Dream Practice Websites

Websites for Dentists: How to Ensure the Long-Term Success of Your Dental Website

If you're a dentist doing research on how to get new dental patients from the internet, then this article should be very helpful. Most dentists never take the time to fully understand the science behind internet marketing. They simply have a dental website built for their practice and keep their fingers crossed that it's going to bring in new patients.

While there is tremendous potential to build your dental practice from the internet, it's important to realize that internet marketing is a specific skill set that needs to be developed in order to experience lasting success. If you simply have a static website, the odds are you'll experience quite a bit of disappointment.

In this day and age, it's critical to be proactive about your website marketing and to build a site that is engaging and interactive. Even three years ago, it was quite possible to attract a lot of new patients from a static website, but the internet has evolved very quickly.. and so has your competition.

The good news is that it's relatively easy in most markets to position your practice as the most trusted and reputable in the local area, precisely because most dentists have websites that are built without the latest marketing features that would position their practice well.

The first strategy that should be a main dental marketing focus for any serious practice is getting to the top of Google for the main keywords prospective patients are typing in. For instance, if you're a dentist practicing in Sacramento, CA. then you would want your dental website to be ranked #1 when someone types in 'Sacramento dentist' or 'DDS Sacramento'.

According to the Google keyword tool, these keywords get a combined 15,700 searches every single month on Google. Statistics show that by ranking in the top position on Google, you'll get right around 40% of the people searching to click through to your website.

That would equal 6,280 unique visitors coming to your website who have already expressed a desire or need for your services. Do you see how powerful this is?

In order to get to the top of Google for the main keywords related to your practice, it's critical that your dental website have excellent search engine optimization. SEO starts with various on page factors. When the site is properly search engine optimized, Google can easily recognize what you do, where you do it, and who your market is. There are quite a few steps that go into on page SEO, including setting up title tags, the meta tag description, image alt tags, creating keyword optimized URL structures, and adding terms, privacy, and disclaimer pages.

In most markets, it's also important to do off page SEO. This is also called link building. Basically, you get a lot of websites on the internet to link back to yours for the main keywords you want to rank for.

At Dream Practice Websites, we use article marketing as our main strategy to get a lot of high quality backlinks to your website. This process involves creating and syndicating short articles to hundreds of article directories, then using the resource box in each article to link back to your dental website.

Link building is often done about 2 months after we take your website live. Our basic web package includes on page SEO as the foundation of your traffic generation efforts. Link building may not be necessary if you practice in a less competitive market. You can click here to learn more about this: link building for dentists .

Other Traffic Generation Strategies for Your Dental Website

• social media marketing ~ building a large following on Twitter and Facebook and regularly bringing your fans and followers to your website to learn more.
• blogging ~ When you use Wordpress, it's very easy to continuously add new content in the form of keyword optimized blog posts. Blogging enhances your on page SEO through the regular implementation of useful content.
• PPC or pay per click marketing ~ This is the best form of paid advertising for your dental practice, as it's highly targeted and controllable. You can set up Facebook or Google ads that link either to your fan page or directly to your dental website or blog.
• Offline marketing ~ You want to have great dental marketing systems in place to bring all current, past, and prospective patients to your website on a regular basis.

Generating a high volume of qualified traffic to your dental website or blog is only the first step in building a successful online presence. Website conversion is the other factor that many dentists completely forget or ignore.

Your website conversion is basically the percentage of people who visit your website who take the next step and either call you or get on your email list. Your first goal online should be to get prospective dental patients onto your email list so you can stay in touch with them.

To do this, you need an opt in form and to use an email marketing system like Aweber and give away a special report or e-book that educates people about your approach and maintaing optimal oral health.

An effective email marketing system is the missing link for so many dental websites. This allows you to stay in touch with everyone who has ever expressed interest in your practice in a semi-automated manner. When someone opts in to receive your special report, you can then send them links to blog posts, videos, your Facebook fan page, or any other resource you want. All of this can be automated, so by the time the patient calls your office, they will often say, 'I feel like I know you already.'

This is exactly what you want to hear in your marketing. Patients should have access to a wide array of educational resources so they can come to like and trust you that much faster.

While the opt in form is definitely one of the most important factors in your website conversion, there are quite a few others that will determine how successful your website performance is:

• the quality of your website copy
• how integrated with social media your website is
• the quality and quantity of content on your dental blog or website
• the quality of the layout and formatting
• the degree of social proof on the site in the form of testimonials, Facebook 'likes' and shares across Facebook and Twitter
• how skillfully you implement online video

At Dream Practice Websites, our mission is to build you a site with many --if not all-- of these powerful features so that you are perceived as the 'go to' dentist in your local area. We also want to make sure you understand exactly how to get traffic to your website. This is why we include an extensive series of marketing training videos with our web package.

Most web design companies will simply build you a site based on what you think needs to be done with almost no marketing support or guidance. We want to make sure we not only design you a beautiful dental website, but that you know how to market it effectively.

You can check out our web package by clicking here. If you have questions not answered on our FAQ page, feel free to fill out this form and schedule your free consult with Kevin Doherty.