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.

There are two primary schools of thought on the construction of your website.  The first is the use of a website template and the other is the use of a completely custom website design.  Both, invariably, have their own pros and cons for use when constructing a website for your dental practice. Today we will discuss these pros and cons to help you make a more informed decision.

Dental Website Templates

Simply put, a dental website template is a mass-produced “shell” or “frame” of a website. The framework has been completed, the images have been created, and the dental practice is simply meant to fill in the blanks with a few details about their practice like their name, address, specialties and perhaps a paragraph or two of text. Each dentist who uses the template gets the same “shell” or “frame” and it’s only a few details that differ from one dentist using the template to the next.

No matter how many times the template is used by different dentists, it will always have the same look and feel, all the way down to the exact same images and markup code.  So not only is what your potential customers see exactly the same as your competition, but what they don’t see is as well.

- They’re cheap. Dental website templates are inexpensive when compared to most custom design solutions.

- It’s easy to get started. Simply select from the list of templates and color schemes available and choose the one that you like best or think is somewhat close to your practice’s image.

- They’re somewhat easy to use for the layman. Changing text may not require a designer, though changing text sizing and styles most likely will.

-  They’re low quality. The quality of the initial design itself, in order to keep costs low and reach the broadest range of customers possible, is of a lesser quality and aims for the lowest common denominator. With more and more internet savvy patients out there, the lower quality design will be noticeable by most of your site’s visitors.

-  Low end or “free” stock imagery is used. Rather than photographs of your staff or offices, or anything unique to your practice, a template site will use cheap or free stock photographs which patients may find on other sites as well.

-  The look never changes. You could have the same exact website as your competitor down the street. To the average patient looking to the web to find a dentist this is noticeable and can greatly detract from their willingness to contact you. The first rule of marketing is making your business different from your competitors, setting yourself apart. A cookie-cutter website based on a template makes your practice look like any number of other dentists out there.

-  No expert advice. Even if you find a template from a source that you feel you can trust, there will be nobody involved in your site’s conception and development to offer you their knowledge or experience. Building your site with a professional web designer or web design team will mean that your input and opinions will be compiled into an effective and aesthetically pleasing website whether you’re an amateur artist or can’t match your socks.

- Flawed Code. Because these sites need to be mass produced and made easy to use for most laymen, the actual code of the website is cluttered with extraneous elements like tables and font tags – a custom website will be built with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to ensure the best possible web experience for your site’s visitors.

-  NOT Search Engine Friendly. Because of the design of most dental website templates with their extraneous code, an exuberant amount of flash and non web friendly bloated imagery, you lose out on the ability to potentially rank on the better, more trafficked, keywords and phrases that patients are using to find a dentist in your area.

-  Image Changes can be expensive. Because often times the source files and code is held by the website template designer, changing images to add text, such as your dental practices name or logo, can cost a great deal as you either have to go to the source of the template or have each image recreated from scratch.

-  Lower Conversions. Due to the low quality of the design, low end imagery, and lack of personal touch in the website often times you will find that template websites have a much lower conversion rate. This means that of the total visitors to your site, fewer and fewer of them are following up by contacting you and becoming new patients. This is especially critical as your website should be a primary source of new patients into your office each month.

Custom Dental Website Design

A custom website is essentially the exact opposite of a website template. With a custom website you will let a professional website designer know what you’re looking for and what your practice is like and they will build from scratch a custom website specifically for your dental practice. It will be wholly yours, unlike templates that are owned by someone else.

- Set Yourself Apart. Your website will be completely custom. You won’t find another dentist with a site quite like it.  Your website will reflect your practice through and through.

- Higher Conversions. A professional dental website designer will know how to create a website that converts the most number of patients visiting your site into new leads. Custom designs can EASILY convert 5x or more the number of patients that a website template can.

- Inherently Search Engine Friendly. Again a professional designer will create a site using the latest in search engine friendly design tactics and quick load times. Google themselves recently came out and proved what many SEO’s had been saying, that load times count towards your sites ability to rank.

- Optimized Code. Your website, when built by a professional custom design firm (such as pro dental web design) will use optimized code to enhance search engine friendliness and patient usability.

