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"Off-Page Optimization" by Dipen (Part 1)”


        As I mentioned in the previous articles, there are essentially two parts to any SEO effort: on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Off-page optimization is even more powerful than on-page optimization when it comes to increasing your search engine results on Google. In my experience, about 85 percent of your results are directly correlated to off-page optimization.
        In fact, after years of consulting for large companies, I’ve proven that it’s possible to achieve positive results without actually applying on-page optimization if using off-page techniques properly. However, going down the path of skipping on-page optimization is a difficult one. Achieving the results you want will take much longer and require a lot more work. Always begin
your search engine optimization with on-page optimization to expedite results.
        Now that we’ve discussed the importance of starting with on-page optimization, it’s time to focus on the next step of any effective SEO campaign—off-page optimization.

What Is Off-Page Optimization?
        In its simplest form, off-page optimization can be referred to as increasing a website’s popularity. This popularity is defined by the number and types of websites that link to a given website or URL. I also like to think of off-page optimization as what you do on the Internet, not directly on your website, to improve search engine result placements.
       The best part of off-page optimization is that there are a handful of proven techniques you can start using today to improve your SERPs on the world’s largest search engine.
        Off-page optimization is the most important SEO strategy for those seeking number one placement on Google. The fastest and most effective way to achieve this goal is by developing quality links to your website. When I refer to “quality,” I’m referring to links from sites that:
  • • Have an equivalent or higher Google PR than your site
  • • Include similar content to your web page
  • • Use related meta tags
  • • Come from diverse sources
  • • Have a large number of quality sites linking to them!
        Even more important than the what (quality websites) is the how. Specifically, how these quality websites link to you is an essential key to Google dominance.

Did you know?
       Your success on Google is DIRECTLY correlated to off-page optimization—the types of websites that link to you and how they are linking to you.
This is the biggest secret to Google dominance. Using this “secret” has changed my failure into success. Let me give you some visuals to reinforce the point.
       Let’s take a quick look at the websites linking in. This will give us a better understanding as to why a website is ranked in the first position. Anyone can do this by typing the following into the Google search box—you’ve gotta love Google!
Link: www.yoursitehere.com
      Be sure to replace “yoursitehere” with your website or the URL of the website you’re researching and press enter. There are a variety of ways to get a more complete listing of inbound links to a particular website or page, such as Yahoo! Site Explorer and other tools, but for the time being, let’s rely on the data that Google provides.
      Below you’ll see a listing of all the sites Google has identified as linking into my website page adsense.
      In the upper left-hand corner you’ll notice the number of inbound links but more importantly, beyond those from my own site, they are quality links from high Google PR sites.
       According to this result, Google tells me there are 265 links pointing into this page on adsense. Gee, I wonder how this compares to the number two ranked website for the keyword phrase “marketing article.” Let’s take a look at the results:
        There are 9,370 links pointing in. How could this be? One would assume that more is better right? Not so. As I mentioned previously, it’s not about link quantity. Rather, your rankings have more to do with link quality than anything else. This site has more than nine thousand links compared to my 265 but they are mostly internal links and from sites of poor quality. Strive to attract
links from well established, authoritative, third party websites if you want to improve your ranking.
         I know the screenshot here is small, but if you look at the first result, you’ll notice that the title has something to do with Forex Trading. This certainly isn’t relevant, and quite honestly may be seen as somewhat spammy by Google. Additionally, take a closer look at the link itself. This isn’t a third-party link but rather an internal link from the same website. Taking it a step further, most of the links pointing to this page are of poor quality and aren’t passing the necessary authority back to the primary page. Said another
way, the inbound links are pretty worthless.
         Now, let’s take a look at our third example, jokes-d.blogspot.com. Logic would dictate that the owner of this blog would have fewer sites linking in than the first site, fewer than the second site, and so on. With that in mind, let’s take a look.
       More than six thousand sites are linking into this website. Similar to our last example, many of the links are internal (using other link evaluation tools we’d be able to filter these from the results). Additionally, many of the sites linking in are either not of very good quality or are not referring to marketing articles in their link text.
       If all of the sites linking in use link text that says something like click here versus marketing article, their search engine value to Google is extremely low for the search term marketing article. This is why I stress the importance of how external links are designed when pointing to your website. They must contain your keywords when possible.
       Furthermore, it’s possible that many of these sites have a Google PR of 0. To find out for sure, you’ll need to use an online SEO tool or software program . Again, it all comes down to link quality, which is a function of Google PR, content alignment, sites linking into the linking site, and link text.
       Achieving top rankings for your website is based on a combination of on-page factors, the quality of inbound links, link authority, and text.

