Website migration is a critical step for dental practices looking to switch marketing providers or improve their online presence. However, a poorly executed migration can lead to lost search engine rankings, reduced traffic, and patient confusion. Most dentists want better marketing without the hassle of building a new website. By understanding the key aspects of website migration, you can guide your marketing team to protect your online visibility and ensure a smooth transition.
Why Website Migration Matters for Dentists
A website migration involves moving your website to a new provider, hosting platform, or content management system. This process often comes with goals like improving site speed, security, or user experience. While these improvements are valuable, mishandling the migration process can cause significant issues.
When search engines can’t find your pages due to broken links or missing redirects, your rankings drop. This makes it harder for patients to find you online. Traffic decreases, and potential patients may visit competitors instead. Revenue can be affected if these issues persist.
What to Ask Your Marketing Team Before Migrating
To safeguard your practice during a website migration, it’s essential to ask your marketing team key questions:
Are you backing up the current website?
A full backup of all content, images, and settings ensures nothing is permanently lost if issues arise during migration.
Will you implement 301 redirects?
Redirects are crucial for maintaining your search engine rankings. They ensure patients and search engines are directed to the correct pages on the new site.
Are you auditing the current site’s content and performance?
Identify high-value pages with the most traffic, backlinks, or conversions. These pages need special attention to protect their rankings and visibility.
How will you protect SEO elements?
Your marketing team should carefully review and update metadata, internal links, and header tags to preserve your search engine performance.
Is there a testing process before launch?
A staging environment allows your marketers to check for broken links, missing content, and technical issues before the new site goes live.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid During Migration
Mistakes during migration can harm your online presence. Broken links frustrate visitors and lead to lost traffic. Missing pages cause confusion for patients and damage your credibility. Slow load times hurt your user experience and can negatively impact your search engine rankings.
Introducing BYOW: Bring Your Own Website
At The Art of Dental Marketing, we understand that dentists want better marketing without starting from scratch. That’s why we offer BYOW... Bring Your Own Website. You can come to ADM with your existing website and still take full advantage of our Storybuilt™ Marketing Engine.
Our process is designed to make transitions seamless. We protect your SEO, handle the technical details, and transform your website into a powerful marketing tool that creates emotional connections with patients and drives real growth for your practice.
How The Art of Dental Marketing Can Help
Unlike other agencies, we don’t require you to build a new website to work with us. Our team ensures your SEO is protected during the migration, handles the technical aspects, and makes the process quick and stress-free. With our Storybuilt™ Marketing Engine, we amplify your website’s impact, making it a tool for meaningful patient engagement and practice growth.
How to Move Forward
If you’re considering switching marketing providers but want to avoid the hassle of building a new website, The Art of Dental Marketing is here to help. With BYOW, you bring what you’ve got, and we’ll handle the rest.
Contact us today to learn how we can make your website transition easy and effective. Protect your practice’s online presence and keep attracting patients with a seamless migration.
