In my last blog, I talked about on site web site search engine optimization and promised to address off site SEO next.

Off site search engine optimization is the process of taking every step possible to drive visitors and search engines to your web site, AND to tell the search engines that your web site HAS to be important, current and of value. Here are just a few of the off site optimization factors that we address when working on a site:

1.) Press Releases
We’ll talk about these a bit more in depth in a later blog entry, but press releases can be a fantastic method to accomplish a few key things: a.) They instill confidence in your prospects and clients. b.) They can help you announce new products and services. c.) They can potentially get picked up by mainstream media and help get you free publicity d.) SEARCH ENGINES LOVE NEWS.  Google, Bing & Yahoo are all in the game to deliver rapid relevant news and results.  Press releases tend to get picked up quickly by Google and can aid your web site in getting some great strategic back links.  Bottom line: they can help bolster your search engine rankings.

2.) Link Baiting.
Link baiting is the process of enticing other web site owners / blog owners to link to your web site.  The more quality inbound links that are relevant to your web sites content, the more Google believes that your web site is more valuable than others.  Link baiting involves creating relevant and unique content on your web site that would entice someone to recommend your particular article or blog entry.  This begins to replace link trading (an older more obsolete practice IMHO).  The key and goal of having a web site should be to contribute information, if others find your information interesting and refreshing, they will link to you.

3.) Social Media
Again, I will address social media down the road as it’s own entity, but it can serve a purpose in off site web site optimization. Most social media web sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to import your blog RSS feed into your profile etc.  The more blog entries that you are posting, the more that your social applications are being updated with your web site’s URL. The more followers you have, the more your message gets disseminated.  The more exposure, the greater the odds of folks linking back to your blog / web site.  Google may not give ‘link juice (weight)’ on your twitter posts yet, but I personally feel that they will almost need too in the very near future.  Social Media is truly moving at the speed of light, the search engines know they need to be there as well.

4.) Directories / etc.
Submitting your web site to a billion web site directories may sound like a grand idea, but based on my experience, you should only be submitting your web site to directories and web sites that make sense.  Think of it this way, If you sell Florida Mortgages and you are seeking to obtain a link from Bob’s Free Salmon Fishing Link Exchange directory you are completely wasting your time.  Linking to bad neighborhood web sites, linking to irrelevant web sites, etc. is a dangerous game and can even get you blacklisted in Google, etc.  We seek like minded relevant directories that are in good standing in the search engines.  They can help bolster your web sites relevancy in the search engines.

5.) Linking from an external blog or source:
Let’s say you have a blog hosted at another domain name and you write brilliant targeted articles guarenteed to leave your audience and the search engines thirsty for more…. While we prefer to install the blog on your domain name, a third party blog can drive in some very targeted traffic and help Google place more weight on your anchored search terms.  Here’s an example: rather than linking Visit my web site here and learn about web design and internet marketing,  I’d want to link it back to my web site like this: Visit my web site and learn more about web design and internet marketing. Note how I linked the keywords relevant to my market? When Google crawls those links and my web site is all about web design and internet marketing, those keywords know start to become relevant to Google when they think of On Target.

There are of course more factors involved, but as of today, these are what I see as the most important elements to off site SEO: remember SEO is only one portion of a comprehensive Internet marketing plan.  Call me at 407-830-4550 to discuss your Internet Marketing plan of attack, I’ll help you sort through the noise and come up with a targeted solution.

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Tags: Search Engine Optimization, seo