So you’ve been running your dental website for your dental surgery for a while now and you haven’t noticed any change in the number of people enquiring about the services that your surgery can offer. What’s going on?
In the majority of cases, this is related to issues with SEO or search engine optimisation. This can often be related to problems with the website itself, which, once brought up to speed, can certainly improve the number of people who will enquire about the services that your team can provide.
So what are some of the common issues that dental websites have which can be slowing down the number of patients that they attract?
Loading time
If you have ever been onto a website, you will know that if the homepage fails to load after around 5 seconds, there is a high chance that you will click off the page. While your surgery page may have a fast loading time on a laptop, does it offer the same fast loading on a smartphone or tablet? If not, you need to discuss this with the marketing team. As this can be off-putting for people who may be trying to access your surgery homepage using a mobile device.
Images
The images used on your surgery page should be original. And they should be based around the surgery itself, your team and the treatments that you can offer. However, if the images themselves are too large, this can cause a decrease in loading time. Which can once again put people off visiting and staying on the page. By discussing this with the marketing team, the images can be compressed and will allow the website to run smoother and faster.
Content
The content on your surgery page needs to be unique. And if you are simply cutting and pasting from other dental blogs, then this is not going to attract the Google bots that are needed to attract new people to your surgery site. Your content will also need to be updated around once a week. It will also need to have keywords throughout it to work as part of a marketing or SEO strategy.
Accessibility
Going back to accessibility, is your surgery page accessible to mobile devices? Or does it only work on a laptop or other PC device? If this is the case, you need to contact a marketing team to ensure that your surgery page is accessible to all types of mobile devices. As this will help people to access it when they are out and about.
Layout
The layout is key. Not only for attracting Google bots who like a logical page layout, but if there are any discrepancies between what is listed and what appears, then this needs to be managed and altered by a trained marketing team. They will be able to arrange the website into a logical layout, which will help to keep people who visit the page engaged and enquiring about what it is that you and your surgery team can offer them.
