Dental website design and SEO – 2017

Preparing your practice website and search optimisation for the year ahead.

The dental world is quite polarised when it comes to marketing and gaining new patients from the web; there are those practices which really stay up-to-date and reap the benefits, but actually quite a lot more which lag behind with out-of-date web properties and fail to realise the potential available to them. Today we’ll take a look at the minimum requirements you need in place if you want your own practice to be up there amongst the “web-enabled” minority who cream off 70% off new patients who find a new dentist via the web.

The first statistic to consider when validating the worth of this is that, after word-of-mouth, the second biggest source of new patients for dentists is the Internet. Of course this is an average figure and if you don’t utilise the various web channels which are available, then this may not apply to you. However, if you decide to up your game and compete, then this could be you and the rewards are certainly there. Let’s take a look at the basic requirements to “web-enable” your new patient acquisition for 2017.

A professional, mobile-friendly website

All projects start with the basic fundamentals and the key foundation for any business which is serious about their web presence, is a top-quality website which is optimised for use on mobile devices as well as desk-tops. Indeed, over 50% of website visits come from mobile devices and this trend is set to continue. So-much-so that Google has already announced experiments to switch the main search results to those based on mobile device content, rather than desk-top sites. You will see the potential problem here if you are stubbornly hanging on to a website which is not mobile friendly!

But it’s not just Google we have to consider, it clearly the user too. Lots of people only use their mobiles or tablets to access the web, so unless you provide a website which works well and is optimised for their device, then expect them to surf elsewhere; possibly to the website of the competitor dentist just down the road.

So your first review should be your website and ensuring that it meets all of the criteria needed to be truly mobile-friendly. This doesn’t just mean that someone built a design based on a WordPress template or similar to tick the “responsive” box. Your site also needs to meet lots of other mobile-friendly criteria such as load-speed, configuration of the navigation and many other elements too. There are approved tools to check this yourself, but if you need guidance, please get in touch and we’ll check your site free of charge.

Engaging, compelling content

A well-structured, mobile friendly website is a great start, but unless your content engages your users and compels them to take action, then unfortunately you’ve still failed. So a good practice website needs to incorporate personalised content including professional photographs of the team and facilities, patient testimonials and, where budget allows, video too. It’s easy to get a cheap site built on a £50 WordPress template where the designer adds a few smiley photos and some generic dental text, but don’t expect this to make you stand out from the rest of the generic, “same old” websites which are out there in abundance. Please don’t think “well it’s just a website”; this is your shop window for everyone, open 24/7/365 and you really do need it to be “bang-on”. Generic just isn’t going to deliver unfortunately.

Ongoing search engine optimisation

Once you have you new website and you’ve checked to make sure that it conforms to best-practice, then you must ensure that it ranks prominently in Google. 65% of enquiries go via the top three Google results and whilst you will not be able to establish this level of prominence quickly, it needs to be a mid/long term goal. In the interests of full transparency, this type of work, SEO, is not cheap and needs to be done by a professional and budgeted for appropriately. You could be paying anything from a few hundred pounds per month to £1k + depending on your location and strength of the local competition. This may sound like a lot, but it easily pays for itself when factored against the value of the business acquired. As we’ve covered elsewhere on this blog, your SEO campaign must be bespoke and not part of some type of monthly maintenance fee which masquerades as SEO, but actually isn’t. Search engine optimisation is a specialised discipline, not a “bolt on” and it must be done diligently by an experienced team.

Social media and blogging

Many dentists grimace when “social” is mentioned and some also struggle with the idea of blogging. However, both of these “disciplines” help to build your brand and local presence as well as contributing to where you rank in the search engines. I won’t go into the technicalities of how that works here, suffice to say that it does, and that you can find more information about it if you take a look through the rest of this blog. Alternatively please call us if you’d like to discuss in detail.

Your email marketing system

Lots of businesses neglect their existing clients in the clamour to gain new ones and dentists can be just the same. Your patients are bombarded with marketing material from competitor practices, whether on the web, in local magazine or leaflets through the door, and many people shop around for more expensive treatments such as implants and orthodontics. So unless you are prepared to update and inform your existing patients about your own news and services reasonably regularly, don’t be surprised if some of them are lured elsewhere by your competitors. A great way of maintaining this connection is by using an e-newsletter system whereby you build a list of approved patient email addresses and mail out news and updates on a regular but non-intrusive basis.

E-mail systems can also be used for more “persuasive” marketing whereby you capture email addresses from interested parties by offering some form of “freebie” and then send out a string of marketing emails designed to persuade the target audience to invest in your services. This is quite a sophisticated technique which is not suitable for all practices, but can be very powerful when used in specific circumstances.

Complementary techniques – web advertising

As well as SEO to target local rankings and the standard search results, you can also consider pay-per-click (PPC) or Google AdWords to serve your business adverts on Google prominently and quickly. You pay each time your ad is clicked and it’s a competitive environment, but done skillfully, PPC can yield new patients enquiries which easily cover your outlay in acquiring them. You can also advertise on other social channels, promote your posts on Facebook etc, to help increase the traffic to your website. When doing this, it’s important to understand the quality of the traffic that each of the techniques will yield – for example, getting lots of web visits from Facebook is quite easy, however, the quality is typically much lower than the traffic which arrives on your website via the traditional Google results.

Measuring the results

As with any investment, you must evaluate the returns. With web marketing it’s quite straightforward to set up “analytics” to determine where traffic comes from and what actually results in real enquiries. This data can be used to adjust your campaigns accordingly, ditching anything which doesn’t return and up-scaling those channels which do. Unfortunately we see way too many dentists who subscribe to a monthly “SEO package” from their dental designer under the illusion that it’s providing holistic marketing coverage. In reality it’s not and is simply a glorified and expensive maintenance fee. So be wary of this and always make sure that your marketing is specific to your needs and that the results are measured in detail.

Summary

When setting your dental practice marketing budget for the year ahead, please take a close look at your website and how you propose to use it and complementary digital marketing channels and techniques for acquiring new patients. Is everything up to scratch? Do you have a holistic approach or are there any new avenues you wish to test? Are you measuring the results and taking appropriate action based on the data?

If you need any assistance with evaluating what you already have in place or need to start from scratch, the digital team at Dental Media will be pleased to assist with experienced advice. You can reach us on 01332 672548 or via the contact link at the top of the page.