Optimizing your dental website with key practices boosts its effectiveness in attracting and converting patients, ensuring a strong online presence.
In today's digital age, having an effective online presence is crucial for dental practices. Your website serves as the first point of contact for potential patients, making it essential to ensure it not only attracts visitors but also converts them into valuable clients. To help you achieve this, we've compiled a comprehensive list of dental website best practices.Easy Navigation
Through years of search data analysis, we've identified the most visited pages on a dental website: Insurance & Financing, About Us, Services, and Location & Hours. Aligning with our vision to build a Dental Marketing company that simplifies patient acquisition for dentists, we strategically highlight these links across every page. This approach not only curates the patient's journey but also optimizes conversions effectively.
Why is this important?
Effective navigation ensures that visitors can easily find the information they need, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.
Relevant Content
In order for Google to begin ranking your website organically (appearing on the first page in Google without paid advertising), you need a few qualifying factors on your website, most importantly, at least 500 words of relevant content. The patient only has a few options when navigating to your site: education, comparisons, or booking an appointment. Focus more on information such as specials, doctor bios, financing/insurance, and reviews in order to create credibility for the practice and share what makes you different.
Why does this matter?
Relevant content not only improves your search engine ranking but also provides valuable information to potential patients, showcasing your expertise and unique offerings.
Above The Fold
Technology is one of the four pillars of Dental Marketing, enabling us to effectively identify and optimize the patient's journey. Your website serves as the starting point for this journey. Users visiting your website typically spend just five seconds before deciding whether to stay, explore further, or convert. This initial visible section, known as 'Above the Fold,' is crucial. It's important to keep this area minimal and impactful, with strong calls to action (CTA buttons) that guide visitors seamlessly through their experience.
How does this benefit marketing?
Including an H1 tag on all pages of your website helps Google recognize your website's relevant content compared to the search term that was entered. The H1 tag with “dentist in [city]” is crucial for paid advertising efforts targeting this page, ensuring visibility to potential patients.
Home Page
The home page is where both our geo-location-specific paid advertising efforts go, as well as all organic traffic (users that type in the URL directly into their browser without using Google). It’s important to be informative and organized on this page so that the user can find where they want to go.
What to include:
- Credibility: Reviews section, Doctor section, Awards & affiliations (if applicable), Office tour.
- General information: Location and Hours, Insurance form, Safety Information (COVID precautions)
Why is this important?
The H1 tag with “dentist in [city]” is crucial for paid advertising efforts targeting this page, ensuring visibility to potential patients.
Accessibility & Security
A secure connection is important for a website because it helps to ensure that the data being transmitted between the web server and the client's web browser is secure and cannot be intercepted by third parties. Without a secure connection, there is a risk that sensitive information could be accessed by hackers or other malicious actors. Clients can avoid this by hosting their website on a secure database or hosting platform, i.e. WebFlow or GoDaddy.
ADA
It’s vitally important for a website to be accessible and that it provides full and equal access, effective communication, and/or meaningful access. For legal reasons as well as avoiding cutting out any disabled patients, we recommend adding an accessibility widget that integrates with your site to allow all users to easily view your website.
Why does this matter?
Accessibility and security are not only ethical considerations but also legal requirements to ensure inclusivity and data protection.
Mobile-Responsive
Approximately 60-80% of users are visiting your site via a mobile device. It is important to create your website with a mobile-first design to best convert users. The top navigation buttons should be contrasting colors to easily identify and “sticky” on the page (so you can see the navigation no matter where you are while scrolling). Too many blocks of content on mobile make the user scroll forever on the page, which can result in users leaving before finding the information they need. Focus on contrasting and strong headlines that mention FAQs.
Why is this crucial?
Mobile responsiveness ensures a seamless experience for users on various devices, leading to higher engagement and conversions.
The use of stock photos on your site will negatively affect your Google Organic Ranking and create a less credible experience. We recommend avoiding the use of sharp tools, the inside of a patient’s mouth, and areas of the office that don’t come off as “welcoming” such as hallways, small corners, bathrooms, and untidy areas. Create a culture by scheduling a photo shoot to share with patients what it’s like to visit your office, before even arriving.
Why should you prioritize real photos?
Authentic images build trust and credibility, helping potential patients connect with your practice on a personal level.
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Basic SEO
Everything mentioned above can have an effect on your overall SEO (Search Engine Optimization). By utilizing Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, we are able to easily identify these opportunities. We found that the most popular optimizations are minimizing code on the back end, proper photo sizes and photo file types, and lastly mobile site optimizations. The ideal performance score is anywhere between 85-100.
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Incorporating this dental website's best practices can transform your online presence into a powerful tool for attracting and retaining patients. Remember that your website is often the first impression potential patients have of your practice, so investing in these strategies is a worthwhile endeavor that can lead to long-term success.