Website Promotion 101 - Understanding Offpage SEO Factors

Link popularity and link quality can be viewed as the yin and yang of offpage search engine optimization. While not necessary opposing factors, they are absolutely complementary. So, what is your weapon of choice when it comes to improving offpage SEO factors? Should it be a sniper approach that is targeted on focused results? Or, can you blast it with a shotgun and hope for the best? This writer packs his sniper rifle when optimizing offpage SEO factors and so should you. Read on to learn about offpage SEO factors and why your website promotion efforts should be highly targeted.

Offpage search engine optimization refers to factors that are not within your web site that affect your search engine ranking. Offpage factors include which sites link to you, the number of sites that link to you, the significance of the web sites that link to you, the anchor text of the link and other elements about the web sites that link to you. Of these offpage factors, the remainder of this article will focus on the two most essential: link popularity and link quality.

Link Popularity

So, what is link popularity all about? Search engine algorithms have determined if other sites are linking to your web site then it must be well-liked and deserving of a improve in rankings. If you think about it, this makes sense. If you have an awesome site, tons of unique content and your web site is updated frequently people will want to link to it. This will skyrocket your popularity and drive up your search engine rankings. You can also increase your link popularity by exchanging links with other web masters, buying one-way text links from link brokers or through article marketing efforts. Just be aware, these efforts should be focused on getting backlinks from highly popular websites that are related to your web site theme. You undoubtedly get several emails daily from other webmasters wanting to swap links. Overlooks them. Instead, actively search for highly ranked web sites that relate to your content and creatively encourage those webmasters to link to you. One backlink from a highly ranked related website is more valuable than a hundred links from low quality unrelated websites. When building link popularity, think like a sniper and target several highly ranked related sites.

Link Quality

While link popularity is meaningful, link quality is even more material. Simply stated, link quality is the reputation of the site linking to you. This reputation includes the significance, relevance, key phrase density, anchor text and several other factors of the referrer. The remainder of this article will focus on these key elements of building link quality.

Significance - The significance of a website refers its prominence, presence or authority. To clarify, think of which is more significant: a backlink from www.microsoft.com or a backlink from www.someunknownwebsite.com. Bear in mind, significance should not be measured in terms of Google PageRank. PageRank is outdated and has little to do with significance. Looking for proof? Analyze the top ranking sites for your primary keyword phrase on one of the search engines. You will find high ranking websites that have little or no PageRank. Focus your backlink building efforts on significant websites.

Relevance - You want your link on pages where the theme is related to your website. This is crucial. You are wasting your time if you try to do link exchanges with sites that are not related to your theme. As noted above, focus your link building on the top ranking sites for your keyword phrases and other themes related to your website. A handful of links from authoritative websites weigh considerably more than hundreds of links from unrelated insignificant websites. Think sniper appraoch - target only highly significant and relevant websites.

Anchor Text - Anchor text is the part of a link that people click to get where the link goes. Essentially, it is a way to tell visitors and search engine spiders why the link was made. It describes the target web site. For illustration, the HTML code for a typical link may look like this:

SEO Instructions

The anchor text in this illustration is the 'SEO Advice' portion of the code. It indicates that the target web site has something to do with SEO strategies. Search engines pay attention to anchor text and the text surrounding the anchor text. Fortunately, you have some control over this factor when building backlinks. Be sure backlinks pointing to your web site use keyword rich anchor text. Vary the keywords in the anchor text, keep them descriptive and ensure they are related to the theme of your site.
Once you have optimized your web site, to achieve a top search engine ranking your web site promotion efforts must shift towards optimization of offpage factors. This essentially means boosting your link popularity. You can do this yourself or hire an SEO consulting firm to help. In either case, just be sure you spend your time and money wisely. Focus on getting quality backlinks from high ranking web sites related to your theme. When offpage factors are being optimized, concentrate on quality over quantity.

Marcus Pore is an internet marketing consultant offering advice on web site promotion, article marketing and finding top-rated affordable web site hosting at his article directory web sites.
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