In this video we’re going to talk about what you need to consider when selecting a name or a website URL for your dental practice. Should you just use your name as the dentist? Is it better to name your practice after the street you are on? If you’re in Minnesota for example, should you register “dentistinminnesota.com”? What will get you the best result?

We work with a lot of dentists in US and Canada that either buy a practice and they want to change the name, because maybe the practice is named after the dentist who is selling and retiring, or sometimes a practice has a bad reputation in the community and the new owner rebrands it. There are a lot of different scenarios where a dentist may choose to change the name of the practice.

We often get asked by our dentists what they should do in this situation so in this video were going to talk about what you need to consider and what is going to work best long-term and give you the best results.

To start off let’s talk about what you don’t want to do. Generally speaking you don’t want to use the name of the dentist as the name of the practice. At some stage you are probably going to sell your practice and this is going to work against you. A dentist is less likely to want to buy a practice that has the name of a dentist who is no longer going to be working there. They are going to have to rebrand the practice and this is just another headache they need to go through.

Even if hypothetically you never plan on selling the practice, using your name for the practice is also a really bad idea. It’s harder for people to remember your first and last name and Google that than to remember something like Trinity Dental dot com. Having your name for the practice also makes you look like a small and unsuccessful practice in the eyes of many patients. Most people are more likely to go to a place like Trinity Dental vs. Dr. John Doe DDS.

Now if your practice is just your name, that’s okay, it’s not the end of the world, but my recommendation is you consider actually creating a proper brand name for your practice as this will help you long-term and it will help you in many ways.

Another thing you want to avoid doing, is using your street name in your dental practice. For example, if you’re on Main street, you don’t want to call your practice Main Street Dental. What happens is, if there are other dentist on Main street, you often see that one practice is called Main Street Dental, then another is called Main Street Dentistry, then another is called Main Street Dental Center, etc. This causes a lot of confusion because patients don’t remember, was that ad or flyer for the Main Street Dental, or the Main Street Dental Center, or the Main Street Dentistry or the 20 other places with similar names? People don’t know who’s who.

Funny enough this can sometimes work in your favor if you have really strong marketing and SEO. In a number of cases we get our clients new patients because their website outranks other practices in the area with similar names, other practices those patients were searching for but they weren’t sure which website to go to, or which was the correct website, so they just click on the one at the top of the page.

However, this honestly is not worth doing as a strategy because of how Google’s algorithm works and how it looks at brand names. You see back in the day a lot of businesses used to register a website URL based on the city they were in. A dentist in Niagara Falls may register dentistinniagrafalls.com or something like that and this actually worked really well… maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

Today though Google’s algorithm works very differently. Primary what it’s trying to look at is how well known your brand name is in that area. This is why when you Google something like “restaurant in Toronto” you’re going to find a brand name like The Keg or something like that. You’re not going to see the first result as someone who registered resturantintoronto.com

So generally in SEO what we’re trying to do is improve the brand recognition of your dental practice name in that area. The more Google can see that people know who you are, that people are talking about you, that people are searching for you, then the more popular Google thinks you are in that city and the more likely you are to show up higher.

Now the problem you have when you have a name like Main Street Dental is there are going to be too many other dental offices with a very similar name and Google’s algorithm can become confused.

Is that article talking about your practice, Main Street Dental, or is it talking about Main Street Dental Center, or Main Street Dentistry? Who’s who exactly. So what may happen is a lot of the work we put into improving your reputation in the area may not have an effect, or as strong of an effect because Google isn’t really sure who’s who. Potentially what could also happen is the work you put into improving your reputation may be incorrectly attributed to another dental practice with a similar name.

My advice is if you’re going to pick a name for your practice, pick something that’s unique in that area and easy to remember like Trinity Dental, or Alpine Dental, or something like that. Use a word that nobody in the area is using, it doesn’t really matter what it is, as long as it’s simple to understand and to spell.

The name doesn’t have to be unique to the world either. There may be another practice in a different city that’s called Apple Tree Dental for example, but as long as you are the only practice in a 50-100KM area that uses that name, then it’s totally fine. When someone searches for a dentist in the area, they are searching for Apple Tree Dental and you are the only one with that name in that area, even if there is someone else on the other side of the country with the same name, Google is smart enough to understand that this patient is probably looking for the Apple Tree Dental in their city.

Now what do you do if you did pick a practice based on the street name, like… most dentists have already done. What if you did pick Main Street Dental? Should you go and change the name?

Well… it depends. First it depends on how many people in the area have a very similar name and how close they are to you. If you have 10 practices on main street all with a very similar name, then yeah may it be worth changing.

If you have invested in doing a lot of SEO work and really tried to push your brand name, it may not necessarily be worth changing the name. You would look like a brand new practice in Google’s eyes and you would lose a lot of that hard earned reputation and credibility.

You would have to go and update all of your directory and citation listings, you would have to do what’s called a 301 redirect from your old website to your new one, there’s a bunch of hoops you would need to jump through. Yes you can do it, and we do this for dentists all the time, but it’s not always worth it if you have a website and a domain that ranks really well on Google already.

However in a lot of cases when we start doing marketing for a new dentist, they haven’t really done much in the past that is worth salvaging. If a dentist has owned a website for 5 or 10 years, but never did anything amazing with it, never really did a great job with the marketing, then it may be worth changing the name and putting in that marketing work into ranking a different name that will have more long-term value.

Again.. it really depends on a case-by-case basis. If you’re in this situation and you’re  not sure what to do, you can always reach out to us by going to revupdental.com and we’d be happy to look into it for you and give you some advice free of charge.