Last week I covered the importance of optimizing your title, meta description and H1 tags on your website, also called on-site optimization. This week I’ll be explaining the basics of off-site search engine optimization.
Step 4: Off-site Optimization
We’ve come to probably the most important aspect of your website search engine optimization campaign, off-site optimization. This is where the majority of any search engine optimizer will spend their time. While on-site optimization is done at the front-end of an SEO campaign the off-site optimization is what is keeping you moving up the ranks. Referring to our swimming upstream analogy before, the off-site optimization is the paddling keeping you moving forward. On-site optimization would be getting you in the boat and casting off.
While the off-site optimization can be the most difficult and tricky part of the search engine optimization campaign, I will help you through some of the most common issues.
Link Exchanges.
Most people think that a link exchange (where I put a link on my website to yours and you put a link on your website to mine) are great things. I’m getting a link to mine and helping someone else. They can be helpful especially if you’re getting a link from a well respected site (ex: technorati.com). However if both sites have a low page rank this can actually hurt as your links will “bleed page-rank”, basically meaning that you are passing page-rank from your site to someone else and canceling out the effect. What you want to get are one-way incoming links to your website. These are much more effective as you are stating to Google “I am a good quality resource on this topic. Others have linked to me because of it.” The more one-way incoming links you can get to your site the better, however this leads us to the next topic.
Poor Quality Links.
If you have been researching how to generate links back to your website you may have seen links or ads directory submission services. While you can get a ton of back-links to your site quickly, they are generally of lower quality and Google won’t pay as much attention to them. If your link profile (the break down of links on your site) is skewed heavily towards the low quality sites it will take considerably more links to compete with someone who has a better link profile. For example a website with links from 0 and 1 page-rank sites can need 10-100 times more links than a site getting links from websites with a page-rank of 9 or 10. These 9 and 10 page-rank sites are extremely difficult to get links from as they tend to be universities, governments and large social networking sites like Facebook. I would suggest focusing your efforts on acquiring links from sites with a page-rank of 3 or better.
Bad Neighbors.
Having a website is like having a brick and mortar store, you want to make sure that your neighbors are quality people. This is a bit more difficult in the world of web as you don’t technically have a “neighbor”, however you want to make sure that if you are linking to another website that it is reputable. By reputable I am referring to sites that offer good quality content, are free from viruses and are not linking to other bad neighbors.
With all of the things not to do you are probably wondering “What is a good off-site search engine optimization strategy?” Asking any search engine optimizer and you’ll probably get as many answers as questions asked. However there are few things that all of us agree on.
Good Quality Back-links.
A good quality back-link can be priceless to a search engine campaign. Generally these high quality back-links require work on your end to foster a relationship with the website owner. These types of links can come from industry specific journals or blogs, distributors or educational resources. You generally cannot simply ask the website owner to link to you (unless you are a well known company), you will need to become an active member on their website. Show that you are an expert in a field and you may receive a link.
Write Good Content.
This goes without saying for anything you do online. Writing good quality content is always a great way to gain links to your website. If you have a blog (which would be on-site optimization) people may put a link to it naturally on their site as your information explains the subject exactly right. You can also solicit the industry websites you are active in and offer to be a guest contributor. These websites are usually looking for great content and having an experts view on it can give you a lot of exposure.
Be Social.
Social media and social networking is here to stay. Be sure that you fully utilize your online profiles. Be sure that what you are posting to these places is interesting and informative, not a sales pitch. Your social followers are much more fickle than the general website searcher as they are inviting you into their profile. Be respectful and don’t bombard them with posts. Unless your company has a lot of news, posting once a week or so would be ideal. You want to keep your users aware of your business but not get annoyed with you.
Press Releases and Articles.
Both press releases and articles have their place in a well rounded search engine optimization campaign. Each of them have their own specific rules which you can find on their websites. Generally articles are not viewed as important because of the huge amount of garbage articles that have been submitted over the years, however there are a few good article directories still available. Press releases are a great way to toot your own horn. You can describe your company, services and offerings all you want in them, just make sure it is newsworthy. Most press release services will charge a fee for submitting your release but for this fee your press release is getting submitted to actual news organizations such as the AP, large market newspapers and high profile bloggers.
So to recap, your off-site optimization should be done on a consistent basis. Gathering a ton of back-links at once and then never looking at it again will give you a short boost but you won’t maintain your rankings. Always write good content. The same idea applies to websites as when you were in school, if you are using someone’s information be sure to credit them, or rewrite it in your own words. Google is extremely efficient at tracking duplicate content. Be a good online neighbor and social friend. Link to people who you feel do a good job and you will tend to receive the same. As for social media don’t over post. You don’t want to be de-friended.
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