The Evolution of Link Building

Link building has come a long way since its early conception in the world of search engine optimization (SEO). In the early days of SEO it was enough to just grab a handful of directory links, engage in a number of reciprocal links, and you were almost guaranteed placement. But the search engines got wise to these techniques, devalued the links, and ultimately forced the Internet marketing world to fine tune their linking strategies.

Moving forward, marketers were forced to find more self-reliant ways of obtaining links. This resulted in the use of large website networks that were interlinked, creating what are now known as “link farms.” This, in addition to the practice of comment spam on blogs, guest books, and forums, lead to another influx of great ranking opportunities; again, however, the search engines caught on to the techniques and ultimately devalued the links, which impacted website rankings overall.

As Internet marketers continued to pick up the pieces and try and recover, the introduction of social media into the Internet marketing scene provided yet another opportunity to obtain a large number of links. This time it was with the help of viral content, link bait, and widgets that contained links pointing back to the provider’s websites. These tactics are still susceptible to being spammy and in some instances got a lot of people in trouble. Yet, overall, the reputable members of the industry were forced to put themselves in check and finally embrace the white hat techniques that would provide the long term benefit, but often lacked the quick turnaround a client was looking for.

Then fast forward a few years and social media, link bait, and viral content were still a reputable and satisfactory form of Internet marketing if done properly. However, these techniques are often hard to come by, depending on the market. Ultimately marketers were again forced to reconsider their strategies, and in the end, gave in to what the search engines were saying all along – to provide relevant, quality content.

The key to a successful Internet marketing strategy is not about getting the most links or getting a quick fix to jump to the top of the search engines; it’s about making you and your business as visible as possible online using quality content and valuable information that will drive not only visitors, but also links and in turn rankings.

If content is informative, engaging, and offers something of value, people are prone to share it, link to it, and even write about it if the content struck a chord with them. Sadly, most plastic surgeons and those involved with plastic surgery marketing forget this and instead provide visitors with dry, self-promoting content written with the sole purpose of enhancing search engine rankings. The next time you are ready to write a blog post, onsite article, or a new page for your website, I challenge you to consider your audience for a moment instead of the search engines. You might be surprised with the success that results from your efforts.

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Reputation Management, Google Places and Rankings

As Google continues to improve their “Google Places” results (formally known as the “Local Business Center”), along with personalized and universal search results, your business’ online presence and reputation becomes more of a concern.

Word of mouth is a powerful thing. In this day and age of information sharing and social media, consumers have an almost endless supply of blogs, forums, social networks, and review websites at their fingertips. The plastic surgery field is no exception.

In addition to anyone being able to post reviews directly on your Google Places profile, websites such as Healthgrades.com and vitals.com are just a couple of the medical review sites available to consumers. There, consumers can post their experiences, as well as likes and dislikes about your plastic surgery practice.

What makes this significant is that Google sees these types of sites as trusted authorities with relevant content for the user’s search, often pulling information and reviews from these sites to display them on the Google Places review pages. These also factor into organic search results, where having too many negative reviews may prevent you from showing in the top 10 results or worse yet, anywhere.

It’s important to start managing these reviews and your reputation as best you can and as soon as possible. After all, consumers are still going to talk about you whether you’re involved or not so what better way to stay on top of things then to be proactive and join the conversations where you can.

Here are a few things to consider when using Google Places to help with your reputation management:

• Consumer reviews that are used in Google Local listings often come from aggregated information across the Internet and third party websites that Google trusts.
• Negative reviews can be addressed if they are deemed as slander, spammy, or go against Google’s terms of service.
• If you have claimed your business in Google Places you have control over some of the content. If there is inaccurate information, such as a picture, service information, etc., you can correct this information by using the “Report a Problem” option and submitting your concerns and/or inaccuracies with your listing directly to Google.

Unhappy customers are unfortunately just part of being a business. You aren’t going to please everyone. However, in the event you do receive a questionable review on your business listing, a recent post from Daily SEO Tip, by Melih Oztalay of SmartFinds offers some sound advice on steps that can be taken to remove negative reviews from your Google Local Business Listing.

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