12 tips for choosing a great domain name for your healthcare business

I was leafing through The Art of SEO the other day (Enge, Spencer, Fishkin and Stricchiola, 2010), and I found this list on choosing a domain name. Selecting a good domain name that will stand the test of time is an essential aspect of internet marketing and usually precedes website design. Below are great tips to consider when selecting a domain name for your healthcare business.

  1. Choose a .com TLD (top-level domain), unless you already own the .com and want to redirect to a co.uk, .com.au, .org, .clinic, and so on, possibly for marketing / branding / geographic reasons. Do this only if you own the .com and can redirect
  2. Brainstorm five top keywords to create good domain ideas (keywords will be bold in search results). One of our favourite examples of this is www.londonvisionclinic.com. This domain does an excellent job of keeping essential keywords in the domain. Note This advice was more critical when Google didn’t yet conduct semantic search. Now, it also bolds synonyms in meta descriptions. Furthermore, Google has recently (2020) stated that keywords in domain names are not needed.
  3. Make the domain unique and unlike other popular domains. Do not choose a domain that can be confused with another domain (especially if the other domain is more popular).
  4. Make it easy to type – make it easy to spell, reduce length where possible, use memorable words.
  5. Make it easy to remember – this is especially true if you do a lot of broadcast advertising.
  6. Keep the name as short as possible; however, avoid abbreviations unless it is your company’s name.
  7. Create and fulfil expectations – what you see should be what you get; keep it intuitive to what is actually on the site.
  8. Avoid trademark infringement
  9. Set yourself apart with a brand – not just descriptive words. Yes, this in some ways contradicts point 2, but in this case, the domain is the company’s name.
  10. Reject hyphens and numbers
  11. Don’t follow the latest trends – avoid trendy misspellings and uninspiring short adjectives. What sounds cute today will ring dated tomorrow.
  12. Choose a domain you can own. Always ensure you are the domain registrant. You will have an exclusive licence to use this domain for as long as you continue paying for it. An agency can buy a domain on your behalf, but you should own it.

Many of our readers will have domain names already. However, if you’re planning to change your domain name in the future, the above list will be helpful.

(NOTE: Want to see how your practice marketing measures up against the best in class? Take this 5-minute quiz to see how you stack up in the 9 areas of practice marketing and get specific tips and advice on how you can improve your weak points and better leverage your strengths).

Domain names and 301 redirects

If you are considering a domain name change, then you must be clear on the important SEO implications this may have. In this case, we’d advise the implementation of 301 redirects in order to keep the majority of your search volume intact. Google has provided their guidance on the use of 301 redirects and you’d be well advised to read it.

Just the other day I encountered a healthcare business who has been maintaining two websites with different domains, instead of redirecting the website from the old domain to the new. The problem here is that you are splitting your content between 2 domains, weakening both in terms of SEO value. It’s also a chore to maintain and involves costs that are unnecessary.

While Google doesn’t actively penalise websites that duplicate content, they may not index content that they have already indexed (they’re picky that way). So, it’s always best practice to have original content that can be indexed right the first time, and retire any old duplicate content that you don’t need.

About the author

Rod Solar
Founder & Fractional CMO

Rod co-founded LiveseySolar and acts as a Fractional CMO for our customers. He’s on a mission to help transform the lives of 10,000 people through vision correction surgery by 2024. To achieve that, he inspires his customers to make confident decisions that will help 50,000 people take the first step towards vision correction.

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Meet our Founders

We’re passionate about helping leaders of high-quality, growth-minded practice owners double their practice revenue

Rod Solar

Founder & Scalable Business Advisor

Rod co-founded LiveseySolar and acts as a Fractional CMO and Scalable Business Advisor for our customers. He’s on a mission to help transform the lives of 10,000 people with vision correction surgery by 2024. To achieve that, he inspires his customers to make confident decisions that will help 50,000 people take the first step towards vision correction.

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LiveseySolar completely transformed the way we were approaching this… We’ve gone from having just the dream of having a practice to having a practice up and running with people making inquiries and booking for procedures… It’s extremely pleasing. We feel lucky we connected with LiveseySolar.

— Dr Matthew Russell, MBChB, FRANZCO, specialist ophthalmic surgeon and founder of VSON and OKKO

Laura Livesey

Founder & CEO

Laura Livesey is the co-founder & CEO of LiveseySolar. She has developed powerful refractive surgery marketing systems that increase patient volumes and profits for doctors, clinics, and hospitals, since 1997.

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Rod and Laura know as much about marketing surgery to patients as I know about performing it. They are an expert in the field of laser eye surgery marketing. They know this industry inside out. I believe that they could help many companies in a variety of areas including marketing materials, sales training and marketing support for doctors.

— Prof. Dan Reinstein, MD MA FRSC DABO, founder of the London Vision Clinic, UK