Off-Page Optimization – a complete guide…

The first thing with search engine optimisation or SEO is to get the structure of your website right.

The on-page factors are really important because the off page techniques involve you linking back to your site.

If your site is poorly optimized for the search engines or the link structure is poor then your results will reflect this.

You do not want to have to start messing with your website once you get stuck in to promoting your website.

If you change your website structure after you have begun the off page optimisation then you will end up with 404 page not found errors and you do NOT want that.

Now, if you are reading this and already started promoting your site and beginning to panic don’t worry too much. There are ways around it of course, you can set up customised 404 pages and do re-directs, but it all gets a bit messy and it is a lot more unnecessary work.

Therefore it is preferable to get the on-page part of optimising your website for the search engines right first. For more details go to here on page optimization

Warning Do Not Try To Cheat The System

Promoting your website is not difficult technically however, it does take a lot of time and effort if you are to do it properly.

The most important thing is do NOT try to cheat the system. It is possible to get high rankings in the search engines by using black hat techniques, but these very rarely work long term.

The search engines are so much more advanced than we know and if they find you trying to cheat the system then you will be out on your ear before you know it and getting back in is a struggle that you do not want to get in to.

There are so many software programs out there that offer to build back-links and automate this labour intensive task, but buyer beware. Do Not Get Involved unless you want to get a “google slap” as it is commonly known.

Lets just take a look at this from the search engines point of view. They want the people searching their database to find exactly what they want. The most relevant website at the top!

Only Google has the answer

We will talk about google as this is the most popular search engine and therefore the one that everyone wants to rank well in.

If you go to google webmaster section there is a wealth of free information on what you should do if you want to rank well in the SERPS.

As we have already said you do not have to be a brainiac to understand it, although you do need dedication and persistence to read it all, it is long, boring and full of technical babble, but the gist of it is, they want to see well structured and informative websites that will add value to the internet and to the people that use it. Simple really! This, and making shed loads of dosh is their sole purpose in life.

There are forums abound on the internet that discuss the search engine algorithms in great detail professing to have uncovered the secrets, but nobody apart from a select few insiders really know how google works. There are loads of theories and opinions, especially from gurus trying to flog you their latest “google crushing” techniques, software and expensive how to courses.

The one thing I do know is that if I was working for the search engines the one thing I would do is buy every piece of software there is and look at how it works and what it does. I would setup the system find the footprint and then go out and find these cookie cutter or automated sites. Wouldn’t you?

Tricks of the Trade

Keyword research

As with the onsite optimisation the most important part is the keyword research. You need to know the keywords that people are using when looking for your product or service.

You need to know the number of searches, as well as the number of results pages that are found for your main keyword terms.

This information will provide the information to allow you to know which keywords you are going to try and rank for first. More details on how to do the keyword research can be found on the Keyword Research Page.

Analyse the competition

You need to analyse the competition. Check out the top 5 or 10 results. See which ones have page one rankings for your main keyword phrases across the top 3 search engines.

Check to see how many back-links these websites have and see how many of your keywords they rank in the top 10 position for. You do this by typing in “ links:domainname.com ” (without the quotation marks) This is not 100% accurate but will give you an idea. You can of course check your competition out too.

Content is the key.

You need to have content. Good quality relevant content that is related to your market. You need content for your site and for the back links you are going to create to you site.

Your content must be:-

Relevant – The content on your site is the most important. This needs to be relevant for your target market.

Informative and Readable – Try and make it informative and interesting to read, Don’t stuff it full of keywords. Make it sound natural.

Use themed keywords – When writing content use as many ‘themed’ words related to your target keyword phrase as possible. Try to keep on topic and do not include too many different keyword phrases.

Unique Content – Use only unique content especially on your main website. Do not have duplicate content on different pages of your site either.

When producing content for other sites it should also be unique wherever possible.

When posting to article directories, this content will be syndicated and may appear on hundreds or even thousands of website over time.

For this reason send different versions of the same article, even if it is just changing the title and re-writing a few sentences from each paragraph of the article.

Build Back links and They Will Come

The Blunderbuss Approach Works -

“blun?der?buss – a short musket of wide bore with expanded muzzle to scatter shot, bullets, or slugs at close range.

I have always been told to focus on one thing, the more targeted and, pin-point focused you are on one thing the faster you will get it done and the better it will be.

This is not the case with SEO. The blunderbuss method is the best way.

The search engines like to see natural and organic growth and if all your efforts go into one mode of promotion then this does not look natural.

By using a variety of different methods your site will be seen to be building back links and growing organically.

You will also be able to judge what works best for your site to. What works best for one type of site will not necessarily work well on another.

Deep Linking, What’s That All About?

