The Ten Factors to Grade Dentist and Physician Websites

Conversions - This factor was given twice the weight of the others because it is the most important factor when it comes to turning website traffic into patients for your practice.  To score well on this factor you must have a clear “call to action” and an easy way for someone to engage your doctor or dental practice for an appointment, ask a question, sign up for a newsletter or something similar.
Design - Without a professional looking design you have no chance of converting traffic into patients.  With a poor design you will see a high “bounce rate” in your website analytics because people will be landing on your website and immediately hitting the back button.  If you are not using an analytics program you should consider taking advantage of the free and robust Google Analytics.
Architecture - This involves the linking structure, themeing, and overall use of navigation to create a website that is easy for search engines (and your users) to spider or crawl.  A poor site architecture will bury good content 3 or more links deep in the site architecture.
Ease of Use - How easy is your site to use?  Can I find what I need easily?  Am I constantly pausing to search your navigation for the link that I need to get to the information I am seeking?
Address/Phone - From a Local Search Engine Optimization perspective this is an important factor.  I am looking for your address and phone number in a form that the search engines can index.  In other words, I am looking for it in html text.  Ideally this address would be located on every page.  The easiest way to do this is to add it into the footer.  The reason that this is important is because the search engines will use this information to verify your location and phone number with what they have in their index.  They will then use this information to display the location and phone number of your doctor or dental practice in their ‘maps search results.’
Map/Directions – The best of the best had interactive maps on their domain.  From here, I saw sites that simply had text directions or links to external pages in Google Maps or Yahoo! Local.
Keyword Rich Content - I am looking for evidence that there has been thought put into the keywords that the doctor or dentist would like to be ranking for.  Keywords in <h> tags, <strong> tags, and in the body of the content is good.  I am also looking for a good quantity of html text on the site with clear, targeted keywords for each page.
Backlinks – I used the Yahoo! link:doctorwebsite.com command and got a read on the number of backlinks that the site has.  I was looking for evidence of link building efforts.  Backlinks are important because each time a search engine sees a link to your site from another site, it counts as an “editorial vote” for your site. I did not take a measure of the quality of those backlinks.
Unique/Keyword Rich Metatags – The two tags that I looked at specifically were the <title> tag and the meta description tag.  I was looking for unique tags for each page and the presence of keywords in those tags.

There are certainly other factors that could have been considered with these grades but this test gave me a good idea of which doctors and dentists were taking time to consider their online marketing and which were satisfied to simply have a website.

I queried the terms ‘dentist in example city’ and ‘family physician in example city’ to find ten random websites from ten large cities in America and the results are below.

Website Grades for Doctor and Dental Websites

SIte: http://www.phillydentistry.com/

Grade: A-

Notes: This is one of the sites where it is clear the the dental practice has hired a professional design and SEO firm to work on the website.  Firstly, it has a very clean, easy to use design and site architecture.  The address and phone information is in html text on every page.  The most impressive factor is the presence of a conversion behavior on every page of the site.  Also, it is a definite goal of this dental practice to build backlinks to their site.  The site has 800+ links, the most of all of the ten sites reviewed here.

Site: http://www.mountainstreamsmedical.com/

Grade: C-

Notes: The site design is too busy for my taste and doesn’t make good use of white space.  The site is easy to use if you can get past the busy design and the architecture is fairly flat.  The address and phone number are present on the site but only on the home page.  The address and phone number should appear site wide in the footer at the very least.  There is a good title tag and meta description tag.

The conversion behavior is good (schedule an appointment) but has one fatal flaw.  There is too much information asked for in the form.  Ask only what you absolutely need in the form and get the rest in a follow up phone call.  With each field that you ask your potential patient to fill out you increase abandonment of the form.  This site has no backlinks.

Site: http://www.dallasdentalspa.com/

Grade: C-

Notes: This site also received a C- but for different reasons from the one above.  The 100+ links in Yahoo! indicate that the site is either old and has garnered links naturally or there has been an effort to build backlinks.  There is a good amount of content on this site but no evidence of keywords that are targeted.  The long list of links in the left navigation are confusing causing low scores on ease of use.  The only conversion behavior available is through email or phone.  This site would benefit from a lead generating form and proper keyword research.

Site: http://drnava.com/

Grade: D+

Notes: Overall, this site has a nice, clean design but the ease of use suffers from difficult to use drop downs in the top navigation.  The site is also starving for backlinks.  The doctor is clearly attempting to engage his potential patients through a newsletter and an Ask the Doctor feature.  However, this is a good example of a site that is suffering from the “If you build it they will come” myth.  A good design that is lacking in keyword research, unique title and meta description tags, and backlinks will be lacking in the traffic necessary to view the nice design.

Site: http://plazadentalcenter.com/

Grade: D

Notes:  I know that right about now you are thinking that I am a tough grader but this site has a lot of opportunity for improvement as well.  In fact, I may have been too easy on this site considering it has auto playing music that is unable to be shut off.  The address and phone number are prominent on every page with a good call to action.  There is also good keyword rich content but it is 3 levels deep in the architecture telling the search engines and the users that it is unimportant.  Overall, the title and meta description tags are the same with a few exceptions.    There are no backlinks to this site.

SIte: http://www.pgaclinic.com/

Grade: D+

Notes:  This site is sorely lacking keyword rich content.  The design is very clean but there is no information present on the site.  A phone number is provided for conversion purposes but is only available from the contact page.  There are almost no backlinks to this site.  The title and meta description tags are not unique.

Site: http://cbddentalcare.com/

Grade: D+

Notes: This site looks nice in Internet Explorer but does not render correctly in Mozilla Firefox.  The dentist has taken the time to create good content but has it all on the same page.  Breaking this content up into separate pages with unique title and meta description tags is critical.  This site has the address and phone number information present but it is embedded in an image and the search engines cannot see it.

Site: http://familymc.com/

Grade: C

Notes:  This site has a very nice design.  The title and meta description tag on the home page was well thought out but the rest are very generic and don’t tell the search engine what the page is about.  The only conversion behavior is via email or phone from the contact us page.  This site could also benefit from a link building campaign.

Site:  http://www.warrdental.com/

Grade: A

Notes:  This is the site you want to model yours after.  It has a wonderful design with clear navigation and a shallow architecture.  There is a clear call to action on every page with a form offering a free consultation.  There is an interactive map located on the domain.  The title and meta description tags are each uniquely crafted for each page with keywords present.  The address and phone number are located on each page in html text.  There is evidence of a link building campaign.

Site: http://www.rogerwashington.com/

Grade: F

Notes:  Everyone take note of this doctors site because from a search engine standpoint it is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing.  This site is in frames.  Notice when you click on different links the URL does not change.  It simply displays different information in the frame.  Search engines cannot see the different content, they only see the one frame.  The frames negate the ability to create unique content, title tags, and meta description tags as well.

The only thing that saved this site from being a total loss is the presence of an appointment maker.  This doctor uses a site called Relay Health to create appointments.  Look for a post on Relay Health on this blog in the near future.

Overall View of These Doctor and Dental Websites

Most of these sites were well designed but a good design does not equal good conversion from traffic to patient.  It was obvious that two of these sites had hired a professional design and SEO firm to create a better opportunity to increase their online presence.  These two sites had unique title and meta description tags, clear conversion behaviors, and hundreds of backlinks.

Put your website to the test and let me know how it turns out.  As always I will be happy to answer any of your questions through the comments in this blog or you can contact me directly by clicking here.