Episode 104: Using Links to Improve Search Rankings

What was discussed?

Quote of the day: “Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.” – Wayne Dyer

A link is when a website mentions your website and provides a clickable link over to your site. Here’s an example: if you’re reading an article and there is text highlighted in blue, and it takes you somewhere else, that’s a link!

Do-Follow Links:

These links are basically saying that they vouch for the site, and the site is trusted. These are reported to help increase rankings more.

Why Does This Increase Rankings?

If you’re getting referenced on CNN or HealthGrades, that provides a signal to the search engines that your website is valuable and trusted. When your site is linked by an already established and reputable source, then that builds trust in the search engines.

No-Follow Links:

These links aren’t vouching for the reputability of the site that they’re linking to. While these can potentially help, they’re not as sought after as Do-Follow Links.

When you’re being linked, ask yourself if the source that is linking to you is relevant. Is it relevant to your practice? Is it in a relevant geographical location? Is it relevant to your region and industry? These tend to look the best to the search engines and help the most. You can also ask yourself if getting linked by the site you’re looking at would make sense. If you’re a local dentist and you’re getting linked by a local plumber, that’s probably not the most relevant and best place to be linked by.

Increasing Links to Your Site

This isn’t as easy as contacting the site owner and trying to get them to mention you. It’s generally more complicated than that.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Who do you do business with now?
• Are you an alumni of a specific school?
• Are you involved in your community?
• Do you donate time or money to charity?
• Does your team or company volunteer anywhere?
• What do you want to be involved with?
• Who do you have business partnerships or relationships with?

When you’re involved in the community, you can often be listed on local community boards or put yourself in newspaper service columns depending on the community. If you’re a big fan of a popular product (for example, Dental Vibe), you can offer to put a testimonial on that product’s site in return for a link back to your site. If you’re a dentist, and you recommend orthodontists or surgeons, try syncing up with them to see if there is the possibility of linking to your site.

Build Relationships and Partnerships

When you do this, you’ll be able to establish relationships that are mutually beneficial and advantageous to both parties. If you’re not very active in your community, get started! Join a Meetup group or a chamber to become known and recognized in your community. Links are a great way to increase your search rankings, build trust with your brand and websites, and show up higher in the search results.

If you need assistance with increasing links to your site, be sure to contact us today so we can see if we’re a good fit for each other.

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