Frequently asked questionsabout dental websites, dental marketing, & our process

If you don’t have a domain for your dental practice, you can purchase one from a domain registrar. If you are working with S8E8 to build and host your website, the best place to purchase a domain is GoDaddy.com because this is what we use, and sharing access to your DNS records is easy that way.

Most clients prefer to own their domain outright (register it themselves for a typically-small annual fee). But if you want S8E8 to purchase your domain for you, we will for any reasonably-priced domain ($100 per year or less).

Your domain name is ultimately your decision, but your account manager is happy to make suggestions and check on availability.

You can check on a domain’s availability using a registrar’s website, like GoDaddy.com.

Having a domain that includes important search keywords actually does help with SEO (i.e. dallasdentalcare.com will be better than smilestudio.com). However, having multiple domains pointing to the same website does not help. Only the primary domain influences the search positioning for the website.

If you changed the name of your business (whether you acquired it or rebranded) and want a new domain to match, you’ll be left with your old domain. The domain that has been in existence the longest has acquired the most SEO value, so there’s good reason to hold onto it, at least until the new domain has gained some traction. You will have to decide which domain you want to be primary, and which one secondary. S8E8 will be able to direct any traffic from the secondary domain to the primary one.

There’s really no reason to have multiple domains. The only reason to purchase a domain you won’t be using as your primary domain is so that someone else won’t use it.

If you have multiple domains, you will have to choose one to be your primary domain. This will be the one you use most frequently, like on business cards and online links. The other domains can be set up to redirect to the primary domain as long as S8E8 has access to the DNS settings for those domains.

Studio 8E8 offers business-class email included with your website hosting. If you are using your previous website company for email, you will probably want to transfer that email to us and cancel with your previous company. However, clients who own Google Workspace or Office 365 (Outlook) accounts typically choose to stay with their current email system.

Keep reading for more email FAQs

Our email is secure business-class email, but it should not be considered HIPAA-compliant for the purposes of sending and receiving protected health information (PHI). For this, you would need to use a patient portal or a secure email system like LuxSci. These systems are more than just email – they are designed to confirm the recipient’s identity before releasing the protected information.

Creating new email addresses requires access to your domain DNS settings. If Studio 8E8 is hosting your email, we can create new email addresses for you. If we don’t host your email, you’ll need to create email addresses with the company that does.

You can switch to our email system, however it’s not possible to move saved mail from Google Workspace or Office 365 into our email system. You will also lose access to the tools provided by those other services, such as Gmail, Outlook.com, and access to productivity apps.

Yes, if you are using a standard email service that supports the IMAP protocol, we can migrate your saved mail into our email system. However, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are proprietary systems and we are unable to move mail out of them.

You account strategist will send you some
simple instructions, but the process starts
with sending them:

• a list of current email addresses and passwords (if you’d like us to move saved mail over)
• a list of new email addresses you want created

If Studio 8E8 is hosting your email, you can access it one of two ways:

1. You can connect any email program, either on your desktop or your phone. (Think: Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) You can find step-by-step instructions to connect common email applications, as well as email server settings for other applications at this link: https://help.emailsrvr.com
2. You can also read your mail in your web browser at https://webmail.emailsrvr.com. This is also the place you can go to change your email password, update your mail forwarding settings, and set-up an out-of-office auto reply.

If Studio 8E8 is your email host, we can help you fix this issue! Help us troubleshoot by providing your account manager with your problem:

• you can’t log into your email box
• you can log in, but you aren’t receiving new messages
• your outgoing messages aren’t being delivered

Not really. Naming your dental practice is like naming your baby, and you should follow your heart! Make sure the name you love isn’t already taken, and consult with legal counsel if trademark issues arise.

While we don’t offer name suggestions, your account strategist can help you work through an idea or give our preference - based on our years of dental marketing experience - if you’re stuck between two ideas. For tips on how to name your dental practice, look here:

There is no better place to start the logo process than curating a great mood board! Well-curated mood boards help our designers see your aesthetic vision for your practice and provide tons of inspiration! Here are some of our tips for making the perfect mood board:

Once we deliver your logo files, we recommend you download and save them. If you’re wondering which file is best for a specific application, the best place to look for that information is the style guide we provide with every branding package.

For more Identity Branding information and pro tips, check out our Ultimate Guide to Dental Marketing and our Trade Secrets articles.

Yes! Whether they are friends or family, actual patients, or hired from an agency, you will be the one communicating with them. Your account manager will provide some resources to share with them so they feel prepared.

No. While what you do is endlessly cool, our production team filming actual patient procedures (even routine cleanings!) is a bad idea. The main reason is that if you want to get the most from the limited time of your session, our team will need to have full control of the space.

