You’ve probably used the word ‘link-building’ if you own a website and have done some SEO with your dental practice. When SEO first became a marketing tool, link-building was one of the most critical tasks in any SEO strategy.
Today, this is still mostly the case.
A backlink is a link that you get to your website from an external site. The idea behind the importance of backlinks for SEO comes from following what is popular.
Accessible content will be shared, and when things are shared, a link is produced. When lots of people share a particular link, search engines learn that this is good content, and they serve it in the hope of providing a good user experience for search engine users.
Here’s why building links for your website is essential:
1. Backlinks help search engines find and rate your dental website
Search engines use connections in two primary ways: to find new web sites, and to help decide how well a page will rank among its outcomes.
When search engines have crawled pages on the site, the content of those pages can be extracted and added to their indexes. In this way, they will determine whether they consider a page is of appropriate quality for specific keywords to be ranked well.
In making this decision, the search engines don’t just look at your page’s content; they also look at the number of links from external websites pointing to that page and how authoritative those external websites are. Generally speaking, the higher the quality of the sites that connect to you, the higher the probability that you will rank well in search results.
2. You will be receiving traffic from motivated potential patients
Backlinks help you get more site visitors. Those visitors have come from another site while searching for information, and have stumbled upon a link to your site. They are already motivated enough to look for dental information before coming to your website, so your link is going to someone likely to have a dental issue that you are in a position to solve.
If your connections are in the right places instead of being placed in front of inappropriate search engine users, you’re going to get more targeted traffic. That’s what you’re looking for- and it will increase your chances of receiving more dental patients.
3. You’ll increase your chances of ranking higher on Google Maps
Google (and other search engines) view backlinks as a vote of confidence for your website. When they take people off their site, they want to take them to a professional website with up-to-date information to better assist visitors to their location.
When Google sees a site linking to yours, it tells them that another site has faith in your content. It, in turn, increases your reputation and your search engine rankings.
Backlinks are a significant ranking factor on Google Maps and their “3-Pack” – the top three results you see when searching for local information. Local backlinks can have a more substantial effect on these rankings, as they let Google know that other authoritative sites in your local area find your content relevant and useful.
4. You’ll increase brand awareness
Because links are available to users, and not just search engines, link building can increase your reputation.
Merely having your name out there is enough to help your dental practice increase its reputation. If a user does not click to show your name for the first time, the more the user sees it, the more they are compelled to click.
And once they do so, they’ve taken to the biggest branding tool you’ve got: your website. Your brand is no better portrayed than on your site, and the creation of links is a great way to encourage people to visit your website.
With the power that backlinks provide to your marketing goals, concentrating on gaining backlinks should be a core part of any dental practice SEO strategy.
Dr. Websites
Link building doesn’t mean creating as many as possible; it means having appropriate links from reputable websites. It’s hard to do, but we can help. If you want to learn more about local backlinking or if you would like us to help grow your local backlink campaign, don’t hesitate to contact us today.