What can a great dental website do for you?
SO MUCH!
In addition to marketing your website online through search engine optimization (SEO) and brand impressions, a dental practice website can help with office administration, accounts receivable, patient education and communication, and even teledentistry.
A great dental website can feature:
- Integration with practice management software (new patient forms go directly into your database; appointments can be made online)
- Payment portal
- Text, email, phone contacts for current and potential patients, plus a Google Map
- Instructions, blogs, and articles for patients (ie: toothache tips, about dental implants, etc.), all sharable to social media accounts
- Responsive websites are always available on phone, tablet, and PC
- Teledentistry can be integrated
- Tracking for new patient leads from the website
- Newsletter archives
- Opt-in for emails, blog alerts, newsletters, etc.
What do great dental websites cost?
A strategically designed dental website can save you time, expense, and payroll hours, while also driving new patient traffic to your office. Most reputable website companies will build a website for under $5000 and maintain it, including providing ongoing SEO, for a few hundred dollars a month. Websites with more complex functionality will cost more.
Elements of a Great Dental Website
Website Copywriting
Dentistry is a specialty health science, as well as a fine art. To build your authority and reputation online, it is imperative that you work with a dental copywriter who’s well-versed in both dentistry and SEO. Hiring a writer that doesn’t understand the clinical and marketing aspects of dental care could sully your reputation. In fact, if a writer plagiarizes wording or images published on your website, YOU may be legally liable. It happens!
An experienced and reputable dental copywriter will provide completely original, well-optimized, clinically accurate, interesting and informative content that accurately reflects your practice brand so you have a great dental website.
Web Design
As for a website designer, find someone who has a good portfolio and who has worked with health-industry clients in the past. If you do not have a logo or name treatment, your web designer should be able to create one for you. A logo visually pulls everything about your practice together, so “brand impressions” can be made on potential patients. It will also make you appear polished and professional.
Web Development
Choose WordPress for your content management system (CMS), and you should have the freedom to move your website to any server, so you can change developers or webmasters whenever you so choose. Don’t allow a web company to use a proprietary design that they own for your website. They could hold the design hostage if you decide to leave their service. This, too, happens!
Your web developer can integrate your practice management software, payment portal, scheduling tool, and other interactive elements into your great dental website. Each element will be provided by a third party, so fees to those software creators should be expected.
Your Domain Name
In addition, purchase your own domain name and do not allow a web company to assume ownership of it – ever! This happens more often than you’d think, and it’s quite a headache for the dental practice. You can purchase a web domain on GoDaddy.com for a reasonable price. Your website designer or developer can guide you, should you need assistance.
Website Hosting
You’ll also need hosting to keep your website live online. GoDaddy and BlueHost have competitively priced hosting options and good customer service. Again, your web designer or developer can help you choose a hosting plan and make your website live.
Website Maintenance and Support
Unless you know how to use WordPress and have time to maintain your own site, you will need maintenance and support. Maintenance covers things like:
- Site backups
- Uptime/Downtime
- Site data
- SEO data
- Security
And support involves things like:
- Adding/changing text
- Adding/changing images
- Adding/changing design
- Adding/changing functionality
- Adding/removing plugins
- Adding/removing widgets
You get the idea. Support can also include SEO.
What is “good” SEO for a great dental website?
If you want to be among the busy dental offices earning upwards of 30 patients per month or more, in this day and age you must have a great dental website that is also well-optimized. An excellent SEO strategy will help get your website on page one of Google, over time.
Your website should be written, designed, and developed with a solid SEO strategy. From there, the site will be more competitive if you publish blogs weekly, at a minimum. Like your website text, blogs should feature original content, images, and graphics.
TIP: You can include your blogs in an email blast or newsletter, and you can share a link to blogs on your social media. However, do not copy and paste a blog from your website to another location online. This creates what Google calls “duplicate copy,” which is bad for SEO.
Your developer should embed a free Google Analytics code into the back end of your site after it goes live. Google Analytics provides many data points regarding traffic and rankings. From this data, your SEO strategist can continually monitor your website’s weak points and implement a plan to address them. SEO is an ongoing process, not a one-and-done task.
What else do I need to do online, once my dental website is live and well-optimized?
In addition to blogging and posting to social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you absolutely must take advantage of Google Business. It costs nothing.
Your webmaster can set up an account for you or you can do it yourself. Creating a Google Business Page is not difficult. Go here to get started. You will need:
- Your practice name, address, phone, email, and website URL
- Images (or short videos) of your office, team, and special features like technology or before-and-after photos
TIP: A Google Business Page is where patients can leave testimonials about their experience in your practice. Studies show that 70% of consumers believe online reviews, and online reviews are important to the “3 Pack” at the top of a Google results page, where businesses are listed with a map.
A Great Dental Website Company
For second-to-none customer service, great prices, and excellent copywriting, design, development, and SEO, call the boutique dental marketing company that created this website: Identiwrite Creative. You can reach Riese Duty, an owner of Identiwrite, at 972-679-6885 by phone or text, or you can email [email protected].
