‘Off-page’ SEO is becoming increasingly important as the search engines continually adjust their algorithms in their never-ending quest for relevance. It’s surprising how few SEO professionals are acknowledging this gradual yet inexorable shift by evolving their SEO models to take into account new and more sophisticated ‘off-page’ strategies. It’s interesting to note that a rule of thumb now being applied to the relative efficacy of ‘on-page’ and ‘off-page’ SEO values the contribution of ‘on-page’ SEO as having only 20% of the total influence on ranking.

It is now less important to spend time on those minor website tweaks such as meta tags, which once might have made a big difference, but now don't. What is really important these days is not how you see your website at all, but how the web 'sees' your website. It’s all about trust and authority. The more quality (keyword-rich) incoming links your website has, the higher regard your site is held in and the higher the site will rank.

What is ‘off-page’ optimisation?

‘Off-page’ search engine optimisation (SEO) is what can be achieved off a website’s pages that will maximise its search engine performance in the search engines for target keywords that are related to the on-page content and keywords or keyword phrases in off-page direct-links and anchor text.

In simple terms, off-page optimisation consists of all of the ranking factors NOT located on the webpage; the all-important factors that the search engines look at when ranking a website.

There are numerous off-page factors included in search engine algorithms including:

• The number of websites providing inbound links.
• The Google PageRank of the websites providing inbound links.
• The theme and subject matter of the providing inbound links
• The page title of the webpage providing inbound links.
• The anchor text used linking to you.
• The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you.
• Total number of links on the website linking to you.
• Trust, rank and authority enjoyed by the website linking to you.
• The IP Address of the websites linking to you.

At SEO Consult we’re fully aware of the gradual movement towards ‘off-page’ factors as part of an overall SEO campaign. We apply our team of dedicated ‘off-page’ SEO experts who work hard to factor in as many effective and useful strategies as possible. In collaboration with our clients we define semantic space, always commencing a campaign with thorough keyword research, testing and selection. We also:

• Make sure that links and anchor text contain keywords.
• Obtain links from high ranking publisher sites
• Cultivate one-way inbound links (not link exchange)
• Apply different keywords in your link-ads from the same site
• Apply link building strategies to avoid growth spikes
• Organise relevant keywords located near your inbound link
• Promote deep linking (from multiple pages to multiple pages) avoiding too much home page focus
• Link from sites with a range of LinkRanks
• Track active link-ad keywords
• Expect results in 30 days (MSN) 1-9 months (Google, Yahoo!)

Where SEO companies and website owners often damage their ranking ambitions is in making common off-page SEO mistakes that fly in the face of clear optimisation advice from Google

It’s a cardinal sin in Google’s eyes to participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. Using link farms (sites with 100+ outbound links per page) to generate sizeable inbound link volume is considered as an SEO spamming tactic. Google refers to "bad neighbourhoods" on the web and strongly suggests that ranking may be adversely affected by those links. Any traffic generated is probably low quality traffic, with a next to zero conversion rate.

Google also hates link buying, as they feel it corrupts their PageRank model. They’re extremely suspicious of pages that have links they don’t necessarily merit, individual pages that have accumulated a lot of links in a short period of time (spiking) and pages with links from high profile yet unrelated sites. Google considers ‘paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings’ as undermining relevance, and does all it can to eradicate it.

Referring to Google’s quality guidelines that say “Make sites for users, not search engines”, Matt Cutts (their SEO spokesperson) adds, “If someone is buying text links to try to rank higher on search engines, they’re already doing something intended more for search engines than for users.” He continues, “Google (and pretty much every other major search engine) uses links to help determine reputation. As links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved the quality of web search, selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results”.

Don't use unauthorised computer programs to submit pages; check rankings, etc. Submitting websites to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, Alexa, Alltheweb, Lycos, Excite and others automatically consumes computing resources and can violate their Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Duplicate and irrelevant keywords in link-ads should be avoided, as should placing random links without keywords near link ads.

Social networking is a potentially powerful ‘off-page’ SEO technique, but care must be taken to not overdo it or spam the sites. Many social bookmarking websites are using rel=”nofollow” tag for the links. Yet there are other sites that do not use that tag.

Perhaps the best piece of advice when considering ‘off-page’ SEO, advice that will not only strengthen your chances of obtaining great results but avoid any potential ranking problems, is to partner experienced and proven SEO specialists skilled specifically in ‘off-page’ SEO. AT SEO Consult our experts deploy a range of strategies including online PR, blogs, news articles, link-baiting, photo sharing, directory submission, widget development, viral marketing, link building and others to generate high ranking across major search engines MSN, Google and Yahoo!

Contact us now to find out how we can help your organisation’s online profile through our ‘off-page’ strategies.