Here is another interesting response to my blog post
Hi Chris
Interesting article in your recent Ezine about Analytics.
I assume you are talking about full website stats in Analytics and not just AdWords stats.
Is the Analytics setup to split  stats on Existing/Registered Patients Vs. New Potential Patients?
I’m doing consultancy for http://www.dentistry.co.uk and they have now split Analytics to monitor Patients, Dental Professionals and Logged in Members separately.
Unless you’re doing a lot of direct marketing, I do not think the high volume of searches for your name is from New Potential Patients.
I believe the high volume of searches for your name is because you have a high volume of existing patients looking you up before and after appointments.
And you are comparing this to a low volume of new potential patients (who are using dental keyphrases to find you) and low because you don’t rank high on Google for enough popular keyphrases. Time for us all to pull together and figure this out! We should setup a fair test
You said:
> Around 80% of the searches are for specifically either the name of the practice or the name of the owners/clinicians.
Well, I think if 80% of searches are for your name – then you are:
1. not doing enough natural SEO for high volume popular dental keyphrases and not ranking in TOP 3 on natural listings and not ranking in TOP 3 on Places local map listings
2. running a radio advert or word-of-mouth campaign that results in people looking you up
3. targeting SEO keyphrases that do NOT attract high volume searches
4. not analysing the statistics fairly or accurately
5. unnecessarily spending money on AdWords for your own name and wasting money pay-per-click for your own name , when you’re already No.1 on natural listing and local map listing for your own name and those are for FREE!
This percentage ratio of searches – for your name Vs. other dental + location keywords – does depend on the volume of searches done.
From my experience,
if you do NOT have TOP rankings for high volume keyphrases i.e. dentist + birmingham OR teeth whitening london, etc then you’re going to have a low volume of searches that find you and thus a low volume of searches registered on Analytics and thus  a higher percentage of registered searches for your name.
Google analytics only shows you what keywords have been used to find your site – it is not showing you the volume of searches for the most popular keyphrases , which most people are clicking on Places Local Map listing and TOP 3 natural listing.
These days, most people try to find what they are looking for in the TOP 3 natural rankings and then they do another search if they can’t find what they are looking for. Strangely, we are way too lazy to go to Page 2 and way too lazy to consistently look at rankings 5-10. We would rather perform another search over and over again.
Basic SEO which should give you a Google Page 1 ranking may NOT be enough to get you into the TOP 3 positions on Google but it may show up on Analytics when a few people can be bothered to click below the TOP 3. But seeing this 20% on your Analytics should tell you that you are missing out!
When you do go for really high volume popular keyphrases on AdWords, you will probably get less than 5% click-through-rate even when you’re no.1 on AdWords. This shows you that you are missing out by at least 80% (rough calculation) by not being no.1 on the natural rankings. Imagine if you have Google domination and are ranking No.1 on AdWords, No.1&2 on natural and no.1 on Local maps?
you said:
When a practice does prepare a sophisticated analysis of new patient enquiries it would seem that the most successful
method of acquiring new patients is via word of mouth recommendation from an existing patient.

The website needs to create a BUZZ – encourage and incentivize visitors and patients to spread word-of-mouth online via Facebook (instead of just joining a group which tells nobody) i.e. get people to talk about you consciously on their Facebook Walls. Everyone is missing out on generating word-of-mouth on Facebook – everyone seems to busy talking about themselves instead of encouraging patients to talk about them.
you said:
The next 2 most popular places to visit are:
• The team page – to find out whether I am dealing with a customer service focused team – or not
• The premises page – to see whether you have invested in the right environment, sofas, plasma TVs and Molton Brown.
My analysis has discovered the FEES page to usually be the 2nd most popular page which makes sense because it doesn’t matter what people are interested in… they will always want to look at your FEES – especially since most people are price comparing at the beginning until they realise there is a difference.
But this all depends on what’s on the main navigation! If you don’t have a “Fees” button on your main navigation, then you won’t get so many people looking at this page, especially if they have to hunt for it which gives statistical tallies to the other pages as the user browses to find your fees.
If you have “Fees & Offers” on your main navigation , I would be surprised if that wasn’t the most popular page on the website after the home page (only because its usually the highest ranking page on your site). Then I would suggest using the Fees page to remind visitors of your USPs and Awards, etc – differentiate yourself here because you know everyone will look at it.
Returning visitors should be going to a page called “Smile of the Day/Week” or “Videos of the Day/Week”. The only thing that could top these pages would be “Offer of the Day/Week”.
I forgot to point out that nobody is really using the URL web address bar anymore…
Everyone seems to google websites even if they know the web address.
A lot of people don’t know how to go directly to a website and what the URL bar is…so they just Google, which also caters for our typos.
This all factors into what the Analytics representsi.e. existing patients looking you up before appointments?
Hope this helps!
Krishan
Krishan Joshi
aka The Master
Internet Marketing Director
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