SEO Basics Revisited: Off-Page Optimization
This article comes as a follow up to our previous post ‘SEO Basics Revisited: On-Page Optimization‘. Now that you are familiar with the basics of on-page optimization, let’s move on to the next step – Off-Page Optimization. This too isn’t as complicated or as difficult as you would imagine. Off-page optimization is nothing but a number of strategies that you can implement off your web page to improve your search engine ranking and increase targeted traffic to your web site.
Here’s is a simple explanation for all the newbies: Let’s say you build a great product and invest 
all your time and effort into making it the best. However, you do not spread the word about this great product and no one knows about it! What’s the use? So, just as you need to let others know about your product and get recommendations from them, you need to do off-page optimization for your site as well.
Off-page factors should be carefully planned and implemented to achieve a higher search engine ranking. Many people think that off-page optimization is just link building and go about it in a random and unplanned manner. However, this is not going to bring much benefit to their site. They’re just going to waste a lot of time and efforts and not get any results. They need to consider several aspects before starting off-page optimization for their site. Given below is all the information you will need to know about off-page optimization.
I. Factors to Consider Before Building Links
It’s not enough to get just any websites to link to you, the quality of inbound links is also very important. You may get 100 links but may not see any difference in your results if you don’t consider the following points:
1. Inbound Links from Authority Sites
Authority sites are popular sites that people frequent, get linked to on the basis of their merit, 
or are referred by many when they need to check up on the subject. Getting links from known websites is priceless while doing off-page optimization for your website. It’s like a certificate from an authoritative figure who has acknowledged the quality of your page. For example, if your site is about current events or news, and CNN.com links to you, consider it as the best bonus ever!
Tip: Make your website as professional and informative as possible. If you give reliable and valuable information, it will instantly impress people. This will also increase the chances of getting linked by other such authority sites.
2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Anchor text is the actual word or phrase of your link. It is important to have anchor text targeting your keywords because the search engines will notice this as a relevant link for your site. As you start getting more and more links with your targeted anchor text, your rankings for those terms will start to improve.
For example, if your site was about selling or renting houses then you should use your keywords in the titles: such as ‘Houses for sale’, ‘Houses for rent’, ‘Homes for sale’, ‘Homes for rent’, ‘Buy a house’, ‘Rent a house’ etc.
The most common anchor text is ‘Click Here’. Sometimes, it is not possible to choose the anchor text for your links from other pages, but for those sites where you can, you need to get it right. Some places where you can enter your own anchor text are online web directories and social bookmarking sites. However, for those sites which do not, you could try sending a request asking if the anchor text can be modified to make it more relevant for your site. You’ll be surprised to see many of them would make the necessary changes.
Tip: Try to include your keywords in your anchor text. Decide what keywords you want to rank for and include them in your anchor text. However, be careful because your anchor text should not read like a string of keywords, it should make sense as well.
3. PageRank of Incoming Links
Google Page Rank is a tool developed by Google to determine the importance of a website or a webpage 
based on clearly defined set of algorithms. It is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. Whenever you link out to another website, you pass on some of your page rank value. Similarly, if you get a link form a high PR page, your site will also benefit from a fraction of the PR value of that page.
PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them – relevance and quality are also important (in terms of the PageRank of sites, which link to a given site). However, not all links weigh the same when it comes to PR. If you had a web page with a PR8 and had 1 link on it, the site linked to would get a fair amount of PR value. But, if you had 100 links on that page, each individual link would only get a fraction of the value.
Tip: While links from high PR sites may be beneficial to your PR, do not restrict your off-page link building activities just on the basis of PR.
4. Placement of Link in Web Page
The position of your link from another website says a lot about it to search engines. Links can be placed in the footer, header, sidebar or inside the content. With so many people selling links in their sidebar or footer, search engines might possibly give these links slightly lesser value. The ones placed as a part of the content (contextual links) could be considered more valuable than the sidebar or footer links. There is a growing amount of importance of placing links on a page in a natural manner.
Tip: Try to get links from a page which does not have too many other links. The page you are getting a link from should not be one which makes it obvious that they sell links.
5. Get Links from Relevant/Related Sites
It doesn’t make much sense when an astrology site links to a website that deals with cars. The topics are niche and completely irrelevant to each other! The audience you are looking at can’t be any more different (unless you want to ask the psychic if the car’s registration number will bring you luck!) This type of linking is not only worthless but if you have exchanged links to get that link, you’re also putting your page at risk. The search engines will smell something fishy and suspect a link trade because the sites aren’t related in any way. So, always try to get links from websites that are related to your topic.
