Demystifying Your Digital GPA: What Is It, and Why Is It Important?

You may be familiar with the acronym GPA, or grade point average. But how does that relate to your digital marketing? What exactly is being scored?

Below, we explain what the digital GPA is, what it does, and why it’s important for your dental practice.

Demystifying Your Digital GPA

What Exactly is a Digital GPA?

The digital GPA is a cumulative score that rates your various marketing techniques. It grades your efforts in Google, the search engine that carries the most weight for your dental practice.

To calculate your digital GPA, we break your marketing efforts down into 6 main categories and score each category individually. Then, we generate a cumulative score by averaging out the individual scores.

Our 6 categories for calculating your digital GPA:

Google Reviews

The number and quality of your Google Reviews says a lot about your dental practice, but it can also reflect how well you’re marketing your practice, and how you measure up to the competition.

Online Directory Listings

The next category to be graded is online directories. We look at 20 of your practice’s online directory listings and compare each one for accuracy and consistency all across the board. If an address on one of your listings is spelled differently than the others, or a phone number is incorrect, this will count against your score. If all your listings are identical, this strengthens the legitimacy of your business as a whole and gives you a much higher score in this category.

Google My Business

Your Google My Business profile is your online storefront, but in addition to being the first thing people see when they find you in search, your GMB can also affect how well you rank in Google. Your GMB score is determined by how well you rank for the term “dentist” compared to other dental practices in the area.

Local Rankings

The next category that is graded is your local rankings. We look at 5 key search terms and how well your dental website ranks for those terms in the local pack. Does your website rank above the competition, below, or somewhere in the middle? We also check your organic listings, to see if you’re ranking for certain popular search terms.

On-Page SEO

Is your website built so that Google can easily read all its content? Is it well-optimized for Google Search? We’ll score you in this area to determine the strength of your on-page SEO.

Copywriting

Next, we need to grade the quality of your website’s original copy. Does each page follow the correct hierarchy for Google to read? Is the content well-written, relevant to the topic at hand, and using the right keywords for SEO? Is there duplicate content on your website? Informative, well-written copy is essential to your rankings. Duplicate content will knock your copywriting score down to 0, so this needs to be avoided at all costs!

Why do you need to know all this? How is it going to help your dental practice?

Digital GPA PDF mockup

Reasons Why You Should Know Your Digital GPA

Do you own and/or run a dental practice? If you have invested in any marketing at all for your business, then you absolutely need to know how effective that marketing is.

Without a digital GPA, you might be in the dark about how well your business is doing in the local market compared to the competition. You may not know how successful your marketing efforts have been, and what things you can change to get better results. Knowing your digital GPA can open your eyes to what you’re currently doing right, what you may be doing wrong, and how you can do better.

The digital GPA is a tool that takes the mystery and uncertainty out of digital marketing. It clarifies all the techniques you practice is implementing and helps you assume more control over your marketing efforts.

It is also crucial to remember that digital marketing is a continuous process. Your marketing strategies will naturally evolve over time to meet the needs of your practice. Keeping up with the information provided by your digital GPA gives you the knowledge required to adjust your marketing in any way necessary to grow your practice and stay ahead of your competition.

How You Can Use the Knowledge Your Digital GPA Provides

In short, your digital GPA enables you to take your digital marketing to greater heights. It shows you where your efforts may be lagging, and where they are excelling. Whether you need to improve your on-page SEO, get more Google Reviews, or update your website copy, your digital GPA will help you see exactly where you stand.

Two doctors celebrating digital success

Get Your Digital GPA from InTouch

InTouch has worked with dental practices and other businesses for years, providing marketing solutions to help them grow. If you feel uninformed and unsure of how to proceed with your practice’s digital marketing, getting a digital GPA for your practice website could be the next step you need to take to succeed. Google is a major revenue builder for businesses, and we can help you utilize it to its fullest potential as a marketing tool.

Get InTouch today so we can help you evaluate your marketing needs and get the ball rolling on your path to prosperity. Call (877) 493-9003 to speak with one of our marketing experts or request a report online.