When you create content whether it be a video, an article or whatever method you are using, you should always set up the back-link to go to the internal pages on your site. This is called deep linking and it is a very effective way to get more of your pages indexed in the search engines. It will also help a lot here if your site links are well structured. This is something that should be checked when you are doing your off-page optimisation.

All back-links are not made equal

It is important that you are rewarded for your efforts, so it is worth knowing that it does make a difference where your back links come from if you are to get the link juice from them.

If you are an interior designer and the search engines spider a website related to interior design with a PR 5 and they find a backlink to your site which they follow, only to discover that, it too is related to interior design, they will reward you well.

The more of these related links you can get the more the SE’s will believe that you are an authority in the subject.

Posting a comment on a forum or a blog about dog training when your business and website is interior designing will be of little value to you as there is no relevancy value. Not to mention that your post will probably get deleted.

Where to Get Backlinks

There are a number of ways to build back links to your website. By using a number of the following methods to grow your back links you will soon start your rise to search engine stardom.

Reciprocal Links

You sometime receive emails from other websites that are similar to yours, offering to swap links. You put their link on your site and you put one on theirs.

I rarely take up this offer unless I think I will get direct traffic from their site or they have a higher PR than mine.

Link Farms

These are websites that have been set up with the sole purpose of adding back links. Google and I am sure the other SE’s too do not like link farms.

They will do you no good and if, they find a large number of back links coming from these known URL’s you may well get penalised. Do Not get tempted to use them.

3 Way Links

These are systems that offer a one-way link to your site as long as you provide a link to anther site in the network. The theory is that you have a one way link from a related (maybe) site and you link to another creating a true one-way link.

The problem is these systems tend to leave footprints and the search engines, as we know are really clever. The chances are they will find these patterns and there is a chance that you could get penalised. Don’t take the risk

Social Bookmarking

There are a loads of social book marking websites available. These are a few of the more well known ones.

• Digg
• Tumblr
• Stumbleupon
• Delicious

When ever you add content to your site or add a comment to blog or submit an article, then you should book mark it.

The search engines love these sites and it is not unknown for a post to get onto page one of the SERPS in minutes.

Social Networking

Social networking sites like:·

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Myspace

These sites are also good for building back links to your site.

Register on these sites and, whenever you add content anywhere on the internet, post a relevant comment and the back link on the social networking sites.

Web 2.0

There are a number of definitions of Web 2.0. It is generally understood that it relates to the movement away from static websites and more to dynamic systems, where sharing, collaborating and interaction are now common.

For the purpose of this article I am referring to them to describe 2nd generation websites that allow users to create and maintain a web page or website. These are hosted and allow the user to have an online presence without any technical skills, and in most cases without any cost.

These sites make money from the revenue generated by advertising on the site. This revenue is usually split with the person who builds and maintains the web pages.

• Squidoo
• Hubpages
• WetPaint
• Weebly
• Webs

These sites tend to have a high PR rating and therefore, by creating pages on these websites related to your products or services and linking back to your main site, you will get some of the value of that page rank passed back to your main site.

You must ensure however that you create a page or website that has relevant and valuable information that will offer value to the visitors. Sticking up a page that says. “come and see my red widgets at www.theredwidgetshop.com.We have great prices and they are very nice” will not be up online for very long and will get you banned as sure as eggs are eggs.

This goes the same for forums and blogs, blatant advertising or self promotion is usually frowned upon and may bring down great wroth upon those that dare to try it, from the owners and managers of these websites.

Take time to search for other pages related to what you do and check them out. Create a good page with quality unique content and add your links sparingly using anchor text. Post the url’s to the social book marking and networking sites as well and watch as if by magic you start to see your site climb up the ladder of the SERPS.

Blogs

You should have a blog on your site and you can also setup blogs on other domains that you own, although they need to be on separate IP addresses, or on websites like:-

• Blogger
• WordPress
• Livejournal
• Blog

Like the web 2.0 sites having a number of blogs that you control each with unique but relevant content on will help you a lot.

Setting up a blog on these hosted accounts is a breeze and it is easy to update and add content, this includes text, images and videos.

You need to add links to sites other than your own to give the site credibility and make it interesting. Again to have loads of other sites that only link to you is a real giveaway to the search engines and the actual hosts of the sites. Google in the case of blogger!

If you have a website that sells car parts and accessories for example, you could setup a number of blogs or web 2.0 sites each related to a particular theme.

So, you have a few sites dedicated to car sunroof’s that has all the latest on sunroof technology and images of the various types and styles.

These link back to the actual part of your website related to sunroofs. You then have a couple of different sites related to other products that you sell like car panels, alloy wheels or seat covers.

Each one links to other blogs and websites related to these topics as well as strategic links back to the relevant page on your website.

You then post all the URL’s to the social book marking sites and watch as they rise through the ranks. (are you getting the idea now)

Websites related to a specific topic tend to rank better than sites that are general. A website all about wheel trims will generally rank better than a site about car parts and accessories.

