The Weapon of Choice for Improving Offpage SEO Factors
By: Marcus Pore | Posted: 08th October 2007
Link popularity and link quality are often viewed as the yin and yang of offpage search engine optimization. Although not necessarily opposing factors, they are certainly complementary. What is the best weapon for improving offpage SEO factors? Sniper rifle or shot gun? This writer packs his sniper rifle when optimizing offpage SEO factors and so should you. Read on to learn more about offpage optimization factors and why your web site promotion efforts should be highly targeted.
Offpage search engine optimization refers to factors that are not on your web site that impact your search engine ranking and the amount of traffic you receive. Believe it or not, offpage optimization ultimately decides whether you appear on page one in the search engines or on page one hundred. Offpage SEO factors include factors such as which sites link to you, the number of sites that link to you, the significance of the web sites that link to you and the anchor text of the link pointing to your web site. Of these offpage factors, the two most meaningful are link popularity and link quality. Focus your energy on these two factors for the most efficient and effective results.
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 build up 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 boost your popularity and drive up your search engine rankings. You can also gain 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 in all likelihood get several emails daily from other webmasters wanting to swap links. Disregards 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
We have hinted around the topic of link quality in the preceding paragraph. Now, let's dive in further. Essentially, link quality refers to the reputation of the site linking to you. This reputation includes the significance, relevance, key phrase density, anchor text and other factors about the referrer. We will focus on several of these key elements in the remainder of this article.
Significance - Your link building efforts should focus on getting links from sites that are significant. Significance refers to the prominence, presence or the authority of the referrer. Some think of this it terms of page rank, but page rank is an outdated and unreliable measure. Page rank has little to do with rankings these days. For almost any keyword combination, you can find high ranking sites that have low page rank. Rather than focusing on page rank, focus on getting links from sites that rank high for your related key phrase phrases. You can do this by focusing initially on the top ten to twenty sites in each search engine for your key phrase phrases. Try to get a link from each of those sites.
Relevance - If you plan to spend time building link popularity, focus your efforts on building backlinks that are from related websites. Votes from sites related to your theme count more than votes from unrelated sites. To clarify, if you sell wallpaper on your website think of which is more relevant: a backlink from www.hgtv.com or a backlink from www.discountcarparts.com. You are wasting your time build backlinks from sites that are not related to your theme. Remember, a few backlinks from significant relevant websites weigh considerably more than a hundred links from insignificant unrelated websites.
Anchor Text - The anchor text refers to the visible hyperlinked text on the referrer’s page. It should be relevant to the webpage where it resides and contain your consequential key phrase phrase. Put some extra thought into constructing multiple variations of the title and description of the links pointing to you. Avoid overuse of your primary keyword phrases. Having hundreds of links using the same anchor text may seem like it will elevate your ranking for the terms used in the anchor text, but there is a point where overuse negatively affects your ranking. Search engines view this overuse as spamming. Vary the phrases in your anchor text to use themes related to your keywords and phrases.
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.
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.
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Tags: search engines, search engine rankings, search engine optimization, likelihood, anchor text, exchanging links, search engine ranking, web site promotion, marketing efforts, link quality, web masters, backlinks, promotion efforts, article marketing, best weapon, yin and yang, optimization factors, sniper rifle