Tip: As mentioned above get the majority of links from sites that have similar topics. Even if you are getting it from general sites like online directories or social bookmarking sites, your link should be placed under the correct category.
II. Link Building Techniques – Direct and Indirect
There are many ways to get inbound links. A few links to your site from reputed, high quality, authority sites are much more valuable to a search engine than hundreds of low quality links. I’d advise you to not to participate in an automated link exchange program as you’ll be automatically exchanging links with all sorts of low quality and unrelated sites. Here are some tips for direct link building:
1. Directory Submission
Even those who are new to search engine optimization know that a directory submission is one of the easiest ways to build links. Directory submission involves submitting details of your website including titles and descriptions about your product/service to online directories. This helps to get links with relevant anchor texts placed under relevant categories. There are many free and paid directories available online. All you have to do is submit your link and add details about it. You will get links form relevant categories in these directories.
Tip: Try avoiding automated submissions or submission softwares as most directories have a ‘Captcha’ code which can be verified only by a human being.
2. Article Submission
Article submission involves writing articles related to the theme of your site and submitting to article directories. By doing this, you will get permanent one-way links from these directories. In addition to that, your article will be put under the most relevant category as well. Now only will you be getting a link, you will also be reaching out to more people. Visitors of that article site will get to know about your site and may even link to you if they think you are an authority figure and like your site.
Tip: Try to keep to original articles you write yourself, the search engines can find out if the article is copied from somewhere! You’ll want to stay away from software programs designed to produce articles one after the other with little difference.
3. Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking lets you store, organize and manage your sites of interest on a 
public bookmarking site, instead of on your computer. As long as you’re logged on to the Internet, you can access and share these bookmarks from anywhere in the world. Once you bookmark with social bookmarking sites and people find your content exciting, they will save it and share it with others. Your bookmark moves to the front pages of the category or site and you’ll soon see the increase in traffic.
While some social bookmarking sites may not give you search engine friendly links, the traffic and visibility you get from these sites could result in other sites linking to you.
Tip: Participate in your social bookmarking community’s activities by posting your comments and giving suggestions. This will increase your social bookmarking credibility and help make you visible in the social bookmarking community you participate in.
4. Forum Posting
Forum posting means visiting online forums that have topics related to your site 
and participating in the discussions. People usually visit forums to hold discussions with other like-minded people. Forums give you an opportunity to build relationships and build your credibility but if you start promoting your link too much and contribute little, you’ll be considered a spammer and you might be at risk of getting banned from the forum.
Tip: When you post a comment, include your link in your signature.
5. Guest Posting in Other Blogs
Guest posting in blogs is one of the best ways to build your brand and site popularity. You get a much wider audience and get links from really powerful sites. It is also a great way to build contacts in your industry. The traffic and exposure you receive is great compared to what you can usually generate from a new site. You can get backlinks, get new readers, get offers from other blogs and increase your traffic with this.
Tip: Study the blog you want to write an article for and see what kind of articles have been successful there. Write on topics similar to the ones that have been appreciated. If you do not do your research properly, you might end up writing on topics that are of no interest to their readers… you might just end up wasting your time.
6. Press Releases
Some people think submitting press releases is a boring old way of trying to optimize your site. However, if the release is written well, the search engine optimized press release can prove to be one of the most effective ways to deliver news of events taking place within your company or industry. Press Releases are also picked up by Google faster. Usually you’ll find press releases on top of the search engines faster than the usual articles.
Tip: Don’t use complicated jargons, but simple language that people can connect with and search engines will decipher easily.
7. Social Networking Sites
An active Social Networking campaign such as using platforms like Twitter, Facebook 
and Linkedin can serve you well in driving traffic. Sometimes, the links are ‘No follow’ but the exposure and interaction you gain with potential customers is extremely valuable. If they like what you are discussing and find your information or products interesting they can help spread your word for you. As of now, FIFA’s profile on Twitter has over 178,555 followers. Even the Facebook fan page for popular potato chip brand Pringles stands out mostly for its great use of video.
Tip: Social media marketing is all about subtlety. Try not to market yourself so much that it turns people off. Give lots of information and inject your product or service details into it.
So that’s that! These are just some of the basics under off-page optimization and link building. If you have something to add or would like to disagree with some of the points, leave your comments in the form below!
