Evan Harris is a good friend of mine and a Patterson rep in San Diego. During a recent visit in our San Diego practice we were discussing some of the problems many of his clients are facing right now. One of the most common questions he hears when it comes to dental marketing is not “how do I market my practice?” or “how do I build a website for my dental practice?”, but “how do I avoid mistakes when having someone build my website?”

I took a few minutes to make a video on some of the most common mistakes I see in dental practice websites. Every day I review and analyze dental practice sites, trying to figure out why so many of them fail to achieve their desired goal (which should always be to get more qualified patients into your practice). For the most part, what I find is a nice-looking templated website that acts more as an online business card than a patient magnet.

I have a client I’m working with right now who bought a site for about $9,000. It was a template, but they promised he would be ranked for his top 6 keywords (don’t even get me started with this idea… any web developer or SEO person who wants you to pick your keywords or limits the number of keywords is bad news… stay away). 6 months later, he wasn’t even ranked for his name and city… and his name is very, very unique. Rather than tell him he made a mistake hiring that company, I told him how he could fix it: take down your billboard on the information superhighway and build a website that goes to the patients, rather than hoping they come to you.

If you want to build a successful dental website, you need to think outside the box. Everyone else has a templated website. Everyone else wants to be ranked for “dental practice your city here” in Google. Why? Step outside that paradigm if you want true results. Start giving patients what they want: answers. Give them a reason to visit your website (not just to get your phone number). Give them a reason to trust you. Use your website as an extension of who you are: a trusted medical adviser who HELPS PEOPLE. Give them a reason to believe in you and a way to develop a relationship with you before they ever set foot in your practice.

These simple ideas will do more than get you to the top of Google: they will help bring in more patients who are qualified and want to do business with you the way you want to do business.

The video we put together should help you stop making costly decisions with your website and start pointing you down the path to a successful dental website that achieves your goals.