Michael Anderson
Michael Anderson & Laura Maly are a husband-and-wife team behind Wonderist Agency, a full-service dental marketing agency hailing from sunny San Diego built just for dentists.
In 2012 Michael and Laura set out to breathe life into the gloomy landscape of dental marketing already defined by stock content, siloed campaigns, poor customer service, and unpredictable results. Today, Wonderist Agency is the leading dental marketing agency in the country and was recognized in 2020 as one of the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies.
Wonderist Agency works with dentists across the country, from scratch startups and acquisitions to DSOs and specialists to help them build brands that stand out and create marketing campaigns that generate new patients. Wonderist is truly full-service, building websites and brands, managing SEO, Google Ads, social, and even print and local marketing. Wonderist does it all, well.
With all the trappings of a Silicon Valley startup, it will come as no surprise that Wonderist culture is at the center of everything they do. With 40+ Wonder Buddies and 10 office dogs, our 8000 square foot office in the heart of San Diego is more than just a workplace- it is home to a team of unique individuals that put their clients first.
Why is it Important to have an Online Presence as a Dental Office/Company
Whether it be on your website or social media, it’s crucial to have an online presence. Why? So, people can find your practice. About 80% or more of people making a purchasing decision in health care go to a search engine and do research ahead of time.
There are two types of people that search for your practice. There are people who come in with no preference. Then there are people who come to a search engine with a referral but still want to do their own research. You need to make sure to consider: Am I accessible? If you picture search engine rankings (the order in which search results appear) as physical stores, the further you have to walk down the street the less likely you are to visit them.
Keywords
Keywords are something you want to be ranking for when someone searches google. You want to make sure you do a good job building out and claiming your business listing. Make sure to fill out your NAP – or your Name, Address, and Phone Number. Make sure to stick to one practice name.
The first thing people overlook is your website URL. Speed of site and content of site should be optimized as well. Do you have relevant, compelling content?
Think of your website as individual pages that can rank for certain key words instead of your website’s ranking as a whole.
If you want to see how your SEO is performing, Dr. Jarod Johnson recommends using Moz Local or Local Viking where you can see where you’re ranking for keywords.
Backlinks and Referring Domains
To understand backlinks and referring domains, you must understand that there’s both on-site optimization and off-site optimization. On-site performance is the content on the page, the site’s speed, page performance.
Pro tip: the keywords in the header matter more for SEO than the body.
Off-site optimization includes backlinks and referring domains. Think of backlinks as a popularity contest. Google might think your site looks great, but how well does it look to other people? Are other people linking (aka backlinking) to your site?
Backlinks are simply links on other people’s site to yours.
Backlinks are a great tool, but not the most useful term to know. Referring domains are even better. For example, 1,000 backlinks from one site domain only count as one referring domain. Don’t focus on the number of backlinks you have, focus on the number of domains, or websites, that link to you, aka referring domains.
Reviews
Reviews can help with your ranking, however, guest Michael Anderson notes that it’s tough to figure out how Google ranks you based on reviews. He’s seen companies with a small number of reviews rank high and vice versa. As best practice, reviews are important for local rankings. Reviews factor more heavily for local SEO. Make sure to get consistent reviews over time.
Creating Content for SEO
Host Dr. Jarod Johnson suggests using Yoast, a plugin for WordPress that guides you through keywords. The other option is to hire a company to create content and optimize your site. They might go through your website and add keywords to signal to Google that it’s a good resource. They can also create content using AI like Jarvis from Conversion.ai. You can type in a key word, and it will write an outline for you and then you can fill in the paragraphs. Guest Michael Anderson uses Keywords Everywhere.
You can either write content or you can create a video. Otter.ai does a great job at transcribing video. This way you can create 2,000 – 4,000 words easily.
Contact Michael Anderson of Wonderist
If you’d like to get in touch with Michael of Wonderist, go to their website, and schedule a video meeting or if you have a specific question for Michael, email him at: michael.anderson@wonderistagency.com