Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves both on-site and
off-site strategies. These strategies involve several procedures geared
towards building backlinks which is critical to you ranking highly in
the search engines. However for this article I will be looking at off-site optimization strategies.
As the name suggests, off-site optimization is employing procedures off
your website itself that relates to how the site is linked to external
pages. A link that points back to your site is known as a backlink.
Some procedures of off-site optimization include the following:
Post your site on web directories
Submission of sites to web directories is an old off-site SEO
strategy geared at obtaining more backlinks. Submissions have to be done
manually and based on my own experience it’s a tedious and time
consuming job so, if you can outsource this function I suggest you do
so. With all the recent updates by Google to their algorithms this
optimization strategy has lost some of its importance. But it’s still
considered a good method of improving your page rank. You should bear in
mind though that you need to post only to high ranking and reputable
directories. Be careful of less popular and possibly blacklisted sites,
they can actually hurt your business.
Video Marketing
Creating videos about your business and or products and then posting
them on video sites is a great way to help with your off-site
optimization strategies. You should then embed the code on your own
site. Video sites like Youtube are seen as an authority site and will
provide you with high quality backlinks. Another advantage from this
optimization strategy is getting even more traffic if your video becomes
popular.
Social Media: Facebook
Did you know that the Social Media can be a form of Off-site SEO? Bet
you didn’t. Links from Facebook won’t carry much weight where Google is
concerned but with proper use of Facebook you can attract tons of
visitors to your websites. You can do this by creating Facebook
Fanpages, Groups, and Events.
Don’t waste your time on reciprocal linking
Reciprocal linking is basically you linking to someone’s site and
then having them link back to yours. It’s actually an old SEO strategy
of trading backlinks which is seen to be ineffective these days as it’s
rather time consuming and doesn’t produce the desired results. So it’s
not recommended as it can actually do more harm than good to your
off-site optimization strategies. What you want to do instead is
concentrate your energies on getting links from relevant sources where
you can chase the links.
Perfecting your techniques
You need to stay on top of your SEO game to get the most from your
off-site optimization strategies. How do you do this? By always, always,
questioning yourself and your methods. You should test different
methods and try new things. If there’s something you can’t figure out
take the time to do some research and learn all you can about the area.
That’s one of the purposes of the internet, to teach you.
Off-site optimization strategies are extremely important and
shouldn’t be underestimated. It takes constant vigilance to be
successful at your optimization strategies and the results you desire
won’t come overnight. But if done right, you will get that high page
ranking and the traffic will come, making a huge difference to your
pocket. For easy an SEO guide containing more off-site optimization strategies click this link