- Browser Compatibility. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari are all different web browsers that your patients will use to visit your website. The problem is each browser requires different code for your dental website to be displayed properly to your patient depending on which browser they are using. With a custom website this is all worked out and tested by your web designer so that your website is compliant between the latest 2 browser revisions. I.E. Internet Explorer 7 and 8, and among all the browsers available to web users.

- Add the pages that you want and need. Unlike a template where each page, no matter the content, will look exactly the same, with a custom website your designer can customize individual pages to your exact needs. For example cosmetic dentistry will have a different look and feel, such as great smiles, than a page about sleep dentistry which may use custom images of people gently sleeping.

-  Cost. The cost, of course, will be higher than a website template. Some templates can go for as little as $300 setup. No good designer could touch that for a top to bottom design.

-  Time. Again, it will take more time to develop a new custom design than a template that is near ready to go. However most designers are able to streamline the process.

If you’re just looking to put “something” up then a website template might be a way for you to go. However, if you’re looking to use the internet as a primary marketing source (which you should be since up to 90% of your local market that is looking for a dentist is doing so online) then a custom website design is the answer for you.

Many search engine optimization companies, like Pro Dental, offer search engine placement guarantees. With a search engine optimization guarantee your website is guaranteed to be placed within a certain position on search engines, such as Google, prior to collecting any monthly fees for their services. Here we will try to clarify what to look out for within these guarantees to make sure that you’re covered when choosing a SEO company for your dental practice.

Guaranteeing “First Page” Placement

SEO companies offering guaranteed #1 placement are actually a little bit harder to find nowadays, especially within the dental community. This is due to the fact that most of these companies have essentially been “run out of town” due to their unethical business practices. Though you will still find some, primarily offshore companies, that will offer this kind of service.

In general, guaranteed #1 placement is seen as an unethical scam by most of the online marketing community, including all of the top search engines.  Google especially can view the tactics used by these SEO firms as violating their terms of service and they can and will respond by penalizing or even banning your website. This means that these SEO companies are using spam tactics such as triangle exchanges, splogs (spam blogs), and more, in an attempt to rank your website. To put it simply no one, but Google, could ever guarantee a #1 placement on their search engine and outside of Pay Per Click they don’t offer this as a service.

Note: This type of guarantee should not be confused with “top ten” placement guarantees which are two VERY different animals all together.

Official Name Ranking

This is where an SEO Company, in order to fill their contractual agreement with you, will only place your name, or the official name of your website, in a top position. Since no other dentist will be actively attempting to place themselves on top of the search engines utilizing your name, getting you there takes little to no effort at all.

Also ranking for your name, or company name, will deliver no “new” traffic to your website — a search engine user who came to your website using your name as the keyword must have already known of you in order to initiate that original Google search. Thus this “guarantee” simply negates the point of hiring a search engine optimization specialist, since it brings in no new patients to your dental practice.

Non Competitive Search Term Placement

There are essentially two types of keywords and keyphrases online: those that deliver traffic and those that don’t. The keywords that deliver traffic are called certified traffic bearing keywords and they deliver real search engine users (I.E. your new patients) directly to your website. The keywords that don’t deliver traffic are called non competitive keywords and essentially are any keyphrase that can be put together but WON’T deliver new patients to your website.

An analogy we use, about non competitive keywords, is that being #1 on a keyword that no one is using is like being the largest billboard 50 miles up a dirt road. Sure your sign’s the biggest and if anyone happens down that road you’re going to be seen, but the problem is that road is closed and no one’s coming to open it.

This is typically what is used by most dental seo companies (NOT Pro Dental) to fill their contractual obligations. Even Google specifically warns against this kind of “guarantee” since the keywords that they will rank you on have no competition and will, like official name ranking, leave you with no viable traffic (I.E. new patients).

The No Guarantee Dental SEO Companies

In today’s market any SEO that doesn’t offer a guarantee for dental keywords shouldn’t be called an SEO. Simply put, for local dentist terms, (I.E. Miami Dentist, Los Angeles Orthodontist, etc…) a competent ethical SEO, following all search engine approved guidelines, should know exactly how to build the authority needed for your website to obtain top placement. Local dental keywords are not competitive juggernauts, even though they do provide enough competition to make achieving ranking challenging, it should still be a very obtainable task for a skilled optimization specialist.

