Should I License an Invisalign Brand Domain Name?
Congratulation – You have reached Invisalign Top 1% Provider status.
As an orthodontist, reaching Top 1% status in the Align Technology Advantage Program is no mean feat. To qualify for the Top 1% status an orthodontist has to have 800 historical qualifying Invisalign treatments and maintain another 100 semi annually.
Having attained Top 1% status an orthodontist qualifies for a number of benefits. One of the many benefits offered is the eligibility to license up to 5 available domain names that incorporate the Invisalign brand name.
Before you start investing in these Invisalign vanity URL’s, let’s look at the benefits for and against.
Benefits for having Invisalign vanity URL’s
Brand recognition
Ride on the back of Invisalign’s strong brand name and mutli-million dollar marketing budget.
Kudos
Something worth shouting about! Having treated over 800 orthodontic patients with Invisalign also makes you the most experienced of orthodontic specialist using clear aligners.
Exact match keyword/domain name
An example of an exact match domain is someone searching for “Invisalign Lincoln” and getting Invisalign.Lincoln as the first search result. Have one or more keywords directly in your website URL can give you a boost in search rankings.
More chances to have more real estate on the first page of Google for competitive keywords
More web properties = more chances of getting found online.
The case against Invisalign vanity URL’s
The cost of buying a domain, hosting and building a website (or five)
The entry cost of buying a domain name, building a website with unique content and hosting your website runs into 1000’s of dollars.
The cost of maintaining a website(s) and ongoing SEO
Websites are like teeth and need constant care and attention. On and off page SEO isn’t cheap if you are serious about ranking your site. Another huge investment.
New websites carry ‘no weight’ in search
A new website carries no authority in search so linking it to your main business website will have little to no impact.
Links are low quality due to young age of sites
Links from your Invisalign branded domain to your business website carry little to no ‘Google juice’.
A new Invisalign branded domain has no Page Rank
Could take around 6 months or more to rank on page one for particular keyword
Dependent on your competition, your new Invisalign branded website could take months to start getting found online as it slowly climbs in the rankings.
Keyword may have no search volume
The keywords (Invisalign/city or town – city or town/Invisalign) may not have anyone using them to search for clear aligners in your area. If no one is using the keywords and even if you rank number one for the term, you will not see any traffic, new customers or ROI.
Keeping up your advantage
If you don’t maintain your current new Top 1% status (treating 100 new patients with Invisalign every six months), you’ll loose your license to use the Invisalign vanity URL’s along with the considerable investment in time and money you put into building and maintaining them.
In Conclusion
Each orthodontic office is different. If you follow the guidelines above you will quickly identify if having an Invisalign branded URL is a worthwhile investment for your business.
You may find, updating your existing website, building authority and posting new, unique, evergreen content on a regular basis to your blog actually increases your rankings and site visitors.
We believe in most cases, a better allocation of budget for long term returns would be to focus on getting more 5 star patient reviews on Google (GMB), Facebook and Yelp. These 3rd party endorsements will help you convert more people looking for Invisalign in your area and give you more chances of getting noticed online without the need for an Invisalign branded domain name.
And in case you are wondering “What if I purchase an Invisalgn branded URL and forward it to my business website without building a website?” Save your cash. There is no benefit from doing this at all! If ranking a website was that easy we would all own a hundred domain names and point them at our ‘money’ site. There’s no gaining the system!
Blend Local Search Marketing specialize in SEO and 360° Marketing for orthodontist. Click here to contact us and discover how we can help you grow your orthodontics practice ethically online.
Invisalign® is a registered trademark and logo of Align Technology Inc.
Perry Stevens is the founder and CEO of Blend Local Search Marketing Ltd. He’s a tea drinker, cocoa grower and a frequent traveller.
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