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Day 6 - Off Page Search Engine Optimization Part 2

In our last lesson, we took a look at how getting high quality links from respected, authoritative websites in your field of interest can boost your search engine rankings. In this lesson, we’re going to delve further into linking strategies, and examine precisely how to determine and obtain “high quality” links. We’ll also talk briefly about Google’s PageRank.

First, let’s examine a regular link. Most links are composed of a segment of text (images can also be links, but we’re interested in text links) that links to your blog. Some of the significant factors include:

1) The address which it links to
2) The text of the link
3) The PageRank of the page on which the link resides

Let’s analyze this information piece by piece. First, you’d naturally want the link to link to your blog, but to which page of your blog is it best to link? To an individual post or to your blog’s home page? Since your blog is a website that is continually updated, it is wise to direct all incoming links to point to your main page instead if individual posts, which tend to be very time-sensitive. The text that you choose for your link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword.

Let’s say your blog is about technological gadgets and another site has a link that says “Lose Weight Fast!” and links that text to your blog. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? On the other hand, if a lot of links that link to your site contain the more relevent terms “technological” or “gadget”, it will greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. Thus, it’s essential to make some specific recommendations when requesting links from other webmasters, as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.

Now, let’s consider Google’s PageRank analysis tool. This is basically a scale established by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can read more about it on http://www.google.com/technology/. What is interesting is that the higher the PageRank of a certain website, the more frequent Google’s robots will visit the website to index it. Of course, the PageRank of a page will also help it to rank higher in Google’s search engine results. In short, having a high PageRank will bring you many benefits SEO-wise.

Your blog will start with no PageRank (which is different from a PageRank of 0) because Google has not yet indexed your blog. Once Google’s robots find your blog through links on other sites, your blog will show a PageRank of 0, and depending on the PageRank of the referring page, your blog’s PageRank will also rise eventually.

Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targetted visitors who are interested in your niche to your blog, enable search engines to find and index your blog, and ultimately to enable your blog to rank higher in search engine results.

»» Day 7: Generating Traffic