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Basic Offpage Optimization

What is offpage optimization?
Offpage optimisation are techniques which are done off the pages of your site in order to improve the ranking for certain keywords in Search Engines. Onpage requires you to do optimization on your own webpages, offpage requires you to do it off-site.

Steps
And with Google, offpage optimization has became more important as they place a lot of emphasis and relevance on links. The simple lowdown for offpage optimization is LINKS. BACKLINKS (inbound links) from other websites to yours. And backlinks with your anchor text(keywords). Seriously, that's about it - getting others to link to you with the proper anchor text. If you have more links pointing to your site, the more important the search engines "rate" your site. Anchor text provides a way to relate the keywords for your webpage. And more links with proepr anchor text to your webpage, the higher the Search Engine will rate your site for those keywords. It's as simple as that. LINKs are also important because they provide a way for the search engines bots to find your site. The more often Search Engine crawl your site, the more pages they will index.

If you properly plan your offpage optimization, you can rank better in the Search Engines. And I mention it again so you won't forget, the keyword here is LINKs!

Firstly, you have to pay attention to :

1. How many sites are linking to you. More websites linking to you, the better it is for rankings.
2. What kind of sites are they and whether their topics are related to yours (titles, keywords and so on). If it is relevant, Search Engines will rate your site higher.
3. The Anchor text used.
4. Trustrank and Pagerank of the sites linking to you and whether they are trusted by Search Engines or have been blacklisted or ignored.

Anchor text is the hyperlink text. They are usually used to tell the viewer the subject matter of the page that it links to. Like a link here - Computer Games Reviews, you can see that the anchor text here is "Computer Games Reviews", pointing to http://www.avaultt.com and this is like telling the reader that the subject is Computer Games Reveiws and the site "http://www.avault.com" has information related to it. So this is helping the site http://www.avault.com to rank for the term "Computer Games Reviews". So use this anchor text to your advantage by using proper keywords in them. Do not overdo with keywords though and try not to make the anchor text look spammy. Although it is not always possible to use keywords you want, you should not use "click here" as your anchor text. Remember to optimize your internal pages as well. Deeplinking is useful because they help to rank for different terms. DO not try to link your main page with all your keywords, it is not effective at all. For example, if you have a site selling comics books and one of your internal page is about your stock of Marvel Comics, is it better for you to optimize your main page for "Marvel Comics"? Not really,optimize your main page for the keyword "Online Comic Books" and that internal page for the words "Marvel Comics". This way, at least your site will rank for more terms and get better results for different specific keyword searches. And not to mention, your onpage optimization would be more effective and easier without too many keywords pointing to one page.

Link building. You should start off with a link building campaign.

Next step is where you get links by posting directly on other sites or asking webmasters to link to you.

1. Link exchanges - Two way links with other websites, preferably with related sites. How is goes is that they link to you and you link back.You can email webmasters and request a link exchange with the proper anchor text. Link exchanges can be effective if done with sites of the same topics or subjects. Try not to link to gambling, medicinal or other non-reputable subject sites. Seriously, be aware of who YOU link to. Linking to "bad" sites can get you into trouble with Search Engines.
2. Submit Article - Submit good articles you have written to article directories. Usually they have an author's note below the article, where you can place your site's URL in it with the appropriate anchor text in it. And not only that, writing quality articles can help improve your reputation in your field of interest as well.
3. Directory Submission - Submit your site to various directories. There are many free and paid directories out there. It would be advisable to submit your directories to free directories(especially DMOZ) and then plan carefully which paid directories you would like to submit to.I don't know whether it is really worth it to use paid inclusions you are on your own here. For paid submissions, try Yahoo Directory or MSN Directory. Please avoid link farms (directories with tons and tons of links in their categories and subcategories) because they don't work to your advantage and a lot of them have already been devalued by Search Engines.
4. Forum posting - Signatures allow you to place links and anchor text to your site. If you are posting in a forum related to your site (and with a lot of nice juicy keywords), you can get better results in your rankings from these postings. However, there are some forums which have the nofollow tag which tells Search Engines not to crawl the link in your signatures. This makes the links virtually worthless in SERPs.
5. Comments - Nowadays everyone likes to leave comments in blogs. You can do it as well. And add your link with the comment. However remember not to spam blog sites, if you add a comment make sure that comment has something to do with the topic. It is also wise to post in blogs which you have some knowledge about. Note that as with forums, some blogs have the nofollow tag for comments which is not crawled by Search Engines.
6. Purchase links - Pay someone to link to you on their site. This method is a bit like a paid directory, just that the site isn't a directory but could be a informative site or even a blog. You get a link or links with a proper anchor text. Again, try to find a site with the same subject as yours. There have been reports that some Search Engine devalues such a technique, but it is difficult for Search Engines to know whether that link is a legitimate link or a purchased link. I would also recommend you to buy links directly from other websites than through a "links broker" because you will never know the quality of the sites. The placement of your link is important as you don't want your link to be in very page of the site. For your link to have maximum exposure, it would be best to be in the first page(the main page) and to reduce the spammy effect, confine to 2 to 3 pages at the most. Avoid site-wide links especially if your site is small!

