You should know that your site may take up to 3 months or longer after your site goes live before the search engines discover and index your site.

There is a lot of competition these days for terms like “cosmetic dentist your city, surrounding area, state,” etc. In fact, most of the sites that come up these days are not individual practices, but sites that are used to find practice sites. And it costs money to be included in these “find a dentist” websites.

It wasn’t always this way and that could change again. Google started it late in 2003 when they changed the criteria used for site rankings. Up until that point, it was relatively easy for an individual practice site to sit at the top of the rankings. Among other things, total number of pages and the number of sites linking to a site received additional weight. The result: individual practice sites are virtually invisible on the first 3 pages of most Google searches.

So what can you do? Paid listings are one way to get around this. Both Google and Overture provide economical ways to “bid” on keyword phrases and come up in “sponsored” link areas. Some terms can be purchase for as little as 15¢ per click in some markets.

Another option is to hire a search engine marketing company to help you with specific strategies to get found. We can help you work though all of the details. Please call us and we will help you figure out the best approach for your practice.