business Profiles respectively.
Impact of inaccurate Operating Hours in Google My Business
According to Google, the accuracy of the operating hours is one of the important local ranking factors of Google Business Profile. Inaccuracy may quickly lead to decrease in the trust for the business.
In some instances, a patient travelling all the way to find a business closed may even result in him or her leaving a poor review along with a photo of the business.
Four Quick Opportunities to Self-Improve the Google My Business accounts for the Dental Practices
- Leverage the Business Description to rank higher in Google
How to leverage the Business Description?
Use 4 or more of the elements shared in the study such as the history, service area, unique selling points along with the list of specialized services offered at the clinic to enrich the Business Description.
This may in all possibility improve the rank of the Business listings when similar services are searched for and attract the users to click on your Business.
2. Add videos and images regularly
Why Dental Practices should add videos and images regularly to their Google Business Listings?
Embellish your Business Profile with regularly captured images and videos from/about your Dental office to keep it updated, to increase the chances of appearing in visual searches and to build credibility of your location among your current and future customers.
With just 6 (2.8%) among the 212 Dental practices having more than 100 videos or images in their profile, there is a huge opportunity hear to stand out head and shoulders about the crowd.
3. Respond to all Google reviews
About 63% of the Dental Offices are not responding or responding erratically to the Google reviews left by the patients.
Similar to video and image assets, the Dentists have a great potential to improve here, i.e., respond to all reviews, both negative and positive, and get noticed among their prospective patients.
4. Choose all Business categories relevant to the dental office
Is it necessary to choose all the relevant Business Categories in your Google Business Profile?
It is very critical to choose the most appropriate Primary category that represents the nature of your business in the Google Business page.
Though not mandatory, choosing at least a couple of relevant additional categories helps Google to understand and rank your business based on the search terms used by its millions of users.
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