On and Off Page Components of
Search Engine Optimization

Off Page Components

Off page components primarily refer to building links or link popularity.  Link popularity is a score that adds up the total number of links you have pointed to your site over various search engines.  Marketleap offers a free link popularity tool.  Search engines heavily weigh how many links there are pointing to your site.  You can view a link as a vote; however, all links or votes aren't equal.  The more votes or links you have the better.  Evaluating a links importance is quite complex and is determined on various factors.  Some of which include content relation, PageRank® and page traffic.

Content Relation - The most valuable link you can get is a link that is on your competitor’s home page, but this isn't feasible as your competitor isn't going to promote your business.  In theory, though any company that operates and or targets the same customers and prospects are very valuable. 

PageRank® - PageRank® is a number between 0 and 10 that Google assigns to every web page in its index.  This number is calculated on the Google Toolbar and can be downloaded by clicking on the icon below.

Getting a link from a PR8 webpage holds more value than PR5 webpage.  Determining a links value solely on PageRank® is unwise as there are lots of PR0 pages that might have lots of targeted traffic.  We recommend that if the company targets the same prospects and customers then a link from them is good regardless of the pages PageRank®.

Page Traffic - Page traffic refers to how many potential buyers may come across a page on the web that you want to target.  For example, our buyers visit the industry website TSNN so having a link on this site is of valuable consideration based of the traffic alone.

So how do you get links? 

You can acquire links in four primary ways and they include DMOZ and other directories, reciprocal linking, purchasing links and content donations.

DMOZ - DMOZ is called the Open Directory Project and it is maintained by over 60,000 volunteer editors.  Obtaining a link is this directory is valuable, but it can take as long as a year to get.  The primary reason for this is that quality editors are in short supply and they are volunteers so it may not be their primary focus.  There are lots of categories within the directory that do not have editors so many sites submissions go unlooked until an available editor within the broad category that it falls under has the time to review the submissions.  In addition, DMOZ powers Google's directory as well as other sites who use data feeds from DMOZ.  There are other directories, but none that hold as much weight as DMOZ.

Reciprocal Links - These are links that have been traded between websites and is similar to what happens in the non-internet marketing world.  We all have companies that we refer our customers to when we don't have what they want or services we don't offer.  On the Internet you aren't there to communicate with the customer person to person so your website must do this for you.  In most cases the easiest way to trade links is to setup some type of directory and promote it on your site.  An example of this is we have a link partners page who of which have content on their site that is relevant to our page.  We've developed various categories of products or services related to our industry which is the easiest part.  Contacting and setting up links is harder as this is an ongoing process that never ends.  There are many places to learn about other websites who actively exchange links; these are three that we recommend, Linkalizer , Link Partners. And Linkmetro

Purchasing Links - You can purchase links in various directories like the Yahoo Directory.  Other websites sell advertising, not necessarily links, but be forewarned, buying links to increase rankings in unwise and in most cases isn't all the helpful.  Having 1000's of links from the same site may increase your PageRank® value with Google, but not your actual ranking.  Many theorize that for every additional link you have from a site the lower its value.  The first link holds the most value where every additional link holds almost no value when it comes to increasing your ranking.

Content Donations - By providing valuable content and your expertise you can obtain high quality links.  You can publish press releases and articles on your website that can be openly used by other web owners as long as the other website provides a link to your site.  This should be noted on each article.  A great example of content donation is this article itself.  There are serveral links in this article to different companies and all of them with benefit from these links. Like Darren Finch - Fair Target book, great read by the way.

Anchor / Linking Text - One of the most often overlooked aspects of a good linking campaign is the text associated with the link.  Every link in this article is associated with a particular keyword.  This text will be what your site ranks well for and are based on your keyword research.  If the link says internet marketing the website it's associated with will rank better for the keyword internet marketing.  Many links are just the company name and some are just keywords.  We find that a combination of both works the best as your targeting keywords and branding your company at the same time.

Links are lots of work and are ongoing and are absolutely necessary for good rankings.  There are lots of ways that other websites will try to deceive you out of a link.  There are Meta Tags that exclude search engines from indexing pages and some sites that use special programming so the link can be seen by you, but not by the search engine. If you stick to setting up links with related sites and use anchor or linking text that are your targeted keywords your linking campaign will be a success regardless of your actual rankings in the search engines.  In the end if you don't achieve the rankings you desire you can always opt for Pay-Per-Click advertising or contract with a Search Engine Optimization company to take over these responsibilities.  In addition, depending on your industry it may take setting up 50 or even 5000 links to get your desired ranking. This alone may cause you not to proceed with Search Engine Optimization .

Let’s now move on to optimizing your site for search engines, our next discussion is going to be about Boost ranking in search engines by over 400 positions for any single page