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Step 4: Conduct Your Off-page Optimization

While on-page optimization is all about signalling to the search engines that you have relevant content on your page and deserve to be ranked for the target keyword, off-page optimization is about signalling to the search engines that you page is the most popular page that contains that content.

Google, in particular, uses links into your site as a proxy for popularity. The quality and the quantity of links coming from other sites into your own is how search engines decide which of two pages that have equally good content should rank relative to one another. All things being equal the site with more links and better quality links will rank higher. The practice of off-page optimization is therefore sometimes referred to as “link building”.

There are so many techniques for link building that it's impossible to put them all into one small paper. At the most basic level, here are 5 strategies that work effectively:

1. Videos
2. Blogs
3. Social Media
4. Press Releases
5. Articles

Videos

Video marketing wasn't an extremely popular Internet marketing tool 5 years ago, but is now one of the fastest growing methods for high search engine rankings. Websites like YouTube and Vimeo are making it easier than ever for eCommerce businesses to post short promotional videos with a short description that links to their web page. Not only do the video channels allow you to link back to your site, but the search engines also rank video content on its own, which can get your brand on the first page for targeted keywords even before you site ranks.

Blogs

Blogs are like an endless pool of off-site content that links directly back to your website. There are two ways to use blogs: either create your own or comment on other blogs. Creating your own is simple enough; just use one of the many free blogging platforms such as Wordpress or Blogger. Then create a series of short blog posts using keywords as the anchor text linking back to your site. Blog commenting involves leaving engaging comments on other blogs that receive a lot of traffic, also with links back to your site.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other social media sites are invaluable for developing strong SEO. These allow you to network, gain a following, and connect with the