SEO & Linking
Off-Site SEO refers to search engine optimization techniques that are not performed on your own website or page, and are therefore termed "off-site."
The biggest part of off-site SEO is link-building, or having relevant and quality links that link back to your website. This is to assist the search engines in establishing relevance. You can think of each backlink as a vote for your page, either for its relevance or its quality, or both. Google also likes outgoing links to relevant sites. This is what Google's PageRank measures, albeit in a complex way, taking many other factors into consideration. Think of it as a giant web, with quality links going back and forth between sites that have something to do with each other.
There are many ways to get backlinks and most of these methods take a lot of time, hence the cost of SEO!
- Creating quality content
- Doing link exchanges with other webmaster
- Submitting your website to directories
- Writing and syndicating articles
- Posting to forums and blogs
- Buying links
- Building social media sites, such as FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace
One-way links into your website from another are of greater value than reciprocal links from carrying out link exchanges. Links to your pages should use the relevant keywords in the anchor text. You'll get better results and it looks more natural to the search engines. It's generally best to avoid organized link exchanges, buying links, or link farms. Search engines see it as manipulation of the SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) and may take your website completely out of the search engine rankings.
Don't underestimate how important off-site SEO is - it is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Good backlinks with targeted keywords in the anchor text carry an increasing amount of weight in the search engine spiders.