Solutions – Checking The Contract:

Make sure that any Dental SEO company that you select offers you a no pay guarantee that includes ranking on MULTIPLE Google certified traffic bearing keywords. This insures that they see results, when you see results, I.E. they place your website on page one of Google on multiple keywords and phrases that are producing you new patient traffic.

Always make sure that any contract or agreement you sign includes ranking on traffic bearing keywords and make sure you get the SEO company to prove it!

Are you ready for your first foray into the still relatively untapped market that is the World Wide Web? Or maybe you’re already online, but you realize something’s just not quite right with your website because you’re not getting the great results that everybody keeps talking about? Or perhaps it’s even been a few years since you’ve made any updates to your website?

Whatever the reason that you’re in the market for a new web designer, there are a few key questions — and ultimately answers — that you need to ask yourself before moving forward. These questions will aid in speeding up the design process, should help to enhance the product produced, all while helping to decrease the total cost involved. Let’s get started.

1) What kind of “look and feel” am I looking to portray to my patients and potential new patients?

Honestly, you may not even be sure and if you’re not, you shouldn’t worry too much because a good web designer should not only know the industry, but how to properly bring your brand to fruition online. However, having a specific stylization that you utilize, for example dentists specializing in dentistry for children may have a circus or zoo themed office, would be a good thing to bring over into your website. Make your website an extension of your office and brand. You will be amazed at how effective this strategy is in conversion and retention of new and existing clientele.

2) Which current marketing materials do I want to incorporate into my website?

Colors, slogans, business cards, sales brochures, imagery all make up your brand. Having the items you wish to incorporate ready for your designer will not only help them “help you” get the best possible site design. This is also a good time to review your current marketing materials such as reminders, bio pages, etc… Establishing and keeping your brand as a cohesive unit should always be your goal.

3) Will I or my staff be writing the content for my website or will I need to use the web designer’s copywriters?

Remember not all designers are writers. For example, here at Pro Dental our designers, design, our SEO’s achieve top rankings, and our copywriters write great content. We believe in order to give you the best possible site we need to have the best and brightest team members to make that happen. Don’t EVER let content be an afterthought. Remember the SEO’s bring in the new patients, the website grabs their attention, but it’s the content that “sells” them on the fact that you are the dentist for them.

4) What pages/information do I really want people to see and to know about me?

Your designer will use this information to create focal points and what are known as “traffic funnels” to make sure that the visitors to your website see the information that you feel is most important to you. For example a cosmetic dentist is going to want to highlight items such as veneers more so than filling repair or cleanings. General dentistry of course will take a broader approach and drive new patients into the office with enticing new patient offers.

5) What features on other website do I want to add to my site?

Have you seen a blog, calendar, custom form, or any other custom feature on another dentist’s website that you would like to incorporate into your website? While some features may not be advisable from a usability standpoint, and any good web designer should be able to steer you in the right direction on that front, it is a good idea to have ready the sites and the specific pages of the feature that you want. This will help the designer give you straight forward pricing, as well as advise you on whether it’s a good fit for future traffic-to-patient conversions.

6) Who is my target demographic?

For some dentists it may be new patients looking for a checkup, for others it may be veneers or sleep dentistry, still for others it is all of the above. Knowing your target demo helps a good web designer to create a structured design that aesthetically stands out, but ultimately helps you meet your marketing goals.

7) I prefer to have patients contact me via email, in person, on the phone from my website.

It may sound like a simple question, “How do you prefer patients to contact you?” but a good web designer will use this information in their “traffic funnels” in order to “nudge” your potential patients to the contact method that YOU prefer. Unfortunately, to many design firms contact is an afterthought, but to a good designer, having patients contact you from your website is the main purpose of having the website in the first place.

8 ) What other sites do I like?

Similar to question #5, but here it’s always going to be helpful to have a few sites that you like either the color scheme, layout, content, pages or some combination of all of the above. Again, to a good designer, it’s all about giving you the best possible site that fits exactly what you want, while also mastering the ultimate goal of converting traffic into new patients.

9) Do I want to be able to make my own changes to the site via a content management system or do I want to work with the designer to make needed updates and changes periodically?

Typically setting up a proper content management system will be more expensive upfront, but can make it easier for you to make your own changes. However, if you’re also running any kind of online marketing campaigns, especially an organic search engine optimization campaign, by changing the different pages from how the SEO set them up may cause shifts in a downward manner for your top rankings.

