The first website was created on August 6, 1991,(1) and websites have evolved drastically since then, from simple, text-only websites to today’s interactive sites. It is not known when the first dental website was created, but I’m guessing that whoever created it wanted to get the most out of the technology at the time. Whenever you use a technology, you need to make sure you’re as up to date as possible, and dental websites are no exception. It’s also important to make sure that your site follows website industry best practices.
There are many articles available that outline what you should be doing to improve your website. But what about what you should NOT be doing? What if you're destroying your website’s chances of getting any visitors, or if you do get visitors, they’re so turned off by your website that they leave immediately?
Here are 11 ways you might be sabotaging your dental website.
1. Make sure your website is old and outdated.
If you want to make sure that visitors who come to your website hit their browser back button right away, then keep your website outdated. Nothing can increase your bounce rate more than a website that looks like it was built in 1999.
2. Make sure you don’t have a mobile-friendly website.
Fifty-two percent of all website visitors use their smartphones,(2) so by all means, make sure your website is not optimized for mobile devices. This is another sure way to increase your bounce rates.
3. Have a slow website.
Having a slow loading website is not only annoying for your visitors, but Google is using your website’s speed as a ranking factor.(3) So, if you want website visitors as well as Google’s web spiders dislike your website, make sure it loads as slow as molasses.
4. Stuff it with keywords.
In the distant past of search engine optimization, you could simply enter the keywords you wanted to rank for on your web page multiple times and this propelled you to the top of the search engines. The search engine algorithms are now much more sophisticated and those days are long gone. But if you want to sabotage your chances of ranking on the search engines you can still do some old fashioned keyword stuffing and watch your search engine rankings disappear.
5. Be sure your website has little to no content.
Content is king for ranking dental websites, so if you want to guarantee your website’s downfall, make sure you have very little to no original content on your website. This is called “thin content.”
6. Don’t list your contact information.
If you want to frustrate potential new dental patients, don’t list your contact information. This means no phone number, no email address, no mailing address, no contact forms, nothing. That is a surefire way to guarantee that no one will call you. (And yes, I have seen this happen on many sites.)
7. Have bad back links.
Link building is a very important part of SEO for dental websites, so having bad back links is actually worse than having no back links. Spammy or black hat link building is characterized by many methods, such as reciprocal linking, article links, directory links, and purchased links. There are exceptions to the rule for these.
8. Be sure to have over-optimized anchor text links.
If you really want to perform some long-term damage while you’re building links, make sure that all of the anchor text is optimized for keywords. This will send your rankings into a downward spiral and make it very difficult to remedy.
9. Buy links
If you want to enter into the black hat world of SEO when performing link building for your dental website, then buy some back links. Google really frowns upon this practice, and if they discover that you’ve purchased some links, it’s almost guaranteed that your website’s rankings will be damaged.
10. Duplicate your content.
If you want to really damage your website’s authority with the search engines, copy someone else’s content and put it on your website. First, this is copyright infringement, but it will also send a signal to the search engines that your content is not original and it will downgrade it and show the original content before yours.
11. Design your website for search engines and not for your customers.
Some designers make dental websites for only the search engines and not for the customers. If you think only about making the search engines happy and ignore your primary reason for having a website, then you’re sure to create a lot of damage.
These are just a few ways to sabotage your dental website. We didn’t even discuss how to not show pictures of your dentists, staff or dental office, or how not to show your practice reviews online. There are definitely many ways to damage your website. Perhaps you’ve even been guilty of these in the past. But now that you’re aware of these errors, you can make sure that your dental website has not done any of them.
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REFERENCES
1. Cern. http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. Published August 6, 1991, Accessed March 1, 2018.
2. Statecounter. http://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet. Published February 2018, Accessed March 1, 2018.
3. Google Webmaster Central Blog. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html. Pubished January 17, 2018. Accessed March 1, 2018.
