Why Dentists Should Update Their Websites

You’re board-certified. You’re regularly ranked as one of the best dentists in your city. You have the credentials, the experience, and the high-tech equipment required for a successful dental practice. With so much going for you, why should you bother investing in a website and Dental SEO? 

In a perfect world, your credentials would speak for themselves and potential patients would overlook an outdated website design, sparsely populated with the bare minimum of content. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, and patients and Google are judging you by your dental website design and the questions that your site answers every single day. 

Bottom line? If your website isn’t up-to-date, you could be losing potential patients. Here are some of the ways investing in website redesign can help your dental practice.

The Stanford Web Credibility Project, which seeks to provide insight into how internet users determine whether a website is trustworthy, finds that 46.1 percent of consumers judge the credibility of a website based on its visual design, including the layout, images, color schemes, and typography. Psychologist B.J. Fogg, the director of the project, explains that:

“People do judge a website by how it looks. That’s the first test of the website. And if it doesn’t look credible or it doesn’t look like what they expect it to be, they go elsewhere. It doesn’t get a second test”.

If your response to reading that was, “yikes!”, you’re right—people are harsh judges when it comes to website design. In fact, most internet users make a judgment about whether a website is high-quality within 50 milliseconds of viewing. 

• When your website is outdated, it sends a message that your dental practice is also outdated. When your website is cluttered, it sends a message that your practice is unprofessional. 
• When your website is sloppy, it sends the message that you’re careless. 
• We could go on, but you get the idea.

Our team of graphic designers and web developers at Dentalfone work to ensure that our clients always make a good first impression with potential patients. You’ll get a custom website redesign that reflects your sensibilities as well as those of your local community. Although every dental website we create is different, what they all have in common is a modern, uncluttered aesthetic that makes it easy for patients to access the information they are searching for.

There was a time when a homepage that was simply a wall of text, links, and a few low-resolution stock images was sufficient. These days, the internet is more visual and interactive. We’ve gone from small images to large, high-resolution photographs as the centerpiece of each page, and now we’re pioneering a transition from photographs to video. 

Dentalfone is on the cutting edge when it comes to incorporating custom photographs and video into dental web design. Your patients want to see you, not a stock photo of a random dentist; they want to take a look at your office, not a generic one you found on Google Images. To reiterate our previous point, appearance does matter. By embracing video and using eye-catching images, you’re sending a signal to patients that your practice is modern and forward-thinking.

When you choose to update your site with Dentalfone and work with our SEO Team, SEO is baked into the process. Our web developers work closely with our local search experts—instead of building a site and then layering in SEO, your site is designed with SEO in mind. It’s in the Hybrid-Responsive interface, the structure of your navigation, and the speed with which your website loads. There is no aspect of our design process that doesn’t take search engine rankings into consideration when you work with our web-development and SEO teams.

Why is this so important? It’s because we know local mobile searches are one of the most significant marketing tools you have as a dental practice. 78 percent of local mobile searches result in an interaction, which means getting your dental website to rank at the top of the first page of search results is virtually guaranteed to grow your practice. We also know that 64 percent of local customers use search engines to find businesses and 46 percent of all Google searches are local. All these statistics add up to one thing: search engine optimization matters.

Unlike paid advertising, once you invest in SEO, the ongoing organic traffic you get from it is free. While ongoing tweaks and updates will always be needed, SEO is much more of a long-term investment than Google Ads. The best marketing strategies incorporate both.

Many dental practices view their website as a marketing tool—and it is. But the difference between a good website and a great one is that a great website is a true resource for patients, and it ranks highly on Google page 1 for keywords and long-tail search queries.

Here are some of the ways we design dental websites for our SEO customers that go beyond marketing:

• We create an online library of information for your patients, with detailed descriptions of procedures, aftercare protocols, FAQs, and educational blog posts.
• Dentalfone’s advanced Hybrid-Responsive user interface allows websites to render beautifully across all platforms for ease of use.
• Our available dental forms are mobile-friendly, secure, and HIPAA compliant, allowing your patients to fill out new patient registration paperwork directly on your dental website.
• Dentalfone websites incorporate online appointment request capabilities to make scheduling a breeze.
• In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can incorporate new telehealth features into client websites, including online consultations.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about aesthetics, but that doesn’t mean substance doesn’t matter. The content you put on your website matters a lot, particularly when it comes to Google.  Considering that Google has in effect become an “answer” machine, good content sends “signals” to Google establishing your practice as an authoritative source to answer search queries.

Your website should be full of robust, informative content. The key procedures you offer should have a dedicated service page on your website with details to help educate your patients. You should have a blog that’s regularly updated with articles relevant to your practice. Everything you write should be concise and easy-to-skim, as that’s how most people read online.

Google loves high-quality content, but your patients will too. While you’ll want to use content creation as a means of getting important keywords onto relevant pages, it’s also critical to include information that your patients will want to know about your practice. Create a page that covers payment options, the types of insurance you accept, and other practice policies. Anticipate the questions your patients will ask and include them in FAQs.

To discuss how we can help expand your website’s reach through professional dental website design and SEO, contact us today.