Choosing the right domain dental for your practice is really important, because it is really your online address. It’s the signifier that you put on all your marketing material and it’s important for patients to know that it belongs to your practice.
But there’s also value in including a primary keyword or service that you offer so that you can harness the power of search on the World Wide Web. So – just what’s in a domain name and how do you choose the right one for your dental website?
Where Are You On The Internet?
At Mediboost we get two types of clients: clients with existing practices who want to upgrade their digital marketing, and clients who are just beginning their online dental marketing and are starting fresh. Which category would you fall under?
Clients who already have established practices with existing websites may be best advised to hang onto the dental domain name they already have. And that’s because domain names actually become more valuable over time. If you’ve already spent a considerable amount of time and money building your brand around your existing domain, it’s not always a good idea to change it.
Our online marketing team will be able to assess your website to let you know if your current dental domain is worth keeping, or whether you should be considering alternatives.
How Do You Want To Be Found?
A popular way to monopolise on the power of search and the number of potential leads from the Internet is to include a service-keyword in your dental domain. Sometimes this can add value, but in most cases it is more beneficial for you to focus on your brand name in your dental website URL so you can build that profile over time.
Also consider that, while it might be tempting to focus on a keyword in your URL, search trends will change in the future and something that is popular or trendy now might not be the same in five years time. Rather think long-term and invest in your practice brand.
Where Are You In The World?
Sometimes using a keyword in your domain can be really good for your online presence. It’s useful to include a city or location with your keyword to increase the number of relevancy factors. If you’re a dentist in Sydney or a Prosthodontist in Perth, combining your service-keyword with your city or suburb could be a good move for your online marketing strategy.
Keep It Short And Simple
Your domain name should be easy to remember, for it to benefit your dental marketing campaign. It also needs to fit onto your marketing collateral that you’re putting out there, and sometimes a really long domain for a dental practice just isn’t practical.
Think about the marketing activities you will be doing where space is limited: street advertising, Google Ads and business cards are just three examples of assets that do not have unlimited continuous space but still need to have text large enough to be read.
What About Your Domain Extension?
The domain extension is the last part of your domain name – the part that comes after the dot and you have a few choices here. The most common top level domains are .org, .net, .com, and .info. Now you can also reserve domains that are industry specific – like .dentist or .orthodontist, but a .com domain generally is the best choice in most scenarios.
What To Avoid When Choosing A Domain For Your Dental Website
Avoid any temptation to include numbers or special punctuation marks in your dental practice domain name. Any extras that interfere with the person’s ability to read or understand the website when it’s being read to them will make it harder to remember.
Sometimes a domain with a hyphen is counter-productive because there are lots of spam sites that use hyphens in their URLs.
Confusing and commonly misspelt words should also be avoided when you choose your dental practice domain name. And search engines like Google are usually quite good at picking errors up -but not always. And it really isn’t worth losing a potential client to a competitor over.
Get A Reliable Host And Secure Your Domain
Having a reliable, secure host is very important to ensure your dental website is accessible at all times. Securing your site with a security certificate adds an extra layer of credibility and trust for visitors who are browsing your site for the first time.
Also, if you are going to run digital marketing campaigns to increase the amount of traffic to your dental practice site, it has to be able to handle spikes and have capacity to manage the extra activity.
Ask your host bout a firewall and any additional security layers you can add to make your site more secure. This creates a much better user experience and lets the search engines know that you prioritise their customers’ safety.
Do you need help choosing a domain dental for your practice website? We’d love to help. Please contact us for a consultation: 1300 163 058.
