If you read our “On-page Optimization Checklist” last week, then you know several ways to improve the SEO performance of your website by optimizing the content on your site, but on-page (or on-site) optimization is only half of the battle; off-site optimization is critical for achieving strong visibility within the major search engines.  

Off-page optimization techniques focus on improving a site’s online credibility against the major engines. External link credibility is the primary algorithm factor that influences major search engine rankings. The more quality links you have pointing to your site, the higher your site will rank on the SERP (search engine results page). The following off-page optimization techniques will help you increase the number of backlinks to your site; therefore, improving the overall performance of your website.

What is Link Building?

Link building is a broad term used to describe the different things you can do to increase the number of links back to your website. It is an important optimization technique because a high number of quality external links pointing to your site will boost your rankings. One way to increase the number of links pointing to your site is to exchange links with other websites. This is called reciprocal linking and is not as high-quality as one-way linking, but can still be effective. The best way to link build is to create valuable, unique website content that naturally attracts links. You want to create resourceful, relevant content that readers will want to link to.

Link Building through Competitive Backlink Analysis

Spend some time researching your top-ranking competitors’ backlinks. By gaining this competitive insight, you can reach out to these potential link targets and request that they link to your site as well. Backlink analysis can also provide you with additional information about your competitors such as links that they are getting from trade shows or events they are sponsoring or colleges that they may be recruiting at for potential employees. You may want to consider these options in the future to be a part of your link building campaign. There are several tools available that you can use to perform backlink analysis including Link Insight and Open Site Explorer.

Link Refinement

The anchor text of external links should be relevant to your targeted keyword phrase. For example, if another website is linking back to your blog on social media optimization, make sure the anchor text is “social media optimization.” (Example below)

WRONG: “For more information on social media optimization, click here.

RIGHT: “For more information, read our blog post on social media optimization. 

This will tell search engines what your page is about according to other sources and not just you. Use Google webmaster tools to determine what sites are linking to yours. You can also type “link:(your URL)” into the Google search box to get a sample-sized list of these sites as well. Reach out to other websites that are linking to your site and ask them to hyperlink your targeted keyword if they are not already.

Social Media

Posting on social networks is one of the fastest ways to build backlinks to your site. In the past, social networking links have not affected PageRank because of their nofolllow attribute; however, they will still increase site traffic and may indirectly build inbound links in the long run. Recently, there have been several discussions in the SEO community around Google adding social networking links to the algorithm, which would affect rankings, but this has not been confirmed yet by Google.

Web Directory Submissions

You can submit your site to several free or paid web directories. Use your best judgment to choose which ones are better quality than others because some of them have been devalued by search engines. If you need help finding a directory, then contact our team and ask for information on Verndale’s directory research services.

Paid Links

You should be aware of paid links as it is not a recommended off-page optimization technique. Google will penalize your site if you pay for inbound links that pass PageRank and will place a penalty on your site, limiting or even omitting it from their index if their spam team detects it. Business Owner, Ryan Abood learned this the hard way when his website was banished from the Google search results page because of paid links his company had purchased.

Blogs

Blogs are beneficial if they are actively managed because search engines love fresh content. If a search engine identifies that you post fresh content regularly, then they are going to crawl it more often. It’s also important to keep fresh content on the blog so that visitors can comment on and link to it from their own active sites.

External blog commenting can also be a great way to send traffic to your website. If you comment on a blog with relevant content to your site and provide a useful link to your website, this can help drive qualified traffic, which increases exposure and the likelihood of garnering more external links. Guest writing on already established blogs has recently become popular as well.

Press Releases

Distribute your press releases through a news distribution service such as PRWeb to extend your reach. PRWeb also offers an SEO product that lets you utilize anchor text on links within the press release, which is a huge SEO value-add because they become keyword-centric links from an external source. Make sure to link back to your site in your press releases. If your clients are releasing press releases that may relate to your company, then request that they link back to your site as well. Make sure to also post press releases on your website as timely fresh content can rank in search engine news results.

Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is a great way to drive traffic to your site. You can create a free account and then use it to answer questions that are related to your website content. Yahoo Answers offers the ability to provide a link in your response, which you can use to reference your site. It is a perfect way to drive quality traffic to your website that is more than likely going to be interested in your content and subscribing to your RSS feeds.

Integrating Offline with Online Marketing

Anything your company participates in offline (meetings, events, sponsorships) is an opportunity to promote online through your own website or asking your partners to link to your site. Also, offline marketing is known to influence search behavior so integrating the offline efforts with your Search and Online Marketing Strategy is essential to ensuring your audience finds you when they search for you online. Make sure to include links on any business cards, marketing collateral, etc. so that other businesses can link back to your site.

In Conclusion

Off-page optimization techniques will help increase keyword relevancy for your site, which will improve your rankings. Don’t expect immediate results – SEO takes time so it may take 1-3 months before you see your rankings improve. And of course, remember to stay away from black hat spamming techniques such as hidden inbound links, paid links or link farms, which are sites with 100+ links per page. These tactics may cause your site to be penalized. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our SEO professionals.