Matt Cutts’ 8 Super-Effective Tips On Link Building
Let’s admit, organic link building can get frustrating and time consuming. We’ve all been through that phase where we try to build inbound links, turning impatient while we wait for the results. Well… we continue because we know it’ll pay off, and how! Organic links are often the result of having good, relevant and accurate content. 
You get an organic link when your information is considered useful and relevant, not when you have paid for it or participated in a link exchange.
Google’s most visible anti-spam engineer, Matt Cutts, has been releasing a series of short Webmaster Help videos in which he answers queries about search engine optimization and shares information that helps enhance traffic to your site. In this video, he offers a peek into some of the most effective ways of building organic links. If you want, you may choose to skip the video as the points have been summarized below:
1. Controversy
It’s a fact – “When you complain, people listen”. Matt admits it’s not his favorite technique, but creating controversy does cook up a storm. This is one of the easiest link baits as it grabs eyeballs. Matt adds that many people choose a company or known person and find faults or pick on them and exaggerate the situation.
For example, E! Online is known for celebrity bashing and gossip which can make or break careers. The 
site has handled controversial issues like Lindsay Lohan’s hearing and Britney Spears’ fashion disasters. However, you might want to be careful about overdoing it and offer some other useful information as well from time to time. In Matt Cutts’ opinion people could get tired of just reading about controversies after a point. Remember that you want to encourage traffic, not kill it.
How To Revive a Dead Site
Dead sites, dying sites or sites languishing in various stages of inactivity can give even the most seasoned webmasters nightmares. Quite honestly, inactivity (or any other signs of morbidity) is a term I hope to never utter in conjunction with my site. However, I realize if I am not careful, I can get complacent and let it creep upon me, or my site to be precise. Thankfully, there are ways to prevent such unwelcome and ill-fated eventualities, and help a site live a full and healthy (read, active) life.
Because I know that there are many out there, living in constant fear of their site dying on them, in dire need of some site-revival intervention, I shall list 9 ways that will surely help breathe new life into a site.
1. Don’t Take A Break From Building Content: Imagine that you are a restaurateur… will you ever consider serving your customers stale leftovers? Of course, you won’t! Setting up a website is just another way of serving your customers, by providing them the freshest and most relevant information. If you fail to do that, you won’t ever have any repeat customers (or visitors). This customer satisfaction angle aside, not updating your site can negatively affect your search engine rankings too. So, if you wish to see your site thriving with a steady stream of traffic, and stay high up on the SERPs, it is important that you regularly create content and update your site.
2. Build Links: Most people make the mistake of disregarding the substantive importance of links and building links. 
In addition to the obvious SEO benefits link building offers, it will also help you be connected to other relevant sites. The whole web works on the principle of interconnectedness, so a site that chooses to isolate itself and refrains from connecting with other sites cannot be anything but a failure.
3. Give Your Site A Makeover: If the current design of your site seems old and tired, don’t hesitate, initiate that redesign that you’ve been thinking about. Take inspiration from some of the most popular sites on the web; surfing the web, more than anything, is a very visual experience, keep that in mind while you decide on the design.
4. Update On Popular Demand: 
If updating the whole site on a regular basis is beyond you, try, at least, to update the pages that are visited the most. This way, even if you don’t succeed in attracting new visitors, you won’t lose out on the old. Writing on current events, or the latest developments in your field, while choosing a nonconformist, if slightly controversial, slant is a great way to hook people.
Perfecting Your Video SEO Strategy
With universal search, Google reinvented themselves as an equal opportunity search engine – allowing search queries 
to return images, news, videos, blogs, local results, shopping sites etc. along with the boring traditional text results. The other search engines soon followed suit, and over the years SEOs have come to realize that optimizing video content gives them a better shot at ranking high for their relevant terms. There are two reasons for this:
a) Videos are given relatively higher rankings to ensure the search results are consistently ‘blended’.
b) The competition is relatively lower.
So, if you don’t make use of this opportunity and try optimizing your videos, it won’t be a crime, but it certainly will be a shame.
