Key features that can make dental websites drop in ranking
Nobody wants their dental surgery to fail, whether it is a brand new surgery that has opened on the high street or if it is a family dental surgery that has been up and running for years.
And while you may think that the only feature that can cause your dental surgery to be unsuccessful is the loss of patients, signs that it is happening can be spotted a while before it gets to that level and can be overturned if you invest in the right marketing team.
When you come to Dental Focus, we make the success of dental websites our priority. If your website is attracting more patients, your surgery is going to continue to expand. When you see our team, we will assess your website for features that may be causing it to drop, and we will aim to turn it into a beacon to attract more people to your team, helping your surgery to grow. Great!
So, with that in mind, what are some of the core features that can cause dental websites to drop in Google rankings? Read on to find out.
Outdated design and content
Dental websites that have outdated design and content can appear unappealing and off-putting to potential customers, negatively impacting the website’s rank. As well as this, if your website is not updated regularly via your blog, you may notice that your page drops in the ranking system too. The Google algorithm prioritizes content that is fresh and unique, so aim to update your blog with plagiarism-free content at least once a week.
Poor user experience
Your dental surgery website needs to be laid out and designed in such a way that it is easy for the Google bots to make sense of, as well as those who visit the page. Websites that are difficult to navigate can lead to a poor user experience, potentially driving potential customers away and decreasing the website’s rank. You want your surgery page to showcase what it is that you are your dental team can do, so having it broken down into sections (e.g. general dental care, cosmetic dental care) is going to be beneficial to those using the site, as well as the website crawlers who assess this and rank the site accordingly.
Poor website speed
Websites that take too long to load can also negatively affect the website’s rank. Not only because the Google bots will find this undesirable but because the average site user is not happy to wait for more than around 3 seconds for a web page to load. So, if your surgery page is slow, this will negatively impact the entire website ranking and will need a bit of professional TLC to remedy.
Lack of keywords
If a dental surgery website does not use relevant keywords that match customers’ search terms, the website’s rank can be lower than competitors who do. For instance, if there is a trend one week for dental implants, your surgery page will need to have the keywords ‘dental implants’ placed on it to get a higher ranking. Our team at Dental Focus can oversee this rather complicated area to help bolster your website’s position in search engine results pages.
Lack of fresh content
The Google algorithm likes fresh content and ranks websites higher if they regularly update their blogs or pages. Regularly updating the website with new content can help improve the website’s rank, as a website that does not have any fresh content can get left behind and may lose out to the competition.