SEO Tutorial for Beginners Part 3

Off page SEO is the effort to create popularity and trustworthiness towards the site in the World Wide Web.

Off Site SEO

-Linking

Now that the site has been optimized for all internal factors, it is time to make it known by the search engines. There is no need to submit your company site to the search engines. A linking strategy will allow the SEs to find and index it. Find sites related to yours and see if they would like to reciprocate links. You will need to create a page or more where you will list links to other sites. After doing so, contact the site webmasters and ask for an exchange. You will put a link to their site and they will return the favor. Ask for a link from them with anchor text that contains the keywords targeted. If you sell car insurance, link with other insurance sites, even if they do not provide car insurance services. Car club sites would be another option. Do not link with a shoe store. It is totally unrelated and will carry little or no weight.

-Submit to directories

Directories provide what is called a one-way link. You do not need to reciprocate. Most good directories charge a fee to have sites listed. The most notable exception is www.dmoz.org, which is a very important and free. With paid directories, it is a step worth the money, especially with a lot of competition for the targeted keywords. Also, other high value related sites may charge for this type of link. It may be useful taking a look at these options as well.

-Other ways to acquire one-way links

If you are an expert in the field, write articles and post them on the many article web sites. For example, an online aquarium fish store could post articles about how to start an easy saltwater aquarium. The article should include a link to the aquarium site with the usual anchor text option. Press releases are also very valuable. PRweb is a favorite. Given the example above, why not release a PR announcing a new aquarium system that makes maintenance easier, or announcing that tank raised fish is offered as an alternative to wild caught?

Creating informational sites or sections of a site devoted to information about products or services will drive many other sites to link to you. Offer the option of using your copy on other sites provided that a credit and link to you is offered. There are many creative ways to publicize your pages on the web.

-What not to do

There are techniques that may hurt your site. While it may be OK to pay for a link on a related and relevant web site, buying links just to increase numbers should be done with great caution. Let me explain: if you manufacture Ipod accessories and a site dedicated to informing readers of MP3 technologies and products has a featured paid link section for advertisers, it may be a good idea to pay. This is a relevant site, and if popular it will drive sales and possibly rankings.

On the other hand, there are text link brokers who will charge customers to put links on other sites, related and unrelated. Usually these "Links for sale" sites are already tagged by the search engines. This could damage ranks and even ban your site.

Obviously stay away from link farms. Link farms are built for the sole purpose to gather links, exchange with others to benefit third party sites. It is a sure way to get at least penalized.

Do not reciprocate with sites that have a PR0. PR stands for Pagerank, a Google feature that is part of how the search engine ranks sites. A PR0 is the lowest possible score. New sites have PR0, which is OK. Some sites have a 0 score because of penalties. The Google Toolbar, once installed, will read the PR of every site and page you visit. To be on the safe side, do not exchange with PR0.