We created RateADentist.com for one simple reason: to help dental practices "get found on the Web". One of the things that Internet search engines take into account is patient reviews - and RateADentist is all about patient reviews. By having a lot of your patients post reviews on RateADentist, you improve your chances of getting a good ranking by the search engines.

Another thing the search engines like is "relevant" websites, and one of the ways they determine if a site is relevant is by looking at all the other websites that are linked to it, and the relevance of those sites. We have designed RateADentist so that every RateADentist user's website will point to it, and vice versa. Eventually, there will be thousands of dental websites all pointing to each other through RateADentist, which should make it appear to be very relevant to the search engines.

So when someone searches for "dentist indianapolis", for example, the RateADentist site itself may come up high in the "organic" search results. Hopefully, the prospective patient will look at it, and search for dentists near them, and of course, the RateADentist clients with the highest number of reviews will appear at the top of the search results. 

Below are some Frequently Asked Questions about RateADentist (and the answers, of course).

Read more... (8669 bytes more)

As the Ruby Sponsor of the AADOM (American Association of Dental Office managers - www.dentalmanagers.com), Lighthouse will pay $100 of your registration fee for the Sixth Annual Dental Managers Conference, October 22-23, 2010 in Las Vegas!

Read more... (1395 bytes more)

If you don't know about the AADOM - the American Association of Dental Office Managers - you should! It's the only organization we know of that's dedicated to furthering the profession of dental office management and administration. If your practice has someone in the role of office manager, or practice administrator, or office coordinator, or any of a dozen other titles that means "the person who is mainly responsible for the administrative aspect of your practice" - you should seriously consider AADOM membership for that person.

Lighthouse is so convinced of the value of AADOM membership, and committed to the organization's goals, that we have become the first ever "Ruby Sponsor" of the AADOM for 2010. (We think we're in good company - Patterson Dental is the "Diamond Sponsor"!) That means that we'll be very actively involved with AADOM throughout the year, culminating in October at the Annual Conference (this year, it's Las Vegas in October!).

Read more... (1669 bytes more)

"The Internet? Is that thing still around?"
-- Homer Simpson

Homer probably still uses the Yellow Pages a lot, but more and more people all the time are using the Internet to find goods and services. Every month, the words "dentist" and "dentists" are searched for on Google over 9,000,000 times! When the search is for "dentist YourCity", are they finding you? If not, Lighthouse has a brand new feature that can help!

Read more... (4443 bytes more)

Last month, we gave the first webinar about PLZ. We will be doing these on a regular basis throughout 2010, approximately every other month - and more often if they prove to be popular. If you missed the first one, or if you just want to see it again, it's on our website. Go to www.JustSayPLZ.com and click on the "Podcasts and Webinars" menu item.

The Ideal Recall System
The webinar topic was "The Ideal Recall System." We chose it because there were so many enhancements to the PLZ recall system in 2009, and we wanted to make sure all of our clients knew about them all. Even new PLZ users might not be fully aware of all them. The rest of this article briefly describes all of the recall tools available to PLZ users, which were explained in detail in the webinar.

Read more... (3877 bytes more)