Optimising Dental Websites For Usability, Conversions and Search Engine Ranking

Is your website failing to generate useful patient enquiries?

When dentists approach us to improve their patient uptake from the web, one of the first things we do is analyse their website. This typically occurs in two main phases; the first is a visual inspection and testing to see if the website is suitably engaging and easy to use. The second is a technical evaluation to see where the website ranks in Google, a thorough investigation of the analytics data and also a check to see how well the site conforms to Google’s guidelines for best practice.

If any of the above elements are in poor shape, it is very likely that the website will underperform when it comes to attracting new patient enquiries.

Unfortunately we often find that the dentist who is seeking our assistance has paid a lot of money for a new website, only to find that it significantly underperforms expectations. Understandably there is often a reluctance to pay more to have the issues rectified, particularly where they’d been led to believe that a new dental website would be the answer to their quest for new patients. However, if the issues are not addressed, that website will never perform correctly.

What are the main reasons for dental website underperformance?

Very often it is one of more of the following reasons:

• Poor configuration leading to bad usability
• Insufficiently engaging – e.g. overuse of stock images, lack of personalisation
• Too “glitzy” – failure to recognise the patient demographic and not representative of the business
• Too many “bells and whistles” leading to poor page loading speeds (bad for usability and search engine ranking)
• Failure to use key elements critical for attracting patients e.g. testimonials, case studies, personalised imagery, video etc
• The website is simply too old and stale
• The website has technical issues preventing easy use and/or compromising search ranking
• Poor SEO has resulted in a demotion in Google searches

Rectification

Fixing an under-performing website is never simple unless there is a small technical issues resulting in big performance problems. In this case, quick diagnosis and a rapid fix can deliver results very quickly.

Unfortunately it’s often a combination of problems causing the bad performance and so we need to identify and then prioritise the essential fixes as follows:

• Fix any underlying technical issues and ensure that the website is performing acceptably to meet Google’s guidelines. There are a number of analytical tools we use to help with this assessment including “Page Speed Insights”, “Lighthouse”, Search Console and GTmetrix.
• With the technical issues addressed, we move on to the aesthetics of the website and its ability to engage and convert user visits into useful enquiries. This could range from re-organising page structure and navigation through to a complete re-write and inclusion of new elements such as personalised photography, testimonials and more. Here we are trying to ensure that the website is more appealing than those of the local competition.
• Google ranking – working through the elements above will almost certainly have a positive impact on where a dental website features in Google searches, but unfortunately more work will be needed to help the website rank in the coveted top positions. To achieve this we need to check the local competition and compare their ranking performance with the website we are working on. This gives us a baseline to work from.

We will also check to make sure that the website has not been compromised in Google in any way, for example, through poor SEO carried out previously. Where this is found to be the case, we have to carry out a whole new tranche of recovery work to re-establish the website in Google. We will also start a programme of optimisation work on and off the website to progressively improve search ranking.

How long does it take to complete this type of optimisation work and what does it cost?

This is a broad question and very much depends on the condition of the website when we receive it. As I mentioned, on rare occasions a simple technical fix can result in rapid improvements. However, wide scale updates of the website configuration and content can take several weeks to complete.

Where Google ranking is poor, it can take several months of optimisation to move the key search terms to page one and then progressively upwards to the top three positions where website traffic really starts to take off.

Where a website is quite significantly sub-optimal, quite a lot of initial work and ongoing optimisation will likely be required. So some patience and a realistic budget are needed.

What will I gain?

Whilst you may need to spend anything from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds to ensure your dental practice website is fit-for-purpose, the rewards are undeniably huge. A website which is technically excellent, with great usability and excellent ranking results, will deliver a steady flow of new patients every month. As a guide, depending on location, our client websites typically deliver anything from 20 – 150 new patient enquiries monthly – even in the worst case, this is a huge return on investment.

Next steps

If your own practice website is underperforming, it’s almost certainly time to get a second opinion and assessment to see what is going wrong. Please remember that new websites can perform just as badly as old ones; ironically one of the most popular dental website designers in the UK actually produces sites where the technical performance is dismal and their search positions reflect this.

For experienced guidance, please contact the Dental Media web team on 01332 672548 for a no obligation assessment and a proposal to get your website firmly back on track.