Off-page factors should be carefully planned and implemented to achieve a higher search engine ranking. Many people think that off-page optimization is just link building and go about it in a random and unplanned manner.
However, this is not going to bring much benefit to their site. They’re just going to waste a lot of time and efforts and not get any results. They need to consider several aspects before starting off-page optimization for their site. Given below is all the information you will need to know about off-page optimization. It is one of the best SEO Strategies to be used before starting the off Page Search Engine Optimization.
I. Factors to Consider Before Building Links
It’s not enough to get just any websites to link to you, the quality of inbound links is also very important. You may get 100 links but may not see any difference in your results if you don’t consider the following points:
1. Inbound Links from Authority Sites
Authority sites are popular sites that people frequent, get linked to on the basis of their merit, or are referred by many when they need to check up on the subject. Getting links from known websites is priceless while doing off-page optimization for your website. It’s like a certificate from an authoritative figure who has acknowledged the quality of your page. For example, if your site is about current events or news, and CNN.com links to you, consider it as the best bonus ever!
Tip: Make your website as professional and informative as possible. If you give reliable and valuable information, it will instantly impress people. This will also increase the chances of getting linked by other such authority sites.
2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Anchor text is the actual word or phrase of your link. It is important to have anchor text targeting your keywords because the search engines will notice this as a relevant link for your site. As you start getting more and more links with your targeted anchor text, your rankings for those terms will start to improve.
For example, if your site was about selling or renting houses then you should use your keywords in the titles: such as ‘Houses for sale’, ‘Houses for rent’, ‘Homes for sale’, ‘Homes for rent’, ‘Buy a house’, ‘Rent a house’ etc.
The most common anchor text is ‘Click Here’. Sometimes, it is not possible to choose the anchor text for your links from other pages, but for those sites where you can, you need to get it right. Some places where you can enter your own anchor text are online web directories and social bookmarking sites. However, for those sites which do not, you could try sending a request asking if the anchor text can be modified to make it more relevant for your site. You’ll be surprised to see many of them would make the necessary changes.
Tip: Try to include your keywords in your anchor text. Decide what keywords you want to rank for and include them in your anchor text. However, be careful because your anchor text should not read like a string of keywords, it should make sense as well.
3. PageRank of Incoming Links
Google Page Rank is a tool developed by Google to determine the importance of a website or a webpage based on clearly defined set of algorithms. It is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. Whenever you link out to another website, you pass on some of your page rank value. Similarly, if you get a link form a high PR page, your site will also benefit from a fraction of the PR value of that page.
PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them – relevance and quality are also important (in terms of the PageRank of sites, which link to a given site). However, not all links weigh the same when it comes to PR. If you had a web page with a PR8 and had 1 link on it, the site linked to would get a fair amount of PR value. But, if you had 100 links on that page, each individual link would only get a fraction of the value.
Tip: While links from high PR sites may be beneficial to your PR, do not restrict your off-page link building activities just on the basis of PR.
4. Placement of Link in Web Page
The position of your link from another website says a lot about it to search engines. Links can be placed in the footer, header, sidebar or inside the content. With so many people selling links in their sidebar or footer, search engines might possibly give these links slightly lesser value. The ones placed as a part of the content (contextual links) could be considered more valuable than the sidebar or footer links. There is a growing amount of importance of placing links on a page in a natural manner.
Tip: Try to get links from a page which does not have too many other links. The page you are getting a link from should not be one which makes it obvious that they sell links.
5. Get Links from Relevant/Related Sites
It doesn’t make much sense when an astrology site links to a website that deals with cars. The topics are niche and completely irrelevant to each other! The audience you are looking at can’t be any more different (unless you want to ask the psychic if the car’s registration number will bring you luck!) This type of linking is not only worthless but if you have exchanged links to get that link, you’re also putting your page at risk. The search engines will smell something fishy and suspect a link trade because the sites aren’t related in any way. So, always try to get links from websites that are related to your topic.
Tip: As mentioned above get the majority of links from sites that have similar topics. Even if you are getting it from general sites like online directories or social bookmarking sites, your link should be placed under the correct category.
In The next post we will discuss about Link Building Techniques.