This is definitely something to discuss with your designer / SEO consultant and come up with the best option for you. Honestly, the best way to look at this is how much do you want to personally work on the website? We always build inexpensive updates into our quotes so that our clients have very little if any future page update costs. For example updating contact information, dates, or simple text should never be a burden to get done.

10) What is my budget for this project?

Let’s be honest, when it comes to the price of just about anything that price can vary wildly. This is especially true when it comes to website design pricing.

Now one caveat here is when we discuss web design pricing we assume that you are only working with a design firm in the US or Canada. Frankly offshore pricing matches offshore quality… In other words do you want your potential patients, when viewing your website, to think that your work is “offshore” or do you want them to KNOW that your work as a dentist is quality? You know when you go to a website what kind of trust factor comes from the way their website looks. Patients WILL judge you by your website. You only have one chance (actually online you have 8 seconds) to make a good impression.

Many dental web designers offer template based designs that do keep the costs down, but you suffer greatly when it comes to quality, conversions, and the ability for the site to rank on the search engines. Typically this is really where most dentists start as the cost comparative to custom are of course lower. Most template companies simply press a few buttons and presto! — They have a site. However, most dentists soon learn that having the same looking site as the “dentist down the street” doesn’t work for conversions. Also Google knows when you are running duplicate content so its search engine ranking can become an exercise in true futility.

Now custom website design is a completely different animal. A custom website is built from the ground up by graphic designers that will create custom graphics and imagery that fit you and your dental practice. A custom design, while having a higher initial cost, pays for itself in spades when it comes to initial conversions and the ability for the site to achieve top search engine ranking.  No use of cookie cutter designs here, when you go custom you are making an investment in your practice.

Realistically initial design costs are not even that much higher, sometimes as low as 5-10% more than a template based design, but the lower bounce rates (the amount of traffic that stays or leaves your site immediately) really will make a difference when you start seeing all of the new patients come through your doors.

Ready to get started? We have dental web designers standing by!

Using email, especially opt in style email, to market your dental practice doesn’t have to be costly, it doesn’t have to be complicated, and it certainly doesn’t have to be a futile exercise in time domination. However, with that said, having a clear and concise plan that utilizes how patients are now choosing to communicate, such as email, will save you time, money, and will help put you ahead of the competition.

That’s why the steps discussed here today are designed to enhance your website and online marketing campaign so that you take full advantage of the response that you get from each.

Dental Appointment Reminders
First and foremost you should have actual physical dental reminders that your staff can hand to your patients as they leave your office. These dental reminders should stand out, they should work as both an appointment reminder and a pseudo business card, and most importantly they should be there to reinforce your brand. If you are unsure if your current dental reminders do this be check out our dental appointment reminders page for more information on our creative services.

Now when it comes to email, building an opt in list of your patients is a great way to get an additional appointment reminder to your patient a day or two before their appointment.

What is an opt in email list?
An opt in email list is a list in which your patients opt in to receive emails, like dental reminders, from you. They are “opting in” by giving you their email address. You can simply ask them for this information on any contact or signup sheet that you use.

By sending a quick email, even a template email that can be quickly modified, you can help to decrease the amount of your missed appointments and all with no added cost to you.

If you would like help setting up a quick and easy reminder that your staff can send out we can help. Contact our branding team for more information.

Promotions – Cleanings and Specials
Having an opt in list of your patients allows you to do a lot of creative remarketing efforts via email at very little cost. Having a slow month? Maybe run a special on teeth whitening or possibly cleaning. By doing this you can remarket to clients that already know who you are, rebrand yourself, remind clients about needing to go back to the dentist and ensure a full schedule.

We of course offer email marketing services at a very affordable rate, however this type of program is easily managed by a staff member once you get the hang of it.

Monthly Newsletter
Monthly Newsletters, like promotions and cleanings, are a good way to keep your practice in the mind of your patients. Include the latest industry news, specials that you are offering, introduce new employees, and a lot more.

In Closing
Email can be a great way, if done properly, to remarket to current customers that your primary marketing campaigns are bringing into your practice. By being efficient with every potential new patient that comes in to your website / office you will be able to keep your appointments full and dominate your local practice area.

We offer all of these marketing programs and can establish them so that you can remain as hands on or as hands off as you would like and still see consistent results. Receive a Quote Today