Having said that, video SEO, if not done the right way can backfire spectacularly. So, on my agenda today is to persuade you to optimize your video content (get you to create new, even) and to show you how to do it. Here are some pointers to help your site become super successful through your videos:
1. Don’t Forget The Keywords: Just as with regular SEO, keywords are essential to optimize videos too. 
In fact, they may be even more essential than you previously thought. Many of us fail to realize that searchbots can’t ‘read’ videos like they can text, and hence are in no position to decipher the content of a video and make semantic sense of it. Unless you trick it out with appropriate titles and tags, it will go undiscovered and unindexed. To optimize your video content, it is important that you use your targeted keywords in the file name, title, tags, URL, and anchor text. It would also help if you could provide an optimized description of the video, or even part of the transcript on the same page.
2. Submit Your Sitemap: Another important step in video content optimization is submitting the video sitemap to search engines. This increases the chances of all your videos being indexed considerably. To put it very simple, by submitting the sitemap, you essentially tell the search engines this: “Hey, I have lot of videos on my site, come take a look at them”. Read more
The Importance Of Long-tail Keywords
Keywords are essential to SEO. You simply cannot rank (high) without them. But then, you already know that. I am pretty sure you also know that ranking high for a particular keyword is often more difficult than logic suggests it should be. Those of you who have tried in vain for years to rank high for your head keyword of choice know what I am talking about. To those of you who are newly introduced to this wondrous world of SEO, I’ll say this: roll up your sleeves and prepare to wait. Or you can do the smart thing and just target long-tail keywords. You won’t have to deal with all that fierce competition for popular head keywords, and you will be a few steps closer to getting your site rank high.
It comes with one warning: the traffic volumes will be considerably lower than that from a head keyword. But then, the probability of your ranking high for a head keyword is less than unlikely, so the traffic from that keyword will amount to exactly nothing.
Now you do the math and figure out which type of keywords will be more beneficial for your small business.
That’s right, the long-tailed ones. Like my great-great-great-grandma once said, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Read more
How Long Before Your Directory Submission Efforts Bear Fruit
Over the years, we’ve received mails from frantic customers worried that all the energy they expended on directory submissions had and would come to naught. All because, they couldn’t find any change in the number of backlinks to their sites or any improvement in the sites’ rankings after submissions. Today, with this post, I’d like to allay the fears of anyone who has been similarly disposed or will likely be in the future. 
Directory Submission is not some quick-fix trick that you can slap on like a Band-Aid and hope to make your SEO better. What Directory Submission offers instead is a long-lasting, albeit slower, SEO-goodness that is virtually impossible to duplicate. And what’s a little wait when the benefits are so bounteous, really? It wasn’t the quick-legged hare, but the slow and steady tortoise that won the race! What I mean to say is slow isn’t always bad, especially when it comes to SEO.
The ‘slow’ benefits from Directory Submission include permanent backlinks to your site, with the anchor text of your choice (I am sure your are well aware of the fact that link building is the most important component of SEO, but building links with the right anchor text is even more important), and an improvement in rankings for the targeted terms. But, yes, it doesn’t happen overnight. Read more
MedRanks SEO-Friendly Web Directory
MedRanks.com – SEO-friendly Web Directory is the next paid directory to feature in our ongoing Paid Directory showcase.
MedRanks is a PR6 Paid Directory that has been online since 2004. A human edited business directory, it is a veritable repository of business resources. As mentioned on their site, their primary aim is to preserve a well-organized category structure for the listings and improve user experience. The Medranks personnel also ensure that the directory remains SEO-friendly at all points in time so that it is regularly indexed by search engines. As is known, submitting links to directories that are regularly indexed can get them indexed as well, and faster too.
The image below will give you an insight into how frequently the directory is indexed by search engines like Google:
The Importance Of Link Diversity In SEO
Any SEO worth his salt knows that link building is the key to ranking higher in the Search Engines. So, rather than reiterating the importance of link building in SEO, I’ll move one step further and tell you about maintaining link diversity while building links. Because it is crucial, and also because many of us often don’t understand its importance. So, why is link diversity important?
The answer has to do with the SEO holy grail that is natural link profile. When a searchbot finds that a big chunk of all the links pointing to your site come from one site in particular, it doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist before it concludes that your are hand in glove with the said site, and that the link profile you’ve established is far from being natural, even if that were not the case. Needless to say, it can go downhill from there in no time, and you can consequently bid adieu to your dream of ranking high, or ranking at all for that matter! Because hell hath no fury like a search engine duped, and you may find your site being dropped from the index before you can say SEO! Now, even if things weren’t to take such a bad turn, a diverse link profile will get better of a homogeneous on any given day.
