Website links and the value for SEO

Why some links are advantageous and others dangerous.

In the digital marketing training sessions we run for dentists, one topic we cover in some depth is SEO and the various factors which help dental websites rank better in Google. Where practices employ in-house marketing staff, we work with them for training but also to help coordinate their digital marketing efforts. So for example helping with latest insights into search engine updates and best practices to achieve success.

Anyone who has working knowledge of on-line marketing will know that one of the main success factors when it comes to improving a website’s search results, is the number and quality of the links which point back to it from other websites. A good link profile is excellent, but on the flip side, a bad profile will have you penalised by Google and potentially banished from the search results index.

So all links are definitely not equal and this is why we like to spend some time explaining the differences when we run dental marketing training sessions. A little knowledge can be very dangerous, so having an inexperienced in-house marketing guy who fires any old link they can find at your website, can prove disastrous.

Good links versus bad links

First let’s recap on Google’s thoughts about link-building. Their view is rather high-level and quite simple in that they encourage you to generate web content which attracts links naturally rather than necessitating that you try to build them manually. This is great in principle and fine if you have a team of content authors generating lots of link-worth articles on your behalf, but in practice, small business owners (i.e. the large majority of dentists) simply don’t have this resource available. So small business SEO usually does require some level of link-building to help make ranking progress.

Good digital marketing teams will have built up a database of viable link opportunities and identified the good from the bad; however, it’s not so easy for more inexperienced guys or members of the dental team who only have a few hours per week allocated to such activities. These guys need some basic guidance as to what they should and should not use. So let’s try to help with a few guidelines:

Characteristics of valuable links:

• links from relevant websites in the dental industry – e.g. equipment manufacturers, articles on authoritative dental portals etc
• links from good quality on-line business directories (not low quality link farms)
• authoritative media publications
• dental or health related blogs – as long as they are good quality
• profile links from some social media channels
• profile links from your business page profile e.g. Google and Bing
• some forum comments – but make sure you are not “spamming” and that your comments are useful; there is a fine line so take care

Typically, decent quality links are difficult to get – so be prepared for some hard work and lots of frustration.

And what do bad links look like?

• typically easy to get, free-for-all and not from manually approved sources
• lots of outbound links all originating from the same source
• where the originating site has clearly been set up simply to generate links
• where the content is irrelevant – there are lots of blogs with mixed content where you can get links but these are generally best avoided
• most social “bookmark” links

What about paid links?

Google makes it quite clear that paid links are against their guidelines and hence open to penalties. Interestingly though, there are lots of big brands which are clearly paying for links or paying to have articles published which contain links, but seem to get away with it. But even so, our advice is to avoid paying for links. A Google penalty is extremely difficult to get lifted and simply not worth the risk.

Summary

Links back to your dental website are still one of the most important ranking factors when it comes to gaining prominence in Google. However, over the last few years, Google has become much more discerning about link quality and what constitutes good and bad. If you point too many poor quality links at your website (the threshold is low) then you can be penalised quite heavily, often with very limited chance of recovery. So it pays to be careful and only pursue good quality – if in doubt, better to leave it than risk it.

If you are interested in promoting your website in Google or perhaps need some training for your in-house staff, please get in touch with the Dental Media digital marketing team on 01332 672548.