We recently examined strategies to help your dental practice stand out in a competitive landscape. Now we thought we’d take it one step further by exploring how you can make your dental practice more visible to AI, which is more important than it’s ever been before.
What AI Needs to Know to Recommend Your Dental Practice
In order to become not only visible to, but recommended by, AI, your dental practice needs to:
- Maintain an updated Google Business Profile (GBP)
- Have consistent and updated website content
- Regularly update and maintain patient reviews
- Make sure that website information is clear and accessible
- Include answers to FAQs on your website for questions patients are asking
These are just some of the marketing pieces you want to have in place to become visible in an AI search for dental practices. In addition to incorporating SEO into your digital marketing, you also want to be taking into account Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Let’s start by looking at what you need to know about GEO.
GEO focuses on content quality, structure, and authority building through thought leadership. This content is then sourced for AI search models, which AI will reference as resource material. To ensure your content is being sourced, you want to create high-value and trustworthy content that is understandable using clear and concise language. This will help your content to appear in AI-generated search summaries, including AI overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Dental GEO is what we typically focus on, in addition to SEO, but knowing about AEO is also important. AEO focuses on pulling direct snippets for a particular search query, so you can find the answer you’re looking for without having to click through for more information. To have your content appear this way, you want to focus on content structure, detailed information, and FAQs.
Dental Marketing Mistakes to Avoid When It Comes to AI
When you’re working with a dental marketing agency on your digital marketing efforts, especially when it comes to strategizing how to stand out online, you want to stay away from the following:
- A focus on vanity metrics alone – if you’re only focusing on building awareness and visibility over conversion, then your marketing isn’t doing the job it needs to be doing
- Not tracking data and metrics – if you’re not tracking your numbers, then you don’t know what marketing efforts are working in your favor; it’s why we have this system in place
- Not having a customized and tailored marketing approach for your dental practice – this is what ends up setting your practice up for long-term success in the future
In order to stand out from your competitors, to stand apart in your marketing, and to be visible to AI, you want to avoid common dental marketing mistakes and instead focus on creating quality content that AI references, leading to future patient inquiries and scheduled appointments.
What to Consider When Choosing a Dental Marketing Agency
If you’re searching for the right dental marketing agency to work with, you want to take into account the digital marketing services they offer, the current stage of business growth you’re in, and how they can meet you where you are, support you, and help you reach your goals.
At Dental Marketing from Day One, we pride ourselves on being a thought partner for clients. We get to know where they are in the development of their practices and where they’re looking to go, so we can put a customized plan into place that works for them now and in the future. If you’re a dental practice looking for a digital marketing partner, we’d love to connect with you.