Link Types
        Before going any further, let me explain the various link types. There are really only three types of links you need to know about:
  • • One-way links. These are links from a website that is not your own. Also referred to as third-party websites, these sites place a link from one or more of their web pages to your website. Google values one-way links above all else. One-way links are incredibly powerful (if they’re quality links) because you are receiving a vote from an independent third party.
  • • Reciprocal links. When you exchange links with another website, commonly referred to as swapping links, you’re providing a link to their site (from your own) in exchange for a link from their website to yours. Reciprocal links are valuable, but not as valuable as one-way links.
  • • Three-way links. Three-way linking is when you partner with another website (site B) and provide a link from your site (site A) to their site. In turn, they provide a link from another site they own (site C) back to your site. It looks something like this:
       This form of link building is ideal because it results in a one-way link from a third-party website. From Which Sites Should You Be Getting Links?
Now that you know the importance of links, the first question you must ask is where you should be getting links from. There are a variety of strategies to apply here.
       The most effective way to identify the “right” sites to get links from should be based on who is linking to your competition, which is defined by who outranks you on Google for your identified search term. This is a very important strategy and one that is frequently overlooked. You should be evaluating who links to the number one search result in Google for the keywords or keyword phrases you’re optimizing for and try to acquire links from the same websites.

Did you know?
        If you get the same sites to link to your site in the right way, and you’ve optimized your site properly, in time you will outrank your competition on Google for the same given keyword phrase. Many methods help you determine which sites are linking to the number one result in Google for the keyword phrase you’re targeting. Begin by identifying which site is in the first position for your search term. You can do this by visiting Google and typing in your search term. Record the URL of the number one search result. Once you’ve identified this site, do one of the following:
  • • Google search. Go to Google.com and type in the following: Link: www.nameoftoprankedcompetitor.com and press the return key. Then, replace the phrase, “nameoftoprankedcompetitor.com” with the name of the site you’ve identified as having the number one position on Google for your search term.
       The result will be a series of sites linking to your competitor. The only downside to this method is that you won’t know which sites are more important than others (e.g., the number of links linking into those sites, Google PR, keyword content on pages, etc.), but it will certainly identify the sites you need to target for link-building purposes.
  • • Alexa. Go to http://www.Alexa.com and type in the name of the site you’re researching. Alexa.com is a tool used to measure the popularity of sites based on the browsing activity of those who have downloaded the Alexa toolbar. Because not everyone uses the Alexa toolbar, the information is only directionally correct but provides a reasonable starting point as well as additional websites you can target with your link-building campaign. Once you get the resultant websites, you’ll see a number of options listed for each one. To the right of your competitor’s website thumbnail image, click Sites Linking In. This option returns a list of sites that Alexa has identified as linking into the site you’re researching. Use this list to target sites for link building.
  • • Online SEO tools. I have found that using online marketing tools to automatically generate a list of sites linking into your competitor’s website, as well as link details such as Google PR, link text, page title, and so on, can be the most effective way to generate a list of targeted sites for your link-development efforts. I’ve personally bought and used about a dozen different products to help me keep an eye on my competition and, more importantly build an effective linking campaign. I regularly use SEO software because in less than thirty seconds, I know exactly which sites are linking to the number one positioned website for my target phrase and receive information that helps me prioritize my efforts like the Page Rank of each inbound link and domain age. You can learn more about the software packages I use at seo-d.blogspot.com but keep in mind that using online SEO tools aren’t always necessary. You can often accomplish the same outcome without purchasing SEO software. However, these tools save you a significant amount of effort, reducing the time required for acquiring in-depth link-building information. You can use whatever SEO or link analysis software you want as long as it provides you a list of sites linking into your competitors and a way to prioritize that list. If you start to develop links from the highest quality sites first, your climb to the number one spot on Google will happen that much faster.
  • • Identify authority websites. Authority websites are those sites linking to three or more of your competitors. If you don’t have a SEO tool at your disposal, you can accomplish this manually using the following method:
  • 1. Search for competitive sites by visiting Google and searching for your most important search term.
  • 2. Create a spreadsheet of the top one hundred sites “linking in” to each of your top five competitors (Microsoft Excel is a good tool for this).
  • 3. Sort alphabetically.
  • 4. While looking at the list see if any of the website URLs are duplicated across your list or use the “find” function. If the site appears two or more times, highlight it.
  • 5. Once you’ve developed your list of authoritative sites, visit each one to determine how your competitors are listed and how you can acquire a link to your website.
       Model the strategy your competitors have used. If these sites are directories, look for a directory submission form. If the links are from articles that your competitors submitted, submit your own. If all you can locate is an e-mail, ask the webmaster to include a link to your site. You may also suggest a link exchange if the opportunity arises.
       If the website is already linking to your competition, they are a prime target for a link exchange or for adding your link because they see value in linking to sites covering similar subject matter. The fastest way to achieve top rankings is to try to get links from the same sites that are linking to the number one, two, and three top search results for your desired keyword. You won’t be able to get links from all of them and, in fact, may only be able to get a
few, but each inbound link can benefit you.
      After applying the competitive link strategy, the next step is to build quality inbound links to your website through a variety of ways that we’ll be covering in the next few sections of this guide. Before I reveal the most effective link acquisition strategies, you must first understand the proper way to format an inbound link for maximum results.

