http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/website-promotion-101-understanding-offpage-seo-factors.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/website-promotion-101-understanding-offpage-seo-factors.html Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600
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.




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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.


This article is free for reprint but must be reproduced in its entirety including live links and this copyright statement:
Copyright © 2007 Marcus Pore

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/writing/article-marketing-and-the-power-of-proliferation.html http://www.articletrader.com/writing/article-marketing-and-the-power-of-proliferation.html Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Search engines use bots to scour the internet and index the vast number of web pages found by the content hungry bots. Using complicated algorithms, each search engine categorizes and ranks the billions of web pages discovered by their bots. The algorithms are highly complex, unique and essentially the “secret sauce” of each search engine. In spite of their complexity, they all use some fundamental processes for ranking each website. The basic building blocks of these algorithms are link popularity and link quality. The concepts are relatively simple. In a nutshell, the number of links pointing to your web site and the quality of those links determines the importance of your web site and greatly influences your ranking within the search engines. Search engines view each link pointing to your site as a "vote" and the more votes your web site receives, the higher the rankings! The more prominent the site is that points to your web site, the stronger the vote. To improve your search engine ranking and ultimately boost traffic, increase your link popularity and the quality of incoming links. More on that in a moment; but first please allow a short detour to explain a foundational matter.

When building a home, the foundation must be built on solid ground. Similarly, your journey to build link popularity should only begin after your website foundation is firmly rooted. How do you build this foundation? Onpage optimization builds a solid foundation. Onpage optimization involves tweaking aspects on or within your web site that search engines use in part to influence your web site's ranking. Two important factors are the quantity and quality of your content. Size does matter - the more content your web site has the better. Quality also matters – your content must be concise, keyword rich and user friendly. Build this foundation solidly first or your efforts to build link popularity will be for naught.

Now back to link popularity and quality - offpage optimization involves improving factors that are not located on or within your web site that search engines use to determine your ranking. Link popularity and link quality are two important offpage optimization factors. To reiterate, link popularity simplistically is the number of web sites on the internet that have a link pointing to your web site. Essentially, these are votes of credibility for your website. Link quality is the page rank, significance, anchor text and several other factors of the sites that link to you. Think of this in terms of how strong the vote is for your site. You may be wondering, how this all relates to the title "Article Marketing and The Power of Proliferation". Bear in mind, you must understand the concepts of link popularity and link quality to fully appreciate the power of article marketing.

Article marketing is a proven strategy for boosting your link popularity. Here’s why. Each article you prepare for distribution will include a short resource box at the end of the article that includes a link to your web site. Post the article to multiple article directories and you get a free one-way link back to your web site. Clearly this is better than a link exchange because you get a one-way link. Choose your anchor text wisely and you can improve your link quality too. Think of it as a double edged sword - one strategy to improve both link popularity and link quality. Submit each article to several hundred article directories and you get a free one-way link back to your web site from every article directory. Think about it. Hundreds of free one-way links and you control the anchor text! By the way, there are tools to automate the submission process and help you get you ahead of the competition. Follow the link at the bottom of this article for more information on tools.

But wait, there’s more. Truly informative and compelling articles will get an added boost by "The Power of Proliferation". Many web masters are in desperate need for additional content for their web sites, newsletters, and e-zines to build their foundation. You can capitalize on this need and supply the content via informative articles. As more web masters post your content, you get more free one-way links. As your articles proliferate, you will begin to see more traffic coming from the embedded links within your articles. This organic traffic is not dependent on search engines. If your articles proliferate, you will enjoy traffic for many years regardless of your search engine rankings.

If you are not publishing articles, what are you waiting for? Article marketing and The Power of Proliferation can improve your search engine ranking and boost your organic web site traffic. Get on the band wagon today.




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Marcus Pore is an internet marketing consultant offering SEO and article marketing information at:

ArticleCache.com - Article Directory

ArticleNode.com - Article Directory


This article is free for reprint but must be reproduced in its entirety including live links and this copyright statement:
Copyright © 2007 Marcus Pore

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/enhance-web-site-promotion-efforts-by-writing-compelling-articles.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/enhance-web-site-promotion-efforts-by-writing-compelling-articles.html Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0600
Article promotion is an proficient marketing strategy that generates web site traffic and is virtually cost free. There is massive growth in the use of this technique to improve search engine rankings, establish credibility and to create backlinks for search engine optimization purposes. This is one of the best ways to drive web site traffic to any new or existing small business web site.

No matter what your article is about, as an author you must absorb the reader. Remember, you are publishing articles to elevate your website and get one-way back links. With a poorly written article you’ll get back links from the article repositories you submit to, but you’ll miss out on the key reason to write articles. The key goal is to get publishers and webmasters to use your content; not just to get your article home's list in the directories. You want your articles to proliferate. Only then, will your embedded links get maximum exposure.

The Style - How do you encourage others to use your articles? First and foremost, the article has to be well written. If you think diagramming a sentence is simply drawing a box around it, you may want to spend some time researching creative writing techniques. Nothing turns off a reader more than poor grammar or sentence structure. On the other hand, good copy writers take advantage of short or incomplete sentences to create emphasis and vary rhythm. Optimize your rhythm. Irregular rhythm encourages your reader to pause and reflect. Be conversational. It makes the article personal. To strengthen your writing technique, read more. As you do, pay particular attention to writing style. Learn from good authors and adapt.

The Hook - Your title will determine if your article is successful or not. Think about it. For a book, the first thing a prospective purchaser sees is the title. People commonly judge the whole book from its title. The same is true for online articles. To turn a casual search engine browser into an engaged article reader, you must first entice them with your title. Otherwise, they will never get to the first paragraph. To write better titles, spend some time reading. Browse your favorite article directory site and look at titles used by others. Learn and adapt. Be creative and use something catchy. Always include targeted keywords that relate to your website.

The Angle - Start with a topic you are passionate about that relates to your website. Your eagerness for the topic will show through in the content. Develop an idea around the topic, but with a different spin. Lead off with this angle. Attract the reader. Once you have his/her attention, expand on your angle. Explain how your angle benefits the reader or solves a problem they face. Loosely speaking, this is your value proposition. Accentuate how your article is different than other articles on the topic. This entices people to read the second paragraph. Use the remainder of the article to expand your key milestones.

The Close - Your closing paragraph should place emphasis on what the reader should do after reading your article. This is your call to action. Remember the importance of the resource box at the end of your article. This is usually the only place you can place a link to your website. Show your experience on the article topic. Include your name, web address and any actions you want the reader to take related to the article.

The motivation of this article is to offer instructions on writing compelling content. An article written for the web should be informative and hold the reader's attention. To do this it should be relevant to the title, well written and contain at least some advice not readily available to the reader. Find an angle on your subject matter and focus on developing it in your article. Don't write articles just to elevate your resource box. Your content will suffer and the article will probably be of little interest to anyone.







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Marcus Pore is a search engine optimization expert and article directory webmaster at www.articlecache.com

Webmasters and publishers, please feel free to use this article provided this reference is included and all links remain active.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>