DOs and DONTs for choosing an effective domain name for your dental practice
A domain name is a text string that maps to an IP address that is used to access a dental website. In simple words, a domain name is a name that a user types into a web browser’s address bar to reach a particular dental website. In today’s world, where the internet presence of your dental practice is a must, choosing the right domain name helps you use your internet address as a way to increase the potential number of visitors to your dental website and to improve your website’s search rankings.
What’s in a name?
It’s about who you are. A domain has the potential to tell everything about you and your dental practice. The domain name is your property and you really own it online. As it is like the first impression, the dental domain name should be chosen carefully to effectively reach out to the maximum number of potential customers. However, if you already have a domain name for your dental website and want to change it, we would suggest you otherwise! Domain names like brands increase their value over time and changing it for something that just sounds better may not be in your best interests.
Choosing the right domain
The fact that the domain name is the face of your brand cannot be over-emphasized. So, if you are just beginning your journey of online presence, choosing the right domain name for your dental practice is of prime importance. Your dental domain and your business brand name must be one as a rule of thumb. If the brand name is not available, try a URL that contains your business name or a part of it in it. This will help you build your brand identity on the internet over time.
Does size matters?
As a general practice, the shorter and more forceful domain names work the best. For example, “smiles.com”. They have a better recall and are easier to be searched with short-string searches. If your dental practice brand name is long like “bright and sparkling smiles”, go for a domain name that contains the most important part of your brand name. Here, for instance, you can use “sparklingsmiles.com” as your domain name. However, do not abbreviate to the extent that it loses its meaning and is not translatable.
Which part of the world are you located in?
If you can combine your dental practice name and your business location, nothing can beat it. For instance, “melbournesmiles.com”. This helps users know what you do and where you are based. And your dental website ranks well when users are searching for a business in a particular location.
This might not work well with businesses having a presence across multiple geographical locations.
This might not work well with businesses having a presence across multiple geographical locations.
The right domain extensions
After the dot, the domain extensions are the last part of your domain name. There are a few choices available as follows:
- Based on the type of organisation - .com, .org, .gov etc.
- Location based extensions -. Au, .en, .us, .in etc.
- Industry specific extensions - .dentist, .orthodontist etc
However, the “.com” extension is the most sought-after and the best choice.
Using keywords in the domain
You can have a dental website domain name consisting of keywords. For instance, dentist.com. However, Google may still not rank your website because rank is a function of many variables like location and specific services like orthodontist, periodontist or aesthetic dentistry. Moreover, the keyword trends keep on changing and the keyword selected today may not be relevant in the future.
What to watch out for?
When choosing a perfect domain name for your dental website, it is wise to watch out for avoiding things that can be counterproductive and create unwanted problems. A few of them can be listed as follows:
- Avoid using special characters, hyphens or numbers in your dental practice domain name. First, it makes the domain name difficult to remember and further this can cause the modern search engines to weed out your dental website as spam.
- Avoid using abbreviations, misspelled or confusing words that sound similar to your competition as this can lead your prospective customers to your competition. For example, if your domain name is melbourne-dental.com, people searching for Melbourne dentists may be directed to melbournedentist.com.
- You must ensure the dental domain you choose is not trademarked or copyrighted. This will help you to avoid any legal issues.
Bottom line
Domain names are like a virtual identity of your business and thus must be chosen with care and a long-term business perspective. Though the above is a fairly good guideline to choose an effective domain name that not only represents your dental business but also attracts more traffic for you, there are many other points to look at.
At One Stop Dental Marketing, we are ever eager to help you choose a suitable domain name and build a strong online presence. Call us at 1300 867 699 to know more in detail.