How to Link
        Now that you know how to find the sites you want to receive links from, you need to learn the proper way to develop a Googlefriendly link. Google-friendly links are links that improve the search engine results of a given website. This is one of the ways that I’ve been able to get much better rankings for my web pages even though I may have fewer links pointing to my site compared to competitors.
        I always cover the formatting aspect of linking in detail because your links are virtually worthless if they’re not displayed correctly on other websites. Let’s begin with the anatomy of a link; for example, let’s take a look at http://www.webcreation-d.blogspot.com.
        As a web browser, you would likely look at this link, know it was a link, and click on it if relevant to your search. This common application of link design is pervasive throughout the web and used consistently (blue and underlined). Another way to present the same link is with alternate link text. For example: Website Creation Expert 
      Link text can also be referred to as anchor text and is essential for Google optimization. Embedded behind the link text is an active URL. In the example above, if you were on a web page and positioned your mouse over the Marketing Expert link, you’d see the URL of http://www.webcreation-d.blogspot.com embedded within. It is recommended to use link text instead of your URL text whenever possible.
      The question I often get is, “If you’re trying to get links to your website from other sites, why wouldn’t you want them to simply place the URL of your website on their website?” There are a number of important answers to this question.
  • 1. Your search result placement on Google is DIRECTLY correlated to the quality of the links pointing to your site and their link text.
  • 2. A link that says http://www.yourcompanyname.com doesn’t tell users anything about your website or why they should visit your website unless you’re a well-known brand. How can you expect to drive traffic if no one knows about or has ever heard of your website? Even if your URL is somewhat descriptive, you’re better off with informative link text that includes your keywords.
Note: If all you did was develop a link-building campaign and asked third-party websites to place your URL on their sites (example: www.webcreation-d.blogspot.com), you would improve your Google ranking for your website name only (example: webcreation) and nothing else. Remember, you’re not trying to rank well for your own URL, you’re trying to rank well for a given keyword phrase.
       To rank on top for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, you want third-party websites to place your link with the proper anchor text on their website. Your anchor text should include your keyword phrase (example:webcreation).
      When users search Google for the keyword phrase “ webcreation” as noted in the example above, it’s my website that shows up in the search engine results list because Google finds many links pointing to my website that say marketing expert.
      This is because I’ve used anchor text, which included my keyword phrase, to build lots of quality inbound links to my site. One thing to keep in mind is that you may want to vary your link text from time to time so Google doesn’t think you’re up to any funny business. Although it’s not essential, adding some variety is good for all involved—browsers, webmasters, and website users.
      One way to do this is to use multiple keyword phrases in your link text.
Using an example from the section on keyword research and title tags, you can vary your link text by using more than one keyword phrase. For example, in addition to including women’s tennis shoes, we can add another keyword phrase like Nike tennis shoes and separate with a post (example: Womens Tennis Shoes | Nike Tennis Shoes). The post is usually found on your keyboard over the enter key. The result is that each time you get your link placed on a third-party website, you’re actually optimizing for two keyword phrases instead of one! The HTML code you can use to get this effect, if you’re not using a WISYWIG editor, is as follows:
<a href=“http://www.yoursitename.com” title=“womens tennis shoes” target=“_blank” rel=“dofollow”>Womens Tennis Shoes | Nike Tennis Shoes</a>
      As always, be sure to replace http://www.yoursitename.com with your own website URL and obviously use the appropriate title including your keyword phrase. I also like my links to open in a separate window (a.k.a. target= “_blank”) and be marked as “dofollow”. This tells search engine spiders to follow the link back to my site. When engaging in reciprocal link
exchanges, three-way link exchanges, or if simply requesting a link from a site, provide them with the link formatting noted above.
      Make sure that every time a website links to you they are using the specific linking format (using anchor text that includes your keyword[s] or keyword phrase[s]). I can’t tell you how many times possible link partners have asked me for a link exchange and submitted their link to me in the traditional link format, example http://www.sitename.com.
     Even though these potential link partners are on the right track in terms of developing inbound links to their website, they’ll never achieve Google dominance because they aren’t asking me to place their link using their desired keywords as the link text. Applying the proper link formatting to your inbound links is vital to the success of your search engine optimization efforts.


This post first appeared on SEO—Search Engine Optimization Tips By Dipen, please read the originial post: here

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"Off-Page Optimization" by Dipen (Part 1)”

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