What You Need to Know About SEO (Off Page SEO – Part 2 of 3) Fueled Friday
Written on February 12, 2010 – 11:27 am | by oldschool
In last week’s Fueled Friday, I discussed the first of three critical factors in SEO; content, which is “king”. Today, I want to discuss the queen that turns the kings neck; off page SEO – otherwise knows as link building.
The content on your website lets the search engines know what your website is about. Left to itself, there is no way for the search engines to know what content is better than the next, so the search engines decided that a great way to determine which site is more valuable, is to measure the number of inbound links to a site.
The process of link building can be time consuming, especially for more competitive markets where your goal is to outrank well known brands. I will share some simple strategies for building links to your website. I will tell you in advance that in the cases of very competitive markets, you may require the services of a professional to get more powerful links to your site, but whatever you do on your own will be a step in the right directions.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the purpose of acquiring links is twofold. You do want to have solid inbound links for the purposes of improving your rankings, but you also want to have links for the purpose of sending qualified traffic to your website.
Before I share with you the several ways of acquiring links, I want to address a few related topics; PageRank, no-follow, and outbound links. If PageRank and no-follow don’t mean anything to you at this point, don’t worry – literally don’t worry about even finding out what they mean.
PageRank
PageRank is the measurement of a websites inbound link strength as determined by Google. I won’t get into the technical details, but I will say this. Don’t be overly impressed with or consumed by PageRank, but rather focus on solid metrics such as the number of website visitors you have and the keywords they use to find you.
No-Follow
This is a technical designation given to links as to whether or not they contribute to a websites PageRank. Again, do not worry about this, just worry about acquiring links. Why? Because good links bring visitors, whether or not they contribute to your websites PageRank and you never know which visitor will end up being a customer.
Outbound Links
Some people get confused in the link building process and start placing links on their sites to other more powerful websites thinking that these sites will then link to them automatically. The truth is that most sites won’t even know that your site links to them unless you send them lots of traffic. Having links to other sites helps those sites, but does nothing to help you build links. In fact, it dilutes your link value.
So where are some good places to acquire links? Here are some thoughts to help you get started:
1. Search Engine Directories. In general if you have to pay to be listed in a directory, the value of that link will be decent. Stay clear of free directories that also list sites in the “pills, porn, and poker” categories and you can actually lose credibility with the search engines by being associated with them.
2. Blog Comments. One of the simplest ways to get a link to your website, is to comment on other blogs. I wrote a blog post on getting links from blogs some time ago.
3. Guest Blogging. Another great way to get inbound links is by blogging on other blogs. This not only provides you with inbound links, but it also gets you in front of a new audience.
4. Plain Old Blogging. If you are a blogger, you can often leverage lots of links to your blog/website through Social Media channels such as Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Twitter.
5. Press Links. If you can get coverage in an online story with a link, that is a good thing. If you have trouble getting coverage, you can always issue an online press release which will have a similar effect.
6. Social Media Profiles. If you create Social Media profiles, most of them have a place for you to add your URL. The top 3 I recommend are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
7. Article Writing & Syndication. Aside from creating blog and web content, you can write articles and submit them to Article Sites such as EzineArticles.com where they will link to you and others can syndicate them as well which produced more inbound links.
8. Association Memberships. Many associations and trade groups have directories where they list their members along with contact information including their website.
I did not get to discuss how to find out how many links you have and track your progress, so stay tuned and I will cover that next week (before Friday).
If you have any questions or need professional help with link building, feel free to contact me.
Have a great weekend and a Happy Valentine’s Day.
Tags: link building
