Search Engine Optimisation Is Dead (part one)

Everyone wants to be top of the natural (free) Google listings don’t they? This has usually needed something called Search Engine Optimisation! Which effectively means using a variety of techniques to get your site to rank well with the search engines.

I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t get an email (usually from India) with a company promising to get my website to the top of  Google search, by search engine optimisation. Occasionally I have enquired how they are going to do this and how much will it cost.

They are normally a little vague as to how my site is going to get to the top of  (actually it normally is), but they usually want between £300 and £1,000 per month for doing this, incidentally with no guarantees and the process will normally take between three and nine months to achieve.

Search Engine Optimisation has always been a black art, basically individuals or companies are trying to fool Google and the other search engines into getting their site to the top of the natural listings (none paid for or Google Adwords).

When I last enquired, Google had around $30 billion in cash reserves. They are renouned for employing the best brains in the world, so just think about it how likely are you to fool Google?

Google has just announced its latest change to the algorithm they use for search, called Hummingbird, as usual they are very coy about what they have done, but basically its going to make things even more difficult for search engine optimisation, especially if you don’t have good original content on your site that is being regularly updated.

You may have a clever search engine optimisation company getting you links and writing articles with links back to your site and maybe even worse, filling your site with keywords. But at the end of the day you really have to offer a good meaningful website that is being constantly updated with new and interesting information for the people who are searching for you to rank better on Google, especially with these new updates.

Most search engine optimisation used to be about link building, that is having other sites link to yours and this still has some validity today, however you can’t just have any links. The links need to be relevant and rank well with Google themselves, the difficulty is finding relevant sites that are in the dental industry and that are willing to put a relevant link to your website from theirs!

If you offer one of the branded products such as Invisalign or Cerec for instance you might be able to get a link from them to your site which might boost you rankings, but ideally you will need many more than this and it still might not work.

Another trick is to write articles and get them published throughout the web with a link back to your site, but again this is very hit and miss, it might or it might not work.

The very worst search engine optimisation trick you can try is to stuff your website with keywords, these are literally the words you think that you patients will search on, if Google thinks you are doing this, not only will they not boost your ranking, but they could actually penalise you for it.

So how can you get your website to rank well in the natural listings of Google? Well the simple answer to that is to have a quality website, with lots and lots of content, that is also continually being updated and added to. Simply putting a website up there and doing nothing with it will also do you not good at all.

So be very sceptical about anyone who claims they can simply improve your rankings by paying them £500 per month, the best way is to do the right thing and make you website lively, have lots of content and be relevant to the person searching for you.

If you want to increase you patient numbers, revenues and profits, call me on 01767 626 398 or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit my website at

www.dentalmarketingexpert.co.uk