Understanding Google’s New Ranking Rules

There is a great deal of buzz in the online world about the new Google ranking rules that go into effect April 21.

Is it time to panic?

Will your website disappear from Google?

Relax, if you have been following our advice when it comes to dental web pages the big changes should not have much effect on your dental practice web page rankings.

The big change that has everyone talking is to add rank value to web sites that are mobile friendly. The best way to do this is to have a responsive site. That is a site that detects the device on which it is being viewed and displays itself accordingly. This has been good advice for years and now Google will be rewarding you for doing it.

The second change is to penalize sites with multiple doorways. These are pages designed explicitly to attract specific Google search terms that then direct users to another site.

Most people still choose a new dentist based on a referral from a friend or family member. That means they will search you on Google by name. SEO for keyword search terms like “dentist” is important, but it is even more important what comes up when someone searches you by name.

by Dr. Larry Emmott