How to quickly assess the effectiveness of your web presence with three easy questions
You’ve got a website and an established presence online, but how often do you assess its performance? Can potential patients find it in the search results? Is it up-to-date? Is it generating new appointments for your office? For starters, ask yourself these quick three questions:
1. Is my website attractive, easy to use, and up-to-date?
Before you answer this question, think back to the reason you built a website for your practice in the first place. Hopefully it was because you wanted to provide a relevant and valuable resource that your existing and potential patients could use to learn more about your practice and services. If it’s not built with your patients in mind, then there’s a good chance your site needs some fine-tuning.
Your website design should be updated, clean, and professional, representing your practice and conveying your expertise to first-time visitors. New and returning visitors should be able to easily and quickly find important information, such as patient forms, contact information, and service details. Finally, the content and images on your site should be up-to-date and reflective of your practice. If you see areas for improvement on the pages of your site, then seek the assistance of a dental website provider who can help you make the important and necessary modifications to your Web pages before more patients decide to seek services elsewhere.
2. Is my website easy to find in local search?
Even if you have the best looking website around, if it’s not showing up on the first few pages of the search engine search results, then it’s likely not generating new visitors. To determine your site’s visibility, do a simple search for “dentist” in your town. Do the search results yield your listing on page one or two? Or is your listing nowhere to be found?
If your site isn’t making an appearance at the top of the search results, then you will want to implement a search strategy, such as paid advertising or search engine optimization, to increase your organic ranking.
3. Is my reputation safe?
For better or worse, your patients may be talking about you online. Local directories and social media sites present the perfect opportunity for current patients to rant and rave about your services. Good reviews can influence a potential patient to contact your office for an appointment. But a bad review can have a damaging impact on your reputation. What do you find when you search for your name or your practice name online?
Even if it appears that there are no reviews, you’ll want to continue to regularly monitor your reputation. You can set up alerts that email you whenever your name is mentioned on the Web. Also, be proactive by encouraging patients to review you online as they leave your office. Satisfied patients will be more than happy to provide positive feedback.
Of course there are other ways to assess the success of your current marketing strategy, but these three critical questions will give you a good start. If you identify an area that needs to be addressed, talk to your dental online marketing provider for expert assistance.
Author bio
Glenn Lombardi is president of Officite, LLC, the No. 1 provider of dental website design and Internet marketing strategies for the dental community. Officite has built more than 7,000 websites that have generated hundreds of thousands of appointment requests since 2002. To learn more, visit www.officite.com or call (800) 908-2483.
