No website is complete without the written word!
Your website is your most important online asset. It provides prospective patients with their first impression of you, your team, your facilities and your philosophies- and we all know that first impressions count!
Within seconds a website visitor will make a decision about whether to stick around and explore your website, based entirely on their initial impression- so your website’s design, images, headlines, and layout must be attractive and appealing to your target audience.
Once they begin reading, website visitors want information that is helpful and relevant. Of course, this means different things to different people: some want the basics, others like detail. Your website’s content must be developed and organised so that each individual is quickly able to find the information they are looking for.
Overarching all of this is the need for Australian dentists to remain compliant with our Advertising Guidelines and other National Laws and Regulations. We also need to ensure that our content complies with Google’s own set of Quality Guidelines.
AHPRA and Google are both serious about setting and maintaining high-quality standards on the internet. We consider that one of our most important roles is to help you meet these standards.
What Not To Do
Don’t rely on copying and pasting from other websites! If you haven’t got permission to do so, at least you are demonstrating very poor manners, but you may be exposing yourself to prosecution for breaking copyright law.
It’s also important to know that Google isn’t impressed by online copycats: if your content appears elsewhere, why should Google elevate your copied material through the ranks?
And besides, copied content doesn’t properly convey the personality and philosophy of your practice. If your content doesn’t authentically reflect you, how can it be attractive to potential patients?
Don’t Underestimate The Time You’ll Need To Develop Great Website Content
Writing takes time- generally more than you think. Even a modest 10-page website requires hours of writing time because there are so many checkpoints needed.
- You’ll need to decide what pages are required: this requires some level of understanding of your audience and what pages they are likely to expect on your website
- Someone with detailed dental knowledge needs to generate the content since it needs to be an accurate reflection of dental practice
- Someone with a knowledge of your practice will need to contribute to ensure that the content is a true reflection of your philosophies and approach to patient care
- The content will need to be reviewed for compliance with the Advertising Guidelines
- It will need to be reviewed for spelling and grammatical correctness
- It needs to be interesting to the intended reader- it must address the likely topics of interest and be written without jargon
- Since web pages have the ability to interlink, this must be managed with care and logic
- Content should ALWAYS be written for the human visitor: however, there are aspects of content that will require a working knowledge of current Google protocols
The time of a practice owner is precious, and yet you are usually the person with the best ability to generate the content, since you know dentistry, your practice, your patients and community and (hopefully) the Advertising Guidelines.
Of course, you went to University to become a dentist, not a writer.
If a ten-page site requires thirty hours of your time to develop (it often takes much longer), this is an enormous opportunity cost! Multiply this by your hourly rate and it becomes a very expensive exercise. Especially when our unique process for developing content requires a fraction of your time and produces quality, compliant content that accurately reflects your practice at a much lower cost.
Developing New Content For Your Dental Practice Website
We like to give you options 🙂 Here are two…
- Do It Yourself – While this option still requires your time, you’ll shorten your learning curve and be able to produce quality, authentic and compliant content for your website confidently and much more quickly. Learn the process and follow the templates using our home study course (Coming Soon).
- Done For You – Although you’ll still need to provide some input (which will require just a few hours of your time), we do all the hard work: and you won’t even have to write a word if you don’t want to!
What We Do When We Do It For You
Our Website Content Development process is comprehensive and designed to tick all of the quality and compliance boxes for Australian Dental Practices as well as to appeal to the people it is being written for. In your case, this may be potential new patients from your local area, people from further afield who are seeking your specialist or unique services, or your current patients.
This is what you can expect from us:
- Your website’s content will be written in your voice and accurately reflect your philosophies and practices
- The content we develop is entirely original- we don’t copy and paste or spin (rewrite) content from other websites. It is written from scratch, specifically for you.
- Non-dentists often don’t enjoy reading dental jargon, so we’ll make sure that your website is written with minimum jargon for maximum reader engagement. This doesn’t mean that we’ll totally ‘dumb down’ the information on your website: we’ll use accurate, reader-friendly language- just like you do when you’re explaining dental procedures to your patients.
- All content, be it text, images, or video, is developed and selected to be compliant with all relevant Australian laws and regulations
- All content is developed to be compliant with Google’s Quality Guidelines and follows Online Search Best Practice
- The code behind each page is important as this helps Google and other search engines to understand the content on the page: we’ll make sure all the necessary codes have been written to follow current best practice. (For the geeks, this includes Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Image Alt Tags, Header Tags).
- If we are developing your Contact Us page, we’ll ensure that it has the correct code markup so that important content such as your address, business hours and contact details can be understood by the major search engines.
- It can be helpful to embed links into your text to provide readers with additional information about the topic they are interested in. We’ll ensure that the pages on your own website are thoughtfully linked together, and will also recommend links to pages on other authoritative websites.
- We’ll provide you with recommendations about the overall architecture, design, and layout of your website (improvements in this area can increase the number of people who remain on your website rather than clicking back to the search results).
- As you might have gathered, we don’t just focus on your text-based content: we’ll assist you with the selection of images to accompany your written information, and will optimise your images for search as well. Please note that all images used must be owned outright by the practice, or you must have purchased the images under a licence that allows their use on your website. The purchasing of images is not included in the fees quoted.
- Each page averages 600 words, contains at least one (preferably original) image and typically links to at least one other page, either within your own website or to an authoritative dental site.
About Our Writing Process
You’re busy- which is why you’re considering hiring someone else to write your website content. While it’s critical that you provide some input, we ensure that your involvement is kept to a minimum.
Your involvement is required at two critical points:
- The Beginning- where we interview you to learn as much about your practice as we can
- Immediately Before Publication – where you will be asked to review the final draft of your website’s content.
More Details
- Once we receive your deposit, we’ll schedule a time to meet with you by phone or Skype for 60-120 minutes. We’ll ask you about your practice, your team, your services, your philosophies and your location. This interview will be recorded and shared with our writing team
- We’ll set up a project in our web-based content development portal. This is where our writers will develop each new page for your website. You (and any other contributing members of your team) will be given access to this project. The portal will allow you to upload the images you want to use on the website, and comment on the content as each draft is completed
- There is one major and (if required) one minor round of revisions.
- The content is assigned to your ownership on receipt of the balance of your payment.
- If you require assistance with uploading the content to your website, our technical team is available to help at our VIP hourly rates.
Writing Fees
Of course, it depends. If your website is of average size (about 9000 words, 15 pages), the investment will be in the region of $4500 + GST.
Need More Information?
Just take a few minutes to complete this form: this will give us an idea of your needs and we will contact you to recommend your next steps.