We want everyone to be comfortable, and wearing what you normally wear in the office is totally fine! Doctors can have two outfits, like scrubs and something more dressy for headshots. We typically recommend everyone, including patient models, be in neutral colors or colors that work with your brand, and no product logos or stripes.

Everyone present at the content session – doctor(s), patient models, and team members – will be in photos and video b-roll (video scenes without sound). However, typically the doctor or owner of the practice is the only person being interviewed on video with sound. If your practice has multiple doctors or someone else you’d like to be interviewed, contact your account manager to see what can be accommodated, or about adding extra time.

Raw video footage is considered property of Studio 8E8, but considerations will be made on a case-by-case basis for a fee. The footage will require a trained video editor to make changes.

Yes! As long as you have rights to photos and videos, we can add them to your website. While we prefer professional, high-end photography and video like what we produce, we understand that sometimes you need content we weren’t able to capture. Smile gallery photos, new doctor headshots, and instructional videos are common types of content we will use along with what we produce, and can be sent over to your account manager.

For more information and pro tips about photography and video for your dental practice, check out these Trade Secrets articles!

Photography articles

Video articles

As part of your website “homework,” you will have the opportunity to choose what pages you want on your website. This can also be discussed with your account manager. Different website packages include a different number of pages, but these are the pages we always recommend:

• Homepage
• About Us, Meet the Team, or Meet the Doctors
• Services (one page to cover all of your services)
• Contact page

We will move over any service pages and blog articles from your current site for SEO purposes. We also often re-use content from Membership Plan pages. The rest of the pages on your new site will use your homework and website starter as primary information. If there’s anything you really want to keep from your old site, please communicate that with your account manager before the new site is created.

We build all of our sites with accessibility best practices in mind (video closed captions, text descriptions of images, screen-reader compatibility, etc.). While it's impossible to guarantee complete website accessibility to every possible disability, we do our best to make the sites as accessible as possible without compromising the user experience.

All websites are inherently HIPAA compliant if they do not ask the user to provide health information.

• To make contact forms HIPAA compliant, we add a line that says: “Please do not send health information via this form”
• To make appointment forms HIPAA compliant, we do not ask the reason the appointment is being scheduled.
• If any health information is collected through the website, it must be sent through a HIPAA-compliant third party system. (New patient forms, virtual consultation, chatbot, payment page, patient portal etc.)

Here is a great website we recommend. Just enter your URL and it’ll create one for you to download!

For more information and pro tips about dental websites, check out these Trade Secrets articles!

SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It means creating and curating your online information so that search engines prefer you and rank you higher in their results.

The biggest indicator of success is increased overall organic website traffic over time. If Studio 8E8 hosts your website you will have access to an analytics dashboard where you can view website traffic, ranking for individual keywords, and specific changes in SEO placement.

Approaching SEO from all angles (on-page strategies, local citations, and relevant content) is the best way to ensure your rankings will improve over time. Search engines and algorithms change all the time, so having expert help can be a huge relief! For more details, check out the articles below and visit our Ultimate Guide to Dental Marketing.

We manage digital ad campaigns for clients on Google and Meta (Facebook & Instagram).

There are many differences, but here are a few
important distinctions:

• Google ads capture leads while they are already searching for a dentist, while Facebook ads are more like having a billboard up in your area. Facebook ads count on multiple “impressions” before someone reaches out, and Google tries to capture them right on the spot.
• Partly for this reason, Facebook/Meta ad campaigns are a bit harder to track. Someone may see your ad on Instagram, then Google you later and click that ad instead.
• Facebook/Meta ads have a better “vibe filter.” By the time someone reaches out because they saw your ad on Facebook, they’re more likely to already be confident that they want to be your patient because they’re more familiar with your brand.
• For this reason, Facebook/Meta ads are often recommended for FFS practices, while Google is often more recommended for practices that accept insurance.

We prefer our clients start Google ad campaigns once their new website is complete. Digital ad campaigns drive traffic to your website, and we want you to be ready for all that attention! Having an enticing, custom website that tells your story helps that lead become a new patient.

That being said, startup practices might consider a strong social strategy (regular posts, even boosted posts) with the goal being awareness more than conversions. Clients of Studio 8E8 will have marketing experts ready to advise you based on your goals.

We’ve answered that for you in this article. We even included a downloadable spreadsheet that will calculate a suggested budget based on your goals!

Check out this article, which covers all the different components of a Google search ad.

Not always. We usually don't recommend them for startups that haven't opened their doors yet, or don't have a full website. It just tends to be a lot harder to gain traction and get that ROI, so their money is oftentimes better spent on a social media strategy.

We also wouldn't recommend Google ads for practices looking to target something with very low search volume, trends, or relative data. We might recommend a social ads strategy in that case, since they can build awareness and educate your potential patients.

It all truly depends on the demographic of patients you’re trying to reach. Here are a few things to think about for each one.