Multiple practices have emailed me recently, forwarding solicitation emails from a company selling procedure-specific secondary websites (sometimes called “mini-sites”) that are promoted using Google Adwords and SEO. This tactic has some merits, but it also has a lot of challenges.
Merits
- Highly relevant content means improved SEO and pay-per-click (Adwords) effectiveness
- In-depth content (multiple pages on a single procedure) improves SEO and conversion rates
- Page design focuses on the procedure, again, improving effectiveness and conversion-rate because patients are lead to believe that this procedure is your specialty.
Challenges
- The current search engine climate favors 1 main website for every business, including dental practices
- Hard to get legitimate links for secondary websites since most link opportunities are better leveraged for the main website (see previous point)
- Because of the above challenges, the success of the campaign will hinge heavily on the Adwords (pay-per-click) campaign. This means it can be very expensive on a per-conversion basis, requiring you to spend a lot of money to generate one phone call or email from a prospective patient.
The Better Alternative: An Internal Mini-Site
(We can get all the benefits of a mini-site and eliminate all of the challenges by building a mini-site within our main websites. We use the same approach that we would with building an external website, but just create it as a deep section of content when people either click on a link or call-to-action, or arrive by a search engine result (whether paid or organic). This means that the mini-site content benefits from our other SEO efforts, including link building and online business citations. Likewise, our main website will benefit from the wealth of content that we create in the website.
[Important : If you have an established mini-site that has already been out there for many years, it may not be a good move to take it down. Analysis is required to tell if it has enough momentum to stand on its own or if it should be absorbed by your main website. The above article was originally published in our members-only newsletter in August 2015. If you are a dentist and would like an analysis of your mini-site and are interested in the benefits of a Pro Impressions Marketing membership, please call us at (970) 672-1212.)
