Off-Site SEO 101

What is Off-Site SEO?

Google and other SE’s decided long ago that external verification of every website’s content would assist their efforts to deliver the most relevant SERPs to their clients.

This is achieved by analysis of Anchor Text (link titles) in incoming links your website.  Think of good links as being like a series of good book reviews! If multiple, external, widely distributed sites are all saying that your site is about “blue plastic widgets” then the balance of probability is that your site is relevant to such a search. Google’s confidence in your site is positively impacted by this external confirmation!

A coincidence of keywords/phrases in both On-Site Content and Off-Site Links reassures Google immensely! Those keywords in the off-site links are referred to as anchor text, and form the link title.

Basically, you cannot rank well for “blue plastic widgets” if that keyword phrase is NOT represented in Anchor Text in incoming links to your site.

Off-Site SEO can involve multiple steps;

1.) Directories: 1-Way Link Building

- quickly getting points on the board by expanding the keywords in anchor text by getting you a range of listings in global web directories, with a series of varying Title and Descriptions

2.) Article Distribution

- writing a series of authoritative articles on relevant topics, and circulating these for inclusion in Article Distribution networks. The article contains an attribution of source – an “Authors Bio” with a link back your web site. A good article on an interesting aspect of what you do can potentially generate hundred of back-links to your site, because other people take articles from distribution networks and place them on their own sites to provide valuable content.

3.) Social Bookmarking

- Social Bookmarking submissions are best for advertising events and items of significant interest. For some sites, Social Bookmarking can deliver significant short-term traffic bursts – more like a solar flare!

Depending on the site’s scope, product and services range, and of course budget, we may need to do one or more of the above to achieve a successful outcome. Going beyond basic link-building is almost certain to be required for sites that are targeting very competitive market sectors.