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Day 5 - Off Page Search Engine Optimization Part 1

We’ve already looked at how to optimize our blog to rank well for search results of those particular keywords that we’re targeting, but here comes the bad news - keyword optimization affects your ranking in only very minor ways. However, you shouldn’t skip this step as every little bit helps when you’re competing for search engine rankings.

Now, we’re going to have a look at offpage search engine optimization.

Offpage SEO refers to those factors that are not on your blog but have a significant impact on your search engine ranking. There are a lot of offpage factors, but we’ll examine them one by one. The first and most obvious one is the number of incoming links to your blog. As a general rule of thumb, the more incoming links there are to your blog, the more the search engines will view you as an authority in that particular niche and hence the higher they rank you.

However, take care to observe the quality of the links. For instance, a thousand links from completely irrelevant sites such as online dating sites will not help at all because your blog is a technology product blog, completely unrelated to online dating. On the other hand, a single link from a highly authoritative site about technology gadgets will get the search engines crawling about your blog like bees on honey.

At any rate, the most cost effective way of acquiring high quality links from authoritative sites is simply to make a direct request. If your blog contains original, high quality content and is designed to provide valuable information to the site’s readers, chances are good that the webmaster will link to your blog or even write about you!Let’s discuss how we should ask these webmasters of authority sites to link to your blog. We’re discussing this based on the assumption that your blog is very content rich and offers high quality information to anyone in your niche or topic of discussion. The most feasible option is to simply send an email directly to the webmaster.

First, let’s search for the top sites in your niche. Use the major search engines to search for the term that you’re targetting. In this case, let’s search for “technological gadgets”. The first few results, www.t3.co.uk and www.acarplace.com/brands/gm/gadgets.html are commercial sites, so in this case, don’t bother asking. We’re looking for community-based sites and other blogs that are may be more open to a complete newcomer like you. It appears that www.gizmodo.com might be a good possibility.

So take a few moments to compose an email to the webmaster of www.gizmodo.com (whose email address you’ll find on the site). They even have their AIM contact there, so it’s also a good choice if you use AOL Instant Messenger. Start by stating how you found their site (i.e. “looking for gadget information”, NOT “looking for link partners!”) and how you think their site provides valuable info. Basically, try to say something very positive about their site, but do so honestly and sincerely.

Then, suggest that certain specific content on your own blog may be a nice complement to their site’s content and vice versa. Put a link on your blog to their site and ask subtly if they might be able to do the same to establish a mutually beneficial relationship between their site and your blog.

Along the way, you’ll undoubtedly find people who won’t even respond to your email. This is inevitable, so when this happens, forget about them and move on. Remove the links from your blog to their site if they have not responded to your email within two weeks, which is a reasonably long length of time.

Continue doing this for the first thirty search results that pop up, and before long you should have quite a few good sites all linking to you. In our next lesson, we’ll continue to explore some of the more advanced offpage factors, and ways to improve them.

»» Day 6: Off Page Search Engine Optimization Part 2