A Raw Deal By Design
Links from other websites to your website is the top determining factor in ranking your website. No secret here. Let’s take this a bit further. In most local markets even the most basic SEO efforts should get your site into the top 10 results for your primary keywords. Being at number 10 should give you at least a handful of visitors per day – let’s assume 10.
Moving up to number 5 should at least double the number of visitors (20). At position 3 it should double again (40), at position 2 again (80) and finally at #1 you should get about 160 visitors. (These figures are based on my experience in the Dental market.)
The difference between 10 visitors per day and 160 visitors per day are almost always related to your website’s backlinks.
There is more to links than simply the number of links to your site - but this is a different conversation. The first point I want to make is this: It does not matter how good a dentist you are – if you do not have enough backlinks to your website you will be leaving a lot of business on the table.
The Website Problem Dentists Face
Backlinks are responsible for about 70% of your website’s ranking power. Where do you get backlinks to your site? You can’t buy them as this violates Google’s policies and will result in your site, and the link provider’s site, to be penalized (or banned) from the ranking results.
You Have To Earn Backlinks
Your website has to be so rich in information that other website would want to link to your site. In other words, your website has to offer content to compliment the content from the linked site. This is where almost all dental web sites hit a brick wall.
All Dental Websites Are The Same
Almost. As an example, let’s compare Farmington Hills Dentist Mark Langberg’s website with that of Irvine Dentist Frank Seo. They both offer almost the same information on the same dental topics – sedation dentistry, teeth whitening, crowns and bridges, porcelain veneers, implants, and the list goes on. Even though each of these dentists feel their site is different (tell me how?) – it is highly unlikely that a mainstream blogging site or news site is going to link to either of these sites and excel it to Google’s dental website heaven.
This leaves dentists at the mercy of SEO pundits who claim that they will get them the links they need – and once again they set themselves up to compete with peers on exactly the same level.
Don’t get me wrong – I am not trying to rain on your parade; I am actually sympathizing with you as I believe you have a raw deal competing in the Google World.
You are Different, Your Website Not
There are reasons why people prefer one dentist over another. Whether it is your skills or your personality that draw patients to you, you need to inject yourself into your website. Use the same language, the same style, the same charisma. No one does this better than Los Angeles Cosmetic Dentist Sam Muslin.
Of all the dental websites I have ever visited this one stands out in that it is truly an extension of the man himself. All the content was written by the dentist in the same tone that he would speak to you if you were his patient. The same patients you see in his practice are the ones featured on his website. No stock photos. No copywriters. No templates. Only more of the same Dr. Sam Muslin. This is a website with remarkable content, worthy to be linked to from anyone in need of reference material to enhance the quality of thir related blog post or news article.
Dare to be different!
Filed under Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing by on Nov 29th, 2009. 
Apollo Hosting is one of 11 companies with which I host. It is now the second time in about 6 months that all my websites at Apollo Hosting has been hacked.
The sites I host at Apollo Hosting are all small Dental websites , no scripts – just plain HTML. Not sites that I monitor every day. Quite by chance I checked one of the sites. The home page loaded, then disappeared. Strange. I tried it on another browser and this time I got a Google message warning me of malicious software that was blocked and an option to view a safe copy of some obscure .cn website.
I tried to FTP to the site and could not connect. Next I tried the Apollo Hosting Control Panel and after I was asked to change my password, managed to connect. I could now use Apollo Hosting’s File Manager to view my sites.
First thing I saw was that the .htaccess file has been tampered with. The file date was wrong. The content in the .htaccess was not mine. I replaced it with a clean copy but could still not load my sites. A closer look revealed a folder with files which were also not mine and I killed this too. Next I looked at the index.html file and found multiple lines of Java Script which triggered a redirect. After I cleaned this out things were back to normal.
OK – so how did my sites on Apollo Hosting get hacked? I am the only one with external access to my sites and I use secure passwords. I run no scripts on my sites. And this is the second time this has happened. I submitted a ticket to Apollo Hosting and got the standard reply – it’s not their problem, it’s mine. It’s my passwords and my sites that are to be blamed – not their hosting.
I did a quick search on Google and found several references to Apollo Hosting accounts being hacked. I mentioned this to them in my reply and requested assurance from Apollo Hosting that they will address their security problems. Same reply – they are right, their customers are wrong.
So the time has come to move away from Apollo Hosting. I have had zero security problems with any of my other hosting companies and I am sure I can easily find a replacement for Apollo Hosting. Goodbye Apollo Hosting – I will be telling this story whenever I can.
Filed under Blog, Hosting by on Nov 9th, 2009.
Welcome to my new blog! Now Loading is an outlet for all the SEO related thoughts piling up in my mind.
This is one of three blog sites complementing the work we do at Webanalytix – the second being SEORiver.com which focuses on do-it-yourself SEO and SEM and the third being Googability.com, our small business anouncement blog.
Now-Loading.com used to be a 301-permanent redirect to Googability.com. I removed the permanent redirect yesterday. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for Google to re-index this site. I’m not sure what scars a permanent redirect will leave but I’ll keep you posted.
You are welcome to leave comments and thoughts – I undertake to work through them and will publish appropriate and related comments that contribute to the value of this site - and remove the no-follow 
Filed under Blog by on Nov 8th, 2009.