The search engines love quality niche sites. If this site then links back to the part of your site that is relevant then you will be regarded as an authority too and you will reap the benefit of this.

A lot of people do not use this method as they think the only benefit is only get one valued link from all that effort, they prefer to go to other peoples blogs and add comments. The first thing is that a lot of these blogs have nofollow tags which means that it wont get counted anyway and they forget the fact that

Side Note:

A lot of people miss out on this method because they believe that they will only get one back link and this is a lot of work for one link. However, this is not the only reason to create your own sites. Whilst you will only get one link, it will be a good one that is worth having.

The other great thing about these blogs is that if you have a number of different keywords that you link back using anchor text to your site you will start to see your main site ranking for these keyword terms.

I have found that these sites can work miracles on helping my main sites rank for these additional keywords very fast which, in my opinion is the name of the game.

Article Marketing

Article marketing has long since been regarded as the golden egg or the holy grail of SEO.

There are two sides to article marketing. The idea is that you write a 350 to 500 word article about topics related to your website and post them to all of the top article directories.

People read your article and are then motivated to go to your website to find out more. The beauty of these articles is that other webmaster or blog owners are encouraged to take your article and post it onto their website which will then get more people to see it and in turn visit your website.

You also get the benefit of another back-link to your main site (or, as you now know a deep link )

Article marketing used to be far more effective than it is now in my opinion.

The problem is that there is now software that will trawl the internet, find articles related to a keyword that they enter and the software posts these articles onto blogs or websites automatically. They do this to try and get better rankings for their site.

The search engines are wise to this and, in my experience, these auto posted blog sites rarely rank well for anything anymore.

Writing a number of unique articles and submitting a different one to each of the article directories gives you a better chance of getting back links that will stand and be counted.

Also, if there is automated software harvesting your articles then they might well have several of them on their site giving you a higher % chance of them getting read.

Forum Participation

A time consuming but effective linking strategy is to join and participate in forums. A lot of these forums have high page rank.

When you register you can also add a signature to your profile, which will be added to every post that you make.

You then go onto the forums and join in with the various conversations, contributing to the community. Every time you add a post everyone gets to see your signature and can click through to your site.

You will, of course, get a valuable back link too.

Some people have been known to set up two or three accounts and start conversations asking questions like, “I need a new sunroof for my Porsche anyone got any ideas as I love my car and want the best.” Then they logon using another profile and answer “I used www.davescarpartsandaccessories.com they do nice sunroofs and were value too”!

Blog Commenting

Search out other blogs related to your topic and read the posts. At the end there is normally a place where you can add a comment.

You then add your name and website address. If you use your company name or keyword in the name box then you get a link back to your website with your keyword as the anchor text.

Due to the problem with spam a lot of people now add a nofollow tag to their blogs. This is not good for your link building strategy and is therefore less effective than having your own blogs.

Terminology

Black Hat
These are techniques that the search engines regard as ‘cheating’ the system and should be avoided if you value your domain name.

White Hat
These are strategies that the search engines are happy for us to use to show them what our site is all about.

Grey Hat
Grey hat is in between white and black.

Spider or Bot

A spider or Bot is the name used for the programs that trawl the internet deciphering and indexing all the billions of pages on the internet 24/7

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is the term used to describe the techniques used to improve the placement of a website on the results pages.

SERPS

Search engine results pages.

On-Page Optimisation

This is the what is referred to as work carried out on the website to improve the rankings

Off-Page Optimization

This relates to the optimisation methods used that do not involve editing the actual website.

Deep links

This is when you link to a page other than the home page on a website.

Anchor text

This is the text used to describe a hyperlink to a website. In the following example you would only see the words “Model Railways are great” When you click on it then you would go to “www.mywebsite.com”
“<a href=”http://www.mywebsite.com”>Model Railways are great</a>

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail key refers to multiple words or phrase. An example would be “where to buy a ford sunroof”

Short Tail
This refers to a short keyword phrase. An example is “ford sunroof”

Keyword

A keyword in linguistic terms is a word that occurs more often than would be considered to be chance. The search engines use these keywords as identifiers to establish essence of a topic for an article, page or website.

Link Juice

This term is used to describe the power that is given to a particular link from one website to another.

Google PR

Page rank is the rating that google gives to a website and it’s pages based on a number of factors. PR goes from 0 to 10. The higher the PR the more relevant and valuable to the internet the site is deemed to be,

Adsense

Adsense is the model that allows website owners to show ‘google adwords’ on their website for a share in the revenue.

Adwords

Adwords is the pay per click model that google uses. The adverts listed down the right hand side and, sometimes at the top of the page are adwords adverts. People create adverts that are displayed based on the keywords that are typed into the search engine. Advertisers pay only when someone clicks on them