Get 100+ New Dental Patients in the Next 120 Days (without paying a dental marketing company)
If you're looking for a DIY approach to SEO, or if you'd just like to learn how to hire an SEO company to do it for you, you're in the right place.
Google has long been saying that building links to your dental website is a great way to get recognized as an authority in your neighborhood.
The problem is that few SEO consultants are offering advice on how to best do this yourself.
Dental articles in respected publications are a great way to get noticed by other dentists. But did you know that Google also rewards you when you offer clinical thought leadership to websites such as Dental Town?
In fact, while you read this blog, something magical is happening.
Google looks at this article as a way to differentiate the dental marketing companies who are thought leaders. By publishing this article, and linking back to the first and only SEO course for dental professionals, I help Google understand that my dental marketing course is the one that is deserving of the #1 spot on Google for keywords such as "dental SEO course."
But, as you can imagine, not all links are created equal.
While almost any dental marketing company can earn you a link from Facebook or Yelp, simply by creating your practice's profile, other links are carefully guarded for elite thought leaders and dental authorities. Imagine Google taking notice when Dental Products Report quotes you on a topic. The difference between you and other dentists in your neighborhood becomes evident.
For instance, if you offer Invisalign in Charlotte, NC, you can help yourself rank higher simply by publishing a piece of thought leadership on this very blog. Dental Town is an informational hub, and by being cited by this website, you can easily outrank other dental websites over a period of several months.
You can earn just a few links from credible sources, including local bloggers and media outlets in your town. In less competitive areas, you may not need to be cited in dental journals, such as this article about attracting new dental patients on Remin Media.
In fact, some less competitive areas may only require a few links from the Dental Town blog. For example, I linked to some informational resources in this Dental Town blog post about the top 100 factors to lifting your rankings. Those links, which direct to dentists in places like Atascadero, CA have proven to lift their rankings as soon as Google's spiders crawl the blog post.
What to expect from link building to your dental website:
Once Google notices the link, you generally see some turbulence in your rankings. This can last a few days, sometimes a couple weeks at the most.
Search engines react this way because sometimes the algorithm isn't sure if the link is a natural fit.
For instance, a link from a knitting website might not do you much good. But a link from Dental Town, Dentistry IQ, or even my blog would make sense.
Once search engines determine that the link is a common sense, editorially granted reference of the information on your website, the magic happens.
Rankings can improve quite drastically in a short period of time, but only if other dentists in your neighborhood are failing to build these types of links.
Search engines view links as an endorsement of you as a thought leader. It means that you're worthy of being cited. The more the website linking to you earns it's own links, the more powerful that link will become.
So make sure before you start building links to your dental website, you follow these rules:
1. Make sure the website you earn links from is relevant to the dental industry, or your geographic location.
2. Make sure the link is editorially granted and not simply paid for.
These two rules will keep you out of the Google "sandbox," which is where your website can be de-ranked due to spammy link building.
As long as a website linking to you does so for editorial support, you're safe.
For more tips on my style of SEO, known as "the Invisalinks Method" be sure to follow me on the dental town forums!