The fight for SEO takes place with every blog post, every website page and even goes on Off Page. Off Page SEO is a hot topic this season. There are many articles being written about it. The first thing I learned is that I already knew about Off Page SEO by another name—Backlinks. Oh I see, I hear you saying if you haven’t been following this new incarnation of one of my favorite subjects from last year. To clear up more confusion backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links and inward links. Off-page SEO is the process of optimizing your web pages outside your website by getting links back to it. These backlinks act as a vote on the content of your blog. The more and better votes (links) you can get on your webpage the better it will rank in search results. That leads to your site getting closer to page one on a Google Search.
Are backlinks the plague?
Sounds important? Yes, it is; but for a short time everyone ran from backlinks like the plague because of Google’s Panda and Penguin which were looking very suspiciously at backlinks. The reason why Google zeroed in on these is because for a time people were buying backlinks by the barrelful from places that would sell you 1000 for $5 in back alleys and in the dark. Yes, you knew you could get knifed that way; but everyone was doing it and for some time it was a great way to get on page one. That tactic is now strictly black hat SEO for many reasons. For one, the links were of poor quality. For another, they were from spammy sites. You can get your website deindexed by Google if you do that now.
So are Off Page SEO links something to stay clear of? Absolutely not. But they are harder to get than paying someone $5 for thousands. You need a strategy, but then you know that you need one for On Page SEO as well. Here are some ideas I picked up for your Off Page SEO strategy as I researched the topic.
Ram Shengale in Off-Page SEO For Beginners | Social Media Today February 2013 made several suggestions I liked. Here are two of them:
Properties Of A Quality Backlink
A quality backlink has the following properties and is considered good in the eyes of search engines and has the maximum effect on your off-page SEO.
1. From High PageRank Web Page
PageRank (PR) is a ranking given to a web page (from 0 to 10) by Google algorithm which tells about its authority. Always try to get backlinks from web pages with high PR, preferably higher than the PR of your own website.
Backlinks from higher PR web pages means quality votes for your web page. You can check the PR of a web page using the Firefox Plugin – WebRank Toolbar or if you don’t use Firefox you can use this online tool PR Checker.
2. From Similar Niche Blog and Website
Try to get links from niche blogs or websites similar to your web page as these are the real natural links. A car blog will never link to a fitness blog so you should keep this mind when building your backlinks and only try to get links from blogs or websites relevant to your niche.
You can search blogs in your niche using Google to put your links on.
Link Baiting
Mintz Pantic had an idea that I use often in Does Off Page SEO Matter? | Business 2 Community published in March 2013. I just didn’t know it had a proper name—Link Baiting:
"An easier way to get links—and possibly a whole bunch of them—is through link bait. Link baiting is a little dangerous as an off page SEO technique because you’ll have no control over who will link to you or what keyword they’ll use, but it can be an effective technique.
The bait in link baiting is often a controversial headline which other people will want to support or refute on their own blogs. For example: 'King Of The Mountain Kills 20 Kids A Year In U.S.'"
I have used link baiting when I used this as a headline, The Press Release is Dead! and put a picture of a tombstone at the top of the fold. I also used it when I used There are No Such Things as Internet Marketing Site Visitors as a headline.
Guest Blogging
One other topic that I saw on several articles is guest blogging. Here is one example.
Sandy of SEHAbitat in an article posted February 2013 Off-Page SEO Techniques for 2013 - SEHabitat said, “Scale up Guest Blogging efforts 2013 will definitely be a year for guest blogging. It is an amazing blog networking strategy and when you publish really awesome content on other blog domains, it scales up your blog’s search engine ranking, as well as blog reputation.
Page Rank, domain authority, reader engagement, blog audience, Moz Rank are some of the criteria used to choose blogs for guest contributions.”
Another time I will address the topic of blog commenting. I think we have gotten Off Page SEO off to a good beginning. Why don't we start using this with each other. If you like this idea, please comment back to me with your backlink, I'll send you some of mine and we can start sharing backlinks.
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.