What Is Duplicate Content?

This is very unfortunate, but the majority of dentists I consult with have a website littered with duplicate content.

Let me first define what duplicate content is, and then how it can hurt both your rankings in google, and with your website visitors.

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What Is Duplicate Content?

According to SearchEngineWatch.com, “duplicate content is content which appears in more than one location on the Internet.”

So what happens to your website with the duplicated page?

It won’t rank for that page (for example teeth whitening scottsdale).
The weight of that page will be negligible.
A point against the site as a reliable source of quality, unique content will be registered.

As you can see by the above issues, this takes your dental website from a potential “authority website” that outranks all your local competing dentists, to a low value, low traffic website that was a big waste of money in attracting new patients to your practice.

Dentists Beware!

When you meet with a dental marketing company and they say they do “content marketing”, which is create content for your web pages, blog pages, and services pages, make sure you ask them if this content is “uniquely written” and found nowhere else on the Internet.

First off, you will hear silence on the other end of the line, or if you are in person, they will turn slightly flush in color 😉

This is a critical question to ask, and one to take extremely serious!

Secondly, ask them how long each article, page or blog post will be?

If they say 250 words or under, do not hire them for that service!

I am not hear to bash anyone, but some of the biggest dental marketing firms in the country are committing this sin of duplicate content. And I mean some of the biggest… and you know or have heard of them.

Social Media Content

The same goes with social media. You will get “pitched” by firms that specialize in this, but unfortunately the same facebook post, tweet or google+ post you get provided is also on thousands of other dental social media pages.

How bad does that look when the exact same image and text appears on thousands of these social media pages?

I can tell you it looks terrible. It portrays your practice as lazy, a copycat, and no humanistic side to you, which is what social media is all about.

The only way to engage with your local market through social media is be authentic, and more importantly REAL.

Dental Content Guidelines

Each page is to be unique (not copied anywhere else on the Internet).
Each page should be a minimum of 400 words.
Each page should have 4-5 subheads for easy reading (skimming).
Each paragraph should not be no longer than 2, or at the most 3 sentences long.
Each page (post) should be written for the web visitor not for the search engines or your practice.
The content should lead them down the path to ultimately pick up the phone and call your practice.