There is a flip-side to on-page optimization and it accounts for at least 50% of all the factors that will get your site to rank in search results. I’m talking about what is known as “off-page†optimization. Some people simply call it “backlink generationâ€.
Let’s look at what is involved.
[emember_protected for=4-5]
- Quality Backlinks – Probably the biggest business in the online marketing world is the sales of backlinks. There is no question that Google values backlinks highly, but do you think it considers all backlinks to be equally valuable? Do you think it would it rank a backlink from, say, the White House, a bit higher than from your cousin Joe? Do you think it would it be more impressed by 10,000 profile links on dozens of nameless “social sites†or by a mere handful of contextual links on the Washington Post site? Always do your best to put your links on quality sites (e.g. via comments, profiles or posts – or by mutual agreement with the webmaster, which is obviously the most difficult to obtain).
- Reciprocal Links – Here we’re in the “on-page†SEO with one foot and “off-page†with the other. You can exchange links with other sites (as long as they’re good quality links, i.e. not buried somewhere on their site without any context on a page filled with other meaningless links). While these types of links are sometimes worth less than one-way links (i.e. links where you do not reciprocate the love), it depends on who you’re trading with and how. If you can exchange highly visible links with a high-authority website, it’s going to be seen as very valuable by Google and your authority will grow as a result. Google uses a technique called “link-juice passing†which awards points depending on “who†sends the link to you.
- Unreciprocated Links – Here’s an On/Off-page hybrid. It is important to provide reference links to certain concepts on your pages which will establish a connection between you and high authority sites on the web. For example, when writing about, say, “indie musicâ€, you will do well to provide a link to, say, a Wikipedia article about that or a newspaper article, and so on. Ideally, choose NON-COMPETITIVE authority sites (i.e. very popular and highly respected) and also get your links to open in new pages/tabs (using the “_blank†tag in HTML or by clicking “open in a new window†in WordPress).
Off-page SEO is critically important to your success because Google (and other engines) see those as a “popular endorsement†of your site. If other sites point to yours, you must have something they like.
But beware: FAKE links, or FORCED links (i.e. links which are placed on “link farms†or on low-quality sites) can actually COST you CREDIBILITY with Google.
So, if you have 10,000 backlinks from just 2 or 3 cheap domains all pointing to your site using one or two highly prized keywords, rather than ranking you higher Google will actually demote your site – and MAY even “sandbox†it, i.e. remove it from its results entirely!
It is BETTER to have 10 genuine backlinks from good sites than a million from trashy ones!
For more information please refer to the Site Optimization Guide.
[/emember_protected]
 |
 |
 |
| Book 3 – Chapter 12On-Page SEO |
Course Overview | Book 3 – Chapter 14Extended Setup |
Book 3: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, Overview
Bonuses: templ, lib, tips, kwds, models Link Res: aff, class, cpa, cpv, cpc, write, mob, outs, rss, soc, traff, var, exch, srcs, vid Sub-courses: sens adw, aff, ar, bkm, cpy, cp, fb, fun, goo, lst, loc, mem, opt paid, ppal, sbox, prod, seo, opt, socn, vidm, host, wp, lnch
