Domain Names For Your Dental Practice

A domain name, in the simplest of terms, is the online equivalent to real estate. Domains, like real estate, can be used to advertise, they can be registered and the rights sold, they can even be used to identify a person, place or business. However, unlike real estate that can be bought and owned, domain names are essentially leased for extended periods of time with exclusive rights to you, the registrant, for all future registrations.

Domain Registration Periods
Currently ICANN, the governing body of domain registrations, allows you to register a domain name for a period of time that ranges between 1 to 10 years. The amount of time you register the domain, over the one year minimum, is completely up to you and your practices individual needs. At the end of the registration period you will be given exclusive rights to re-register the domain or let it expire and go back into a pool for someone else to register and use.

Domain Rights
Because you own the exclusive rights to the domain name, once you have registered it, you can sell those rights at any time to an interested party. For example if you sell your practice you can easily transfer the domain into the new owner’s name.

Now most dentists are not going to get into the buying, hoarding and selling of domain names. However, it’s good for you to know and understand how this all works in order to understand why domain names are being depleted at a record rate. Which is why your first few ideas for a domain name may be long gone.

When trying to select the right domain for your dental practice you will need to take two primary things into consideration; search engines, like Google, and your patients. Here we hope to give you some insights into making the right domain selection, as well as planning, somewhat, the long term marketing of your website.

The Search Engine Optimized Domain Option

This is the method that we recommend to each and every one of our dental clients. While for our clients we do the leg work to find the right domains, this method can be used by just about anyone willing to put in the effort to get it right. In this option you will be registering two different domains.

The first domain name that you will register will be the official name of you as the dentist or of your dental practice. An example domain would be DrSmithDentistry.com or SmithDentalClinic.com, etc… This domain should be used for all of your offline materials, such as reminders, invoices, etc… Essentially anything that you would hand or mail to a patient should include this domain.

The second domain that you will register will be a search engine friendly domain that better enables you or a search engine optimization specialist, such as the ones here at Pro Dental Web Design, to target top search engine ranking for your dental website. For all intents and purposes the search engine friendly domain will be your “primary” domain.

Quick Overview On Search Engine Friendly Domains
A keyword focused domain will provide better short, as well as, long term results for search engine ranking purposes. That’s why it’s important to perform the proper due diligence when making your selections. For example if you are a dentist in Miami Florida that offers cosmetic dentistry, you could select a domain such as:

MiamiCosmeticDentist.com     / MiamiFloridaDentist.com / etc…

These are short, easy to remember domains that clearly define the keywords and keyphrases that you are looking to target. However, choose carefully as it is critical to avoid choosing a domain that looks like SPAM to your potential patients and the search engines.

Examples of SPAMMY domains would be:
MiamiFloridaCosmeticDentistCheapDentistry.com or CheapCosmeticDentistMiamiFlorida.com

To search engines and your patients these domains would scream “SPAM!”

As previously mentioned in this scenario we recommend that you use the clinic or dentist domain for all of your offline marketing and sales material and the optimized search engine friendly domain as your primary domain for search engine ranking purposes.

For example we chose the following domains for the cosmetic dentist “Dr. Widget” in Miami Florida.

Offline Materials – Such as Business cards, Letterhead, Dental Reminders, etc…
DrWidget.com – DrWidgetDDS.com – DrWidgetDentistry.com – etc…

It’s short, simple and easy to remember.

Example Optimized Search Engine Related Domains
MiamiFloridaDentistry.com – MiamiCosmeticDentist.com – MiamiFloridaDentist.com – etc…

The most prominent keywords for your local area should help to determine the exact search engine friendly domain that should be acquired. For example if Miami Dentistry has a higher number of monthly searches than Miami Dentist, you would want to acquire a domain utilizing dentistry over dentist and vice versa.

Bringing The Two Domains Together

Once you have selected both domains it’s time to bring it all together. This is done by creating a search engine friendly 301 redirect of the “DrWidget.com” domain to the “MiamiFloridaDentistry.com” domain. Since you will be hosting your website under the “MiamiFloridaDentistry.com” domain you can setup a simple 301 redirect of the “DrWidget.com” to “MiamiFloridaDentistry.com” directly at your registrar (the place where you registered the domains).

Your patients, both new and old, won’t notice the difference with this kind of redirect as your website will look exactly the same whichever domain is used. This option gives a professional appearance to both new and current patients, as well as being search engine friendly. Can you go with just the DrWidget.com style domain? Sure, but at $10 a year for each domain, it really is a no brainer. If $10 is too much for you to spend to help maximize your returns online than marketing yourself online might not be for you.

Things To Avoid In Your Domain Name

We’ve seen this mistake time and time again. A domain name is chosen that looks something like this:

I-Am-A-Dentist.biz. A domain such as this not only looks bad and unprofessional to your patients, but also to the different search engines in which you need your website to rank.

Extensions
When selecting a domain you must make sure that you select a domain utilizing the .com extension only! How many professional sites do you know of that use the .biz, .us, . info domains? Not many, if any at all. In fact these domains are most often utilized strictly by spammers.

If the .com is taken then change the domain slightly until the .com is available. Using our Dr. Widget example above, if DrWidget.com is unavailable you can try DrWidgetDDS.com or WidgetDDS.com or DrWidgetDentistry.com, just to name a few possible examples. Always, always, always use the .com extension for your website. This applies to both the offline domain and the search engine friendly domain.

Hyphens
Like the selection of the domain based upon the extension, never choose a domain with a hyphen in it. It’s unprofessional, typically a strategy used by spammers for “throw away domains”, and you will have a much more difficult time trying to rank for your primary keywords if you select a domain with a hyphen in it. For example do a search for your primary term, typically this would be something like “your City + Dentist” for example: Miami Dentist. How many hyphenated domains do you see on Google for the first 20 results?  You may find some in very small metro areas where there is little to no online competition, but they are definitely the exception not the rule.

Speaking strictly from a search engine optimization specialist’s point of view you should always register your domain out the full ten years. We’ve seen anecdotal evidence that it can help your site to look more “serious” to search engines since it says that you plan on being around for awhile. From a cost savings point of view the more domains that are registered as time passes, the least amount left around, the higher the costs to register will continue to go.  In fact ICANN just recently raised its rates on July 1^st. It’s simply smart to spend $100 – $200 (2 domains) right now on registering your domain(s) a full ten years than to spend $10 this year and potentially $100+ a year five years from now.

For search engine friendly domains that are generic and based upon specific keywords and phrases we always recommend registering, at least for one year, the .net and .org’s of the search engine optimized domain. This prevents competitors and domain squatters from coming in and registering them out from underneath you. For the offline domain that is your clinic name such as DrWidget.com then typically you will not need to worry about it due to copyright issues. For these we only recommend registering the .com. The reason is that most cyber squatters wouldn’t take the chance, or more importantly, waste the money on registering the domain when they would likely lose in a simple dispute notification with the registrar in question.  This would change if you have a very common name like “smith” where another Dr Smith could register drsmith.net.

We recommend Godaddy.com for domain registration services. We, however, do not recommend ANY of their other products. Which means you will need to watch out for the up sell of these additional products as they try to sell them to you during the domain registration process. By simply making sure you don’t click on any of their additional offers you will save yourself around $22 PER YEAR PER DOMAIN (or $220 – $440!) over other registrars like Network Solutions. Our extensive domain collection is all through Godaddy.

Hopefully we’ve given you a thorough overview of how to select a proper domain name for your dental practice. It’s definitely the critical first step to putting yourself online for the first time.

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