While the visual appeal of your dental website will have an effect on what your users think about your practice, it’s your content for website design that does a lot of the dental marketing for you. You see, good content sends new patients to your website from search engines. Great content keeps your users on your website and convinces them to make contact with you.
At Mediboost our team of digital marketers and content creators have helped numerous dental practitioners get professional websites that feature the right content for their practice. Let’s see how we can apply a content strategy to your practice website in 2019.
Crafting Convincing Content For Website Design
The content for your website should serve two purposes:
- It should communicate to search engines that your site has relevant content of interest to your users
- It should engage, inform and entertain users on your site, so that they want to make an appointment to see you.
Dental Website Content That Is Optimised For Search
Most patients get onto Google in order to find a solution to their problem. And, in order for your website to show up when a user types a query related to a service you offer, certain things need t have taken place on your website to show the search engine that you are a good match.
What Do the Search Engines Like?
This process is known as SEO or search engine optimisation and both the copy and the page on which it appears need to meet certain criteria.
Some of the criteria include:
- Making use of the appropriate keywords and supporting keywords in a specific ratio or density
- Achieving a minimum word count
- Making use of headings, sub headings and short paragraphs
Actually there are dozens of factors that search algorithms take into account when indexing content and the job of a digital marketer is very much to help make your content more indexable according to those criteria.
Getting Your Website Design And Content To Work Together
We think that starting the creative process with website content is a logical place to begin because form dictates function. Once your content has been created and your narrative has been written down, a team of designers will come up with a visual look to support and enhance it.
Keeping Your Website Design Interactive
Some of the trickiest aspects of dental website design involve making the website approachable and appealing – and big walls of text can be counter-productive to that end.
When you take an interactive approach to the design of your website, you can start to get creative and interesting with where and how the content is placed. Well-written dental website content is goal-driven and its aim is to encourage patients to make an appointment. By breaking big sections up into smaller pieces that are easier to digest, you have a better chance of keeping your readers engaged. By ensuring your website layout is responsive, its content can be accessed and read by patients, regardless of the device they use.
Why High Quality Content Makes A Difference
Your website (and everything on it) is a reflection of your practice and how you manage it. It also provides an introduction of what patients can expect if they make an appointment to consult with you.
Investing in high quality content is an investment in your reputation. If you want to be considered an authority on orthodontics or recognised as a pioneer of digital dental implants, writing great content is the most effective way to do it.
Patients want to consult with experts. They want some reassurance that their providers are well experienced and trained in the field that they require dental treatment in.
Writing high quality content also gives your patients some insight into your chair-side manner and your personality. Sure, you could create pages with lots of links to different sources but that would make it very impersonal. A very effective approach is actually to write about real world occurrences that have taken place in your practice.
Writing and reflecting on your interactions with real patients is an effective way to educate and inform your patients. It also gives you the opportunity to write about topical subjects that affect the patients who come to see you.
How To Write Content For Your Website Design
We recommend that you consider working with a professional copywriter who has experience in digital marketing and dental topics. In order for your content to be well optimised, it needs to be worked on by someone who is experienced at search engine optimisation.
While your role as a subject matter expert is crucial, we find the strongest content is created out of collaborative efforts.
Here are some tips to write great website content:
Write from personal experience
Remember that most patients won’t have medical degrees or dental backgrounds. The information should be conveyed in a manner that is easy to relate to. Sometimes personal anecdotes can send a message much more clearly than if you write about hypothetical situations.
Write about things that matter to your patients
Maybe 75% of new patients are flossing wrong or four out of the last ten patients you have worked with had questions about dental implants. Use the opportunity to give them tips and advice.
Don’t overuse technical jargon
Try to use language that patients use and avoid medical terms and technical jargon. If you absolutely have to use a technical term try to define it for your audience – or include a link to a source that explains it well.
Work with a professional copywriter
There are more nuances to effective copywriting than simply thrashing words out on a page and filling it up.
Some of the considerations a professional copywriter will make include:
- Who is your target audience?
- How does it want to be spoken to?
- What angles or approaches does it respond to?
- How can the technical (SEO) requirements be aligned with the readers’ needs?
- What persuasions need to be engaged to get the user to make an appointment to see you?
- How does the text need to be arranged in order to complement your website design?
- Is the spelling, grammar and sentence construction correct?
A professional will also have a look at your competitors to see what they are up to. Are they incentivising patients to make an appointment? Are they running promotions or special rates? All of these elements play a role in convincing a patient that you are the dental provider who can assist in solving their problem.
Need help with your content for website design? We’d love to help you out. Take us up on our free consultation offer and let’s explore your potential. Call us now on 1300 163 058.