The next step would be link baiting. Link baiting makes links look natural and are much respected by Search Engines. However all these link baiting are very much related to onpage optimization(what you do on your site). These are usually very much out of your own control but you can "manipulate" that by these tips.

1. Although this is considered onpage optimization but it would be appropriate to mention this again - content. The biggest and most effective offpage technique is related to your onpage optimizaton. Quality, useful and keywords rich content. This way, you are "baiting" other webmasters to link to you. Some of them even provide you with a good anchor text as well. These are what is termed as "natural links" because others linked to you without you directly asking for a link. Good content generates links for you.
2. Write Software/script - Writing a script or software which a lot of people use is a good way to generate links. If you look around forums or blogs or just normal sites, you can see people recommending this or that piece of software or script. Some scripts like forum scripts have a small link back to their site with the appropriate anchor text included, just imagine, if a lot of users use those scripts, the amount of backlinks will be enormous! Do a Google search "link:www.simplemachines.org/" and see the amount of backlinks! Simplemachines.org is the creator for the free SMF forum script. And if you provide the software or the script at no charge, grateful users will be linking to your site in no time. Again you can see it, this is backlinks creation.
3. Tutorials/How-to articles - Yes, this is much related to content again. Write useful tutorials like those photoshop tutorials or howtos and this will encourage other web designers or webmasters to link to that. Having useful and unique content is one of the best way to get natural links as well as targetted traffic. If it is useful to a webmaster's visitors, he will certainly tell his visitors about it. This is where the links come.
4. Provide a Unique Service/Knowledge Sharing - Ok, even if you don't or can't write good content or tutorials or articles, you can provide a valuable service to others. Like software installation for example, PC troubleshooting, technical support for Operating Systems and so on. Something like sharing your knowledge or helping others with their problems can very well get you the links because it is useful to webmasters and useful for their visitors as well. You can see some of the most popular sites are actually sites which help others like those webmasters forum or those technical support groups. You can even be selling some unique product or service to the public and then let it create links for you. A niche service is just as important as unique, valuable and useful content.
5. Free stuff and contests can attract links from other sites as well. Who doesn't want free stuff or who doesn't want to join a contest to get prizes? Everyone does and because it is such a good promotional tool, you can attract a lot of visitors(and links) from these contests even if it is for a short period.

What all this being said, it is important to note that links from high quality sites are better for rankings than links from low quality sites. A few good links from reputable sites is worth more than a buckload of links from lesser ones. So if you can, try getting links from these sites instead.

There are a lot of SEO experts who say that offpage optimization is more important than onpage optimization. While that is not completely wrong, it is very difficult (but not impossible) for a good offpage optimization to work without excellent content. And that is ultimately what is on your web pages.

If you would like to learn more on Search Engine Optimization, please visit Darksat's IT Security Forum.

SEO is the best way to drive traffic to your site. It is cost effective as well. I would also recommend even the beginner webmaster to use some form of basic SEO on their website. You can follow the above tips to help you get started on your webpage.

With all that being said, I need to tell you that SEO is seriously more an art than science. Even SEO experts don't have all the answers. Even engineers in the Search Engines don't have all the answers. So I think it is better to go slow and just start basic and if there is a problem with your rankings, find out why and correct it. It takes time to get good results from SEO. And please be patient.

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