Doing Things the Right Way

We'd like to take a moment here to address the area of off-page optimization (or “backlink acquisition”). As you may have already heard, the generation of links back to your website from other sites is a part of the typical SEO package. We stress the word typical here, because medical websites have issues that most other sites do not.

No one likes to lose control

The establishment of backlinks is a thriving industry right now, where the organization doing the work strives frantically to place links to your site on any manner of other websites (none of which are under your control or influence). They use internet directories, blogs, forums, aggregator sites, etc., many of which exist solely for this purpose. They sometimes write “articles” about medical subjects and submit them to these websites, with a link back to you.

Upholding your reputation

We believe that most medical professionals would be understandably alarmed to find direct links to their practice's website spread around the web this way. The situation could exist where a new patient finds your practice by linking from a website which promises unobtainable medical results (we've all seen them) and then has issues when you don't deliver them. You have no way of knowing what these other websites will evolve into over time – we've seen medical website backlinks appearing on porn sites!

Betting on the future – safely

The other factor to consider is the future of the whole backlink idea. Google is very good at changing their search algorithms to try to provide the most accurate, meaningful results to their searchers. They are also very aware of the “backlink factories” that have multiplied (many of them overseas), and it's only a matter of time before the practice is diminished, or even disregarded when calculating search engine rankings. Backlink acquisition is also very expensive, and we don’t feel that our customers should be taken down this road when it promises such suspect and potentially temporary benefits.