Interactivity.

This is the third of the Four C’s of Professional SEO.  If you have not read the other posts I would encourage you to start from the beginning by reading the first two C’s — Content and Crawlability.

The Internet gives us the ability to interact and connect to other individuals and organizations anywhere on the planet with a few keystrokes.  Your ability to create a network of connections on the Internet will be paramount to the success of your website.

Why?

The search engines have placed a lot of algorithmic stock in what I call your “footprint” on the web. Your “footprint” on the web consists of all of the connections that the search engine spiders find that can be attributed back to your contribution to the world wide web.

How the Search Engine Spiders Work

Notice that in my definition of footprint I used the term “contribution.”  Search engines are in the business of finding and ranking websites based on their usefulness to the searcher.  Your network of connections acts as a gauge of the popularity of your website content, business, and brand on the Internet.

A lack of connections on the Internet indicates your lack of “contribution” to both the Internet and the physical world to the search engines.  If you are not creating connections your website and your business must not be worthwhile and is thus unworthy of being displayed in search engine results.

The “spiders” are programs that scour the web at all hours of the day returning information to the search engines index.  The main objective of the spiders is to gather information and return it to the index to be categorized.  For example – “This page is about dental veneers and this other page is about crowns and bridges.”

At the same time, the spider is also indexing any connections that they find that can be attributed to another website on the Internet and returning that information to the index.

How to Get Connected

Inbound Links

An inbound link is any link that is pointing to your website from another website on the Internet. As a rule of thumb “any link is a good link.”

However, all links are not created equal.

- You should be looking to garner links from websites that are relevant to the content on your website.

- You should be looking for links from pages on the Internet that other people are linking to.

-  You should be looking for links where one domain is linking to you but you are not linking back to them. Known as one-way links.

-  You should be looking for links that do not have the no-follow attribute appended to them.  For more information about the no-follow tag read here.

Outbound Links

An outbound link is a link from your website to another website.  This is a great way to make connections on the Internet.  Since website owners understand the importance of having inbound links to their website, linking out to other websites is a great way to get noticed and drum up a connection.

The search engines are also beginning to rank sites based on whether or not they share “link love” with other sites.  If a site would be useful to the users of your website, then link to it. 

Citations

A citation is similar to a link except it doesn’t necessarily need to have an actual hyperlink to your website.  Any time your dental practice or your name is found by the spider along with the address and phone number of your practice you receive a citation.

Citations are important because each time one is found it reinforces the confidence that the search engine has in the location of your website.  A search engine DOES NOT want to return local search results with an incorrect address or phone number.  More citations that are consistent with what they have seen before will lead to an increased chance of your site being displayed in local search results.

Check out this oral surgery practice that has 38 citations noted in the Google Local Business Center.

Citation Example in Google

Reviews of Your Practice

Reviews of your dental practice online indicate that you have a thriving practice.  Encourage your patients to review your practice in Google Maps or Yahoo Local.

Social Media

What’s all they hype about Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?

Connections.

You should be using these as outlets to create connections that the search engine spiders can use to verify that you and your practice are active on the Internet and open for business.  At the very least create profiles for you and your practice at the aforementioned social networking websites.

Forums and Blogs

Making it a habit to post useful information in forums and on blogs that are relevant to your dental practice is a great way to make connections online.  Do not SPAM.  Forums and bloggers have no tolerance for SPAM and it will create a bad reputation for you and your practice if you give in to this temptation.  Consider regularly posting on Yahoo Answers or adding your expertise to a Wikipedia article.

It Won’t Happen Overnight

The Internet is known for moving at high speed but your “footprint” won’t grow as quickly as you hoped it would. I promise you that. I will also promise you that if you stick to the above practices for several months it will start to pay dividends.

Search engines are on a constant quest to find the 10% (that might be being too generous) of content on the web that is useful amongst the 90% that is useless. Creating a website that is useful to your user will ultimately lead to connections. Do you see why I advocate blogging on your dental website?