Research shows that search engines love sites high on the link diversity factor, which they equate with authority and trust, and index them frequently. If that doesn’t motivate you to increase your link diversity, then you are probably one of those people who won’t even blink if Matt Cutts himself offers to index your site!
Also, by diversity I don’t only mean getting links from different sites, it includes so many other things. So, do yourself a favor and keep these six points in mind while trying to build diverse links to your site: Read more
7 SEO Predictions For 2010
We are settling nicely into this new year; though things have been turbulent in the real world, the web has enjoyed an easy, peaceful feeling so far – no major upsets or updates (some would argue they are both the same) have happened. Yet, late last year, Matt Cutts was definitive when he mentioned that the Caffeine roll-out can be expected after the holidays. Well, the holidays are over and the second month of the year almost upon us, so, those of you who haven’t yet taken stock of your SEO efforts, now would be a good time to do it. For, though SEO has remained largely unchanged over the years, this year will see some changes wrought to it thanks to the tremendous growth enjoyed by social media, and various developments in search technology. With this post I hope to bring you up to speed on all the changes you can expect to see in SEO this year and tell you just what you should do to claim a place on the SERPs.
1. Social Media Optimization Is The New SEO – This wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; in the last two years or so, SEOs around the web have come to realize and accept the immense optimization potential that social media offers. Now it’s even more important that you no longer see social media optimization as something that will take away from your SEO effort, but as something that will help boost it. Be it building good backlinks from individual social sites or building a robust network, or developing a strong social media presence with good profiles (that will also help you land on the first page of the search results) or even ensuring you’ve got a piece of the real-time search pie, using social media as a crutch to take forward your SEO efforts will (only) be a good idea.
2. Site Speed And Other On-Page Factors – If you belong to the group of people who think it’s all right to ignore on-page factors, then it is time you changed your way of thinking and got optimizing, the site load time in particular. In their (latest) effort to school the web in good behavior, Google has decided that a slow loading site doesn’t just align itself with their ‘Don’t Be Evil’ policy and hence needs to be ‘penalized’. Site speed will figure prominently in the algo this year, so will the oft-neglected Meta tags. So, get your Webmaster working on tweaking your on-page factors adequately or prepare to miss one crucial ranking opportunity. (Or many, for that matter) Read more
Why Does Google Hate My Site?
Does your site fail to rank on Google despite all your efforts? Does your well-ranking site suddenly disappear from the listing? Is being sidelined by Google affecting your business? Do you think Google hates your site?
If your answer to all the questions is yes, I suggest you continue reading and find out just what is going wrong and where, and how you can get yourself some Google love. Google provides more than 80% of all search traffic to a site, a fact that highlights the importance of staying in its good books. Listed below are the possible reasons your site has lost/will lose favor with Google.
1. Your Site Doesn’t Have Enough Quality Content To Entice A Visitor Back To It. Google has always been particular about the quality of the content present on a site. According to the big G, the primary function of a site is to provide useful content to the users, that good content will make users go back to the site for more. As they put it, “Focus on the user and all else will follow”; if your site has Good Quality, Original content, it will help you rank on Google.
2. You Put In Large Chunks Of Content At Once, And Then Go On For Long Intervals Without Refreshing It. An add-on to the earlier point, this has to do with content too. If you are serious about having a user-friendly site, you will update your content regularly, not add a bulk of content at once and then ignore to update/ refresh it at timely intervals. Resorting to such a practice will harm your chances of winning Google’s favor.
3. You Engage In ‘Cloaking’- Your Site Shows Different Information To A Searchbot Than It Shows A Real User. Cloaking ranks on top in the list SEO crimes according to Google. 
They do not take kindly to the kind of deception that is involved in Cloaking – fooling both users and bots by creating a page or site that will appear different to either party. According to Google, “Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines…Serving up different results based on user agent…[like] Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users or serving different content to search engines than to users…”. When found out, a ban from the index will be immediate.
4. Your Site Harbors Duplicate Content. Google doesn’t like duplicate content. 
Period. So, every site that is found retaining duplicate content will be penalized; it doesn’t matter which site originally possessed the content in question, and the penalty can be as severe as removal of site from the index. To ensure you aren’t wrongly penalized, avoid using duplicate content and regularly check if your content is being duplicated elsewhere using sites like www.copyscape.com and www.duplicatecontent.net and if you find sites infringing your copyright, file a Notice of Infringement with Google immediately.
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