Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the primary tool that potential patients use to find the health care service they want and need. This is why link popularity is so imperative. If a prospective patient searches online and doesn't find your website, you have no possibility of helping them.

You're probably wondering what the heck is popular about a link! Well, in a word - everything! Link popularity refers to the process which search engines use for ranking your website in their search results. It literally determines the ranking your page gets when specific keywords are entered into a search engine. Now you're probably asking, how do I make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary and discriminatory, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites and penalizing sites that have links from unrelated poor quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to rank all the pages in your website.

The more commonly used a keyword is, e.g. "Back Pain or Chiropractor", the harder it will be to achieve link popularity necessary to get to the top of the results, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don't be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using even the most competitive keywords.

There are a several things you should be aware of when building links for your website. The first is that just getting a group of friends to provide reciprocal links (where you link to your friends and they link to you) even with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. Today the search engines simply discount reciprocal links (give them essentially no value) and if you get a link from a penalized website this could even get your website removed from the index all together. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines today aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them and if you find out that one has added a link to your site - demand that they remove it! You can find all the links pointing to your site by using Google and entering your full domain name, e.g. http://www.wellplanet.com - this will return a list of all pages that include your domain name.

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the sites you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your prospective patients seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate or cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will actually lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it. I would suggest only providing links to professional associations, chiropractic colleges, websites relating to your specialty, and carefully selected other natural health related websites.

Now let's take the first few steps to get you on the way to achieving supreme link popularity and improve your keyword rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines and in particular Google.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get your listing in the various free online professional directories. DMOZ is the ultimate directory to get listed in but for the moment it is a pipe dream because the moderators for Chiropractic listings have decided not to list individual chiropractors websites - at least in the US. I have submitted literally hundreds of times and have yet to get a listing - so althrough it would be great - don't waste too much time and energy. A couple of my favorites are Linkedin and MyChiroSpace - these both offer free listings where you can provide all your details including a link to your website. Next you want to ensure that you have a listing or account with a number of the social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are a great place to start and if you look through their features you will see that you can connect these accounts quite nicely. Be sure to create a public page on facebook and youtube. I will write and article on this subject next month to cover the details of connecting your social networking accounts and creating public pages. Once you have your social networking accounts be sure to add links to your accounts on your MyChiroSpace profile listing in the social tab  (again this increases link popularity). MyChiroSpace also offers a Directory Listing Membership which is an excellent way of getting your listing on a variety of health related directories.

Get your free search engines local listings from Google and Bing and review my article on how to optimize your local listing. The more you can add to your local listings the better.

The next step is to become active in submitting articles and/or participating in professional health related online forums that allow you to add a link to your website in your signature line. Do an online search for a local health related forum - contact the moderator and offer your help in moderating. Every submission you make or posting you make that include your signature link (with a link to your website) helps to increase your link popularity.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance. If you simply don't have the time or patience to build your own links be sure to hire a professional Search Engine Optimization service that specializes in Chiropractic SEO - we highly recommend Promotional Chiropractic Websites SEO Service.

By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site because even with great link popularity and amazing search engine result - prospective patients that visit your site and are under impressed will simply go to the next site on the list. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom! Remember that your community is counting on you!

For Optimal Health - From Above Down,

Dr. Pat