Wednesday, December 2, 2009
10 Off Page SEO Factors For High Google Rankings
What the majority of people are familiar with already to some extent or another is on page SEO. Specifically, most people are familiar with the concept of using keywords in order to help boost their Google rankings. However, the other side of the coin is all about the SEO work that you do OFF site. This is collectively referred to as off page SEO, and in today's world of online marketing it's safe to say it's even more powerful than any on page SEO methods.
Below are 10 of the most important factors when it comes to off-page SEO and increasing your Google rankings. By following this advice and incorporating these strategies into your own SEO strategy, you will be giving yourself the best opportunity to soar up the search engine rankings.
1. Backlinks - The long story short is that the more backlinks (one way links to your site) tha you have leading to your website the better your website will be able to rank. This is one of the most important elements of improving your Google rankings with off page SEO.
2. Backlink Quality - While the more backlinks you have for your website the better, the quality of these backlinks plays a vital role. Not all links are created equally, and ones that have more inherent value will provide a larger boost to your Google rankings. High quality one way back links in particular, especially from related sites, or better yet, high page rank sites, are key to your search engine rankings. The more the better.
3. Backlink Diversity - In addition to the quantity and quality of backlinks you have leading to your website, the diversity of backlinks you have also plays a role. It will help your rankings much more to have links coming in from numerous sources including blogs, directories, forums, articles, related websites and more than to just have links coming in from one individual class or network.
4. Backlink Anchor Text - Having a backlink is great, but having a backlink that includes highly targeted anchor text is even better. The anchor text used in a link leading to one of your web pages will help associate that page with the included term. This mans that it's a great way to improve your Google rankings for your targeted keywords and key phrases.
5. Website History and Age: The longer your website has been around and the older your domain is, the more credible and reputable you will be viewed. You can't do much about this problem if your site is new, but you can consider purchasing older, existing domains as long as they are in good standing with the major search engines.
6. Social Networking - The growth of social networking has been extremely link, and it's a great way to improve your off-page SEO. You can build a large and diverse amount of backlinks to your site but you will also be able to reach out and connect with more prospects and potential customers and clients. Your participation will help lead to an increased web presence and stronger results across the board.
7. Visitor Behavior: The way that visitors behave when they see your website can actually affect your Google rankings. Bounce rate is a measure of how many one page visits to your website that there are. The lower your bounce rate, the more valued, related and worthwhile your website is viewed as being. Therefore you have to strive to minimize your bounces and provide meaningful, useful content with an intuitive and engaging design.
8. Traffic Sources: The sources of your traffic can also end up affecting your Google rankings. There are "good" and "bad" sources of traffic on the Internet, and if you participate in linking schemes or traffic buying you can actually end up being penalized to some degrees. You want your traffic to come from credible referral sites that are related to your own website, natural searching and any legitimate PPC campaigns you may be running.
9. Traffic History - You need to think about website development as a gradual process. That means that you should be gradually and continually adding more pages and content, while gradually and continually adding more links and so on. A sudden, large boost can signal some sketchy behavior, and can end up costing you some position in the Google rankings. Therefore take your time and build slowly, naturally and continually.
10. Web Directory Inclusion: There was a time when web directories were some of the most powerful tools for high Google rankings that your website could use. That time has passed, however the most valued directories can still provide a great deal of help. Focus on being included into a few of the select best web directories instead of trying for mass-inclusion with thousands of directories with no value whatsoever.
If you follow all of the above, or even a fraction, and you implement them, you will be on your way to improved Google rankings through the use of off-page SEO. While these off the page tactics were once questioned, today they are viewed as equals to on-page SEO. In fact, many experts and specialists now agree that SEO has evolved to the point where off-page SEO is even more important for Google rankings than on-page strategies, and I think it will continue to trend that way.
I recommend that you take the time to familiarize yourself with the best practices of off-page SEO. Build up a diverse collection of high quality links, provide content that people find relevant, gradually build your website and do everything you can off of your website to help increase your Google and search engine rankings.
5 Reasons Why Your Google Web Page Ranking Fluctuates
As a Search Engine Optimizer, I often receive inquiries from Webmasters or Business Owners asking why sometimes they see their web page rankings appear on the first page of Google but to disappear after a few days. Based on my experiences, there are a few reasons why your web pages encounter these drastic ranking changes.
The first reason is because your website is very new. If you have just created your website and put it online last week, you may be able to see your web page ranks on first page of Google for your keywords - for example, when you search for your company name. However, the ranking disappears after a few days. This is a very common thing that happens to new sites. Some people call this the Google Ranking Bounce effect. Do not worry about this issue because your ranking will come back in a few weeks time once it stabilizes.
The second reason is the frequency of fresh incoming links. If there are no incoming links pointing to your web page for a few weeks, you will find a drop in your rankings in Google. This is because of the freshness relevancy. Search Engines loves fresh incoming links and this is one of the ways to make sure that your site is still fresh and there are people linking to you for your content. So make sure you put up a great piece of content to draw in some links from other sites at least in a monthly basis.
Unstable linking strategies will also affects your rankings. For example, if most of the links pointing to your web page is from forums and when the forum owners start to switch the forum links to no-follow or hide the signature links, you will find that your rankings drop overnight. This is what I call the unstable linking strategy. It is better for you to get other people linking to you willingly instead of you going around creating or asking for links. Thus, you really need to come out with something that will make people talk and link to you.
The fourth reason is pretty straightforward. Some people will find that their rankings drops a lot when they search using different computers. One of the reasons is because they have logged into their Google account when searching. Never ever log-in to your Google account when searching as this will make all the search results customized to your history. I always do a search using another browser without my previous cookies and log-in information. This ensures that I will be seeing results that other people sees as well.
The last reason is that you may have changed your content especially your title tag. To me, I would avoid making drastic changes to title tags as they are the most important part of your web page when Google allocates you the relevancy. Hence, always make little changes to your page unless you are sure what you are doing. Making little changes and tracking the results is a safer route to ensure that your ranking does not fluctuates too much.
I hope that you will find the above tips useful and do keep them in mind as these are the most common pitfalls people jump into accidentally.