A simple guide to off site search engine optimisation or ‘off site seo’. How search engines measure the quality of links to your site and some tips on how to get quality inbound links.
So, in the last article we looked at the measures you can take within your site in order to optimise the pages, otherwise known as On Site SEO. Now we’ll look at what happens when external sites link to yours and how this effects your search position. This is what’s commonly known as Off Site SEO.
By its very nature, good Off Site SEO is more difficult to achieve because, to a certain extent, you are relying upon sites you have little control over to link to you and in a way which positively effects your search performance.
External Links
One of the most important factors in determining the relevance of your web site for a given keyword or phrase is the number, authority and relevance of external sites linking to it. In simple terms, the more of these you have then the higher your site will be returned in search results. Of course, it’s never quite so simple and for this reason it’s worth looking at these factors in more detail.
Number of links – in the early days of search engines the number of external links your site had then the better it would perform. The simple logic was that external site owners would only link to other sites they thought were of reasonable quality and relevance and so the higher the number then the better your site must be.
Eventually people started to manipulate this and just got as many links as they could – with little regard to where they came from. Nowadays it’s not quite so simple, which is where authority and relevance comes in to play.
Authority – not all sites are equal and some have a lot more authority than others. Every page on the web has a page rank and this is determined on a number of factors. Firstly there is what is known as ‘Toolbar Page Rank’ which is publicly viewable in the form of a green bar scale which rates sites from 0 to 10. This works, more or less, on a measure of the number of links to your site and the page rank of those sites. This is a broad-brush indication of a given sites authority and not to be taken too seriously.
Actual page rank is more complex and not publicly viewable. This is the rating that search engines assign to your site for any given search term and is very complex; and, in the most part, highly secret. Anyone who claims to know the workings of this is likely to be guessing or passing on hear-say. It is acknowledged, however, that trust, authority and relevance play a big part in actual page rank and these are areas you should concentrate upon.
Generally speaking, a link from a trusted, authoritative site is worth many times what a link from a low ranking, unknown site will be.
Relevance – another factor to consider with external links is their relevance to your site and chosen key phrases. For a child or baby themed site a link from a site relevant to babies and children will be much more valuable than one from a totally unrelated site.
Anchor Text
Just as we discussed previously with On-Site links about the importance of anchor text in links then it is just as important with external links. The problem here is that you are often at the mercy of other webmaster as to how they format their links. However, there are few steps you can take to help them out:
If you have asked another site for a link then give them an example of anchor text to use – they don’t always pay heed but it’s still worth asking nonetheless.
Format your URL’s in search friendly manner so even if another site just uses the URL to link to you then it should have some useful anchor text included. For example: mybabysite/disposable-nappies.htm at least contains the text relevant to the page.
Getting Links
One of the most difficult aspects of running a site is getting other websites to link to you. There are measures you can take however and, often, once you get a certain number of links then the process becomes a lot easier.
- Add useful content to your site that people will naturally link to
- Contact other relevant sites and ask if they would consider exchanging links
- Offer content to other sites in return for a link to your site – this could be in the form of an article or an offer of expert advice
- Submit articles to Ezine Articles , a respected article site and if you provide good quality content it can attract links in its own right. Eventually the benefit will trickle down to your site.
- Try to write really good and useful information – don’t just spin content over and over again.Be patient – it can take a while to be noticed so don’t get disheartened. The longer you keep plugging away and adding content to your site then the more chance that you’ll be noticed.
- Don’t reply to emails or forum posts offering to get you links – often these will be very low quality and virtually useless. There are countless examples of sites with 1,000’s of links which come lower in results than those with just a few quality on theme links
- Directory links are OK in moderation, just don’t overdo it – you have to start somewhere and a handful of directory links might just get the ball rolling.
Hopefully you will now have a basic understanding of how external sites can affect your standing in the search results. You should also have discovered a few ideas on how to get these links and where best to concentrate your efforts.
