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Off Site SEO

Posted on April 13, 2008
Filed Under SEO | 1 Comment

I’m going to link back to the second of my posts that dealt with online SEO, entitled: On Site SEO Update, because it provided proof that when you go about something single-mindedly and mean to do it successfully, you usually will.

I said I’d get this blog onto the first page of Google for the term on site SEO and I did just that. So what about off site SEO? Well, that’s not an impossible task either, because I only have to repeat what I did for the previous project to rank on page one for off site SEO. In fact it would be an easier task as there are less than ten thousand competing pages for”off site SEO” so to attack that particular keyword niche would be a bit like using dynamite in a small lake to catch a fish.

So, while this post will indeed rank on page one for the term “off site SEO” within a few days, that’s not going to be the reason for the post. I’m going to talk about one aspect of off site SEO that is probably the most important when it comes to ranking your site on Google’s page one for whatever keyword term you intend to rank for.

Its no big secret, either. They’re called one way inbound links, otherwise known as backlinks. But I’m not talking about any old backlinks here, although it is true that quantity of sheer numbers of crappy backlinks still count and will make a big difference to your position in the SERPs. No, I’m going to talk about the best quality backlinks you can get your grubby little hands on!

These are top quality links that come from authority sites within the niche you are targeting with the added imporatnt factor that they must include your main keyword in the anchor text. That’s the most important part of any off site SEO you can do with any backlink you can get pointing to your site or blog.

I can’t hark on about this with enough emphasis - it is absolutely vital if you want to get up onto page one of the SERPs to have as many keyword anchored backlinks as possible, especially when there are other competing pages that also know a thing or two about on site and off site SEO.

Why?

Because the more authority sites that you can get to include your keyword in the anchor text of the backlink they give you, the more authority your blog will have in Google’s eyes for your main keyword and therefore the higher it will place you in the SERPs. Google ranks authority sites highest, above sites with high page rank (PR) and above sites that are full of great content that do not have keyword anchored backlinks and therefore are seen as having less authority. To add to this, it is also important to vary the keyword anchor slightly to include other related long tail keywords, as this will make it look more natural. There’s more… getting keyword anchored backlinks to some of your deeper pages in your site count highly for off site SEO as well - giving your site even more authority.

That’s the long and the short of it. So you may ask, “where do I get these coveted authority keyword anchored backlinks from?”

There’s the rub - its not easy else everyone would be doing it. Most site owners that mean business and are determined to dominate their niche will buy them, pure and simple. They’ll use services like PayPorPest or other so-called paid review service, or Textlonk Ads (deliberate misspellings, there) to buy their way to the top of the SERPs.

But you can do it more legitimately if you have several sites or blogs of your own that all occupy similar or related niches. Even if they do not have high PR or a whole lot of authority, if you can use each of your other related sites to provide one keyword anchored link to the site you want to dominate your niche with, you will do it a lot of good by raising its keyword authority. That’s your off site SEO taken care of without having to resort to buying links. You then need to do your on site SEO by writing lots of keyword rich, relevant content and keep writing it often so Google sees the constantly updated content and the authority links and will then continually improve the position of your site in its SERPs.

That’s how you you do your off site SEO and combine it with good on site SEO to compete in your chosen niche. The rest is up to Time (it takes some) and the search engines to spider your site and recognise the links and content.

Lets see what happens with this site…

Terry Didcott, owner of Saturn Directory
Blogging Web 2.0