I hope that you have found this content useful and if you have I encourage you to increase our “footprint” by linking to our website or passing the word along to friends and colleagues.

The next of the Four C’s is more important than all of the others combined – CONVERSIONS.  Look for it next week on the blog or sign up for the free newsletter if you would like to receive it via email.

Remember that search engines use inbound links to determine which pages on the Internet are valuable and therefore are worth displaying as search results.  The more links you can garner that are pointing at various pages throughout your website, the more trustworthy your site becomes in the eyes of the search engines.

All links are not created equal.  Some links have a “no-follow” attribute appended to the code.  This tells the search engine that despite the presence of a link, the link is not indicative of an endorsement of the website that the link is pointing at.

The link you will gain from DentistryOffice.com does not carry the no-follow attribute and is therefore a do-follow link.

As I say in the title of this post… it’s a no brainer.  Take advantage of this free link by navigating to the directory at www.dentistryoffice.com and entering in the information for your dental practice.

–FYI… For those that receive the Free Email Newsletter, this is the post I was referring to in the video that was sent out.–

This video post tells you why inbound links are important and shows you how to check your links on Yahoo.  In the video below, I demonstrate how to check the number of inbound links you have and the number that your competitor has as well.

Inbound links can explain a lot about the reason that your website is ranking above or below another website in the search engines.  Remember that search engines have to manage information from billions of web pages.  They cannot do this manually.  Therefore, they create algorithms that allow them to automate the ranking of a website.

One of the most important aspects of the search engine algorithm is “link popularity.”

It is very similar to the method that we use to determine which businesses are trustworthy and which businesses are unproven.

For example — When you need your car repaired you are more likely to choose a mechanic that has been in business for a longer time versus one that has been in business a short time.  You are more likely to choose a business that someone else has recommended to you rather than one you have never heard of.

Similarly, a potential dental patient will base some of their decision about which dentist they prefer on the length of time they have been in practice and whether they have been recommended by someone.

The search engine  applies the same criteria to web pages automatically through the use of it’s algorithm, and more specifically the “link popularity” portion of the algorithm.

The search engine is more likely to show results of web pages that have been online longer (accumulated lots of links) versus one that been online a short time (accumulated few or zero  links.)  The search engine is more likely to show results that someone else has recommended (accumulated lots of links) rather than one it has never heard of (accumulated few or zero links.)

In essence, they are attempting to mimic what we do as consumers when we are deciding with whom we would like to do business or from whom we want to get our information.

It is the invention of this portion of the algorithm that allowed Google to usurp Yahoo! as the search engine of choice.  Although Yahoo! has since begun incorporating this into their algorithm, the head start that Google achieved by being the inventor has kept it in the lead.

Want to know how many links you have pointing to your website?  Watch this video and apply what you learn.  Let me know if you have questions by contacting me here or leaving comments on the blog.

6 Minute Video – How to Check Your Links

When you are looking to rank better on geo targeted search terms you should be thinking about a couple of different things in terms of links. Firstly, be sure that you have claimed your business location with all of the local search engines and directories including but not limited to:

Yahoo Local
Google Maps
Yelp.com
localeze.com
merchantcircle.com

When your business only makes sense to cater to the local customer (dentist, dermatologist, exterminator, etc) you should not only be concerned with live links with keyword rich anchor text but also with something called citation. A citation may not have a live link associated with it at all. The citation may merely mention the business, the telephone number or address and may or may not comment about the site at all. The citation serves to verify the address and telephone number of the business. The search engines are interested in verifying this information in as many places as possible to ensure that the local results they are returning are accurate. A citation may look like this:

I have been going to Allied Dentists and visiting Dr. Geoff Martin for years now. If you are looking for a great experience at the dentist visit their location at:
135 Broadway
Cleveland, OH 44102

Notice that there is no live link heading back to Allied Dentists website but the search engines will use this nonetheless to verify the address that they have in their databases.

Do: Be sure that your getting both traditional links and citations for your locally dependent website.

Don’t: Just concentrate on links that would get you high rankings in the standard search algorithm.