Three Directories Your Dental Website Needs
This is a brief review of the major directories and an explanation of their importance to your dental website. You’ll want to consider listing your site in them.
There are search engines and there are directories — and some directories are “better” or more powerful than others.
A search engine is simply a computer program that incorporates and sends out a “crawler” to find and index websites for its database. It’s an automatic process governed by the subtleties of its algorithm.
Directories on the other hand, are websites organized by category — their content and the websites which reside in their respective categories are added and edited directly by a human. Some directories are niche specific, while others are more general in focus.
Importance of Directory Links
If you have a new site, or an older one — you may not have any links pointed to it. Unless there’s a link pointing to your site from another one, that is, a link from another site that’s ALREADY indexed by a search engine, your website has slim chances of getting indexed — and your site may never get positioned in the search engines where prospects can find your practice online.
Search engines initially “find” your website by encountering and following a link to it — from another site — similar to how electricity follows wire circuitry.
The Big 3
Now to the main subject of this post — without question there are three main directories you should be familiar with and submit your site to…
- Dmoz - free
- Yahoo! - (annual recurring fee)
- Business.com - (annual recurring fee)
Invariably, dental websites which reside in the above three directories perform decidedly better than competitor sites that are not listed in them. “Better” meaning they position easier, faster and higher in the search engines.
There are nearly an unlimited number of other directories online, though these three are the ones that matter most. You won’t get much, if any, traffic from these directories, however, the search engines attribute so much relevance and importance to them, and the sites which are listed in them, that the value afforded the dentist website makes submitting to them well worth the effort.
December 11th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Hi John,
Thanks for the post. Very useful information for any dentist who wants to do their own SEO. Just one additional suggestion is that each link to dentist’s site needs to have the keyword as anchored text.
Here is post I had on anchored text.
Ali
December 11th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Ali,
Yes you’re correct, keyword linked text is helpful. However most organized and respected directories will not approve SEO oriented links and submissions intended solely for the purpose of ranking.
Most directory editors prefer to use the doctor’s real name in the clickable text. I can see their point too; with so much crap being pushed to consumers these days, both directories and search engines want to ensure that their users are directed to quality, on-topic content.
Thanks for your input!
John
December 13th, 2008 at 5:52 am
Thanks for introducing these directories. They are the most important directories but would you tell me Google Directory is as important as those directories?
Sincerely,
Heliya
December 13th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Google’s directory is a mirror of Dmoz.org — so if your site makes it into Dmoz, you’ll be automatically added to Google as a concomitant benefit.
John
December 28th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Very useful post. Submitting to DMOZ is important to do but don’t hold your breath. DMOZ is perhaps the most mismanaged business entity on the planet. A little tip I have used is to search for a category that has an editor listed at the bottom. This shows that there is someone actively editing those submissions. The queue is usually longer however in these categories.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:01 am
BOTW is an older, well-known directory and it can be a great source for link juice.
John
May 12th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Thanks! This was great advice. I really appreciate all of the information that you give.
May 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Hi Steff — great to hear from you again!
Glad you liked it — don’t be a stranger — come back soon!
John
August 10th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
John,
I was wondering, is it was at all possible to put patient education programs such as XL Dent on the Web Site? Also, do you have any ideas on how to make the website more interactive?
August 12th, 2009 at 5:04 am
Tyler,
I think XL Dent is only for the practice itself. It’s a Dental Office Management, software system.
For interactivity, you could always add a blog to the website, or one of the many Patient Ed video suites available for dentistry.
John
November 17th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Just surfed in, and have to say that his is a great post.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Fantastic stuff this is a great place to read!
December 11th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
John, I really do need to spend more time reading your blog entries, ’cause you have so much good stuff, and there’s just so much of it. Given the huge increase in patients and business I’ve gotten from my website(s) in 2009, I’m sure taking more of your advice will only boost that even more. Traditional media marketing is performing more and more poorly for me, whereas the Web is playing an increasingly large role.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Hi Chip,
Yep, I think a greater number of dentists every day are coming to the same conclusion; the Web is where it’s happening and search marketing right now truly offers the best ROI.
John
February 18th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
We need more people who think like you.
March 6th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Michale, perhaps.
IMO, it would be great just to have more people who think.
John
May 16th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Great post. Very refreshing given all the duplicate content out there. Thanks for doing something original.
December 28th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Never tried Business.com, but Yahoo and BOTW are totally worth it. Getting into DMOZ is really hard, and sometimes you even have to become an editor to get your website listed, but you should apply anyway.
June 26th, 2012 at 4:37 am
DMOZ can be a nightmare to get into even with a quality site. A few additional tips though, don’t re-submit over and over (be patient), and make sure you get the category correct.