Search Engine Optimisation is composed of on page optimisation and off page optimisation. While on page optimisation is concerned primarily with tweaking or modifying Website structure, content and presentation, off page optimisation is concerned with managing the perceived importance of a website with regards to links from other websites.

Off page optimisation is probably the single most powerful aspect of Search Engine Optimisation, and often the least understood. Google, the world’s most popular search engine, was the first to implement off page ranking criteria or link popularity. Google’s patented Page Rank algorithm measured the importance of a webpage by evaluating the number and quality of website hyperlinks pointing to that page.

Today, other major search engines such as Yahoo and Live.com are also beginning to implement some level of off page ranking criteria. Microsoft has announced that it is creating its own algorithm to calculate the link popularity of a website. This gives an added sense of impartiality to the website ranking process. A link coming to a website is seen as a vote of confidence for that website. The more links a website has, the more important it is perceived to be to the topic of the link.

Off Page optimisation was a relatively late phenomenon to come into the SEO world. This can be explained by the Google’s late entry into the search engine market as the pioneer of off page ranking criteria. Link popularity as a ranking criteria caused a sudden change in search engine optimisation strategies, leading to the birth of off page optimisation. Webmasters took advantage of this fact, and massive link farms grew. Google revamped its algorithms to take into account low quality link farms or link spamming, thereby nullifying forced linking.

Today, many unscrupulous webmasters continue to practice unscrupulous search engine optimisation techniques collectively known as Black Hat SEO. Black hat off page optimisation can involve massive link spamming through link farms.

Google has recently launched a massive crackdown on paid links. Many industry analysts, however, say they think it is a case of too little too late. Matt Cutts recently wrote a blog post about this issue, and how paid links featuring poor quality information are influencing search engines to skew rankings. According to Matt, paid links can cause a search engine to perceive a website as relevant to a particular search, even though in reality it may be quite less so. For example, if someone is searching for a particular health topic, paid reviews featuring product links can skew the search in favour of irrelevant sites that feature the keyword in their anchor text.

How far Google’s latest endeavour will go to improve the relevance of its search results is anyone’s guess. Google was recently outfoxed by group of clever black hat practitioners that used massive spamming to rank disposable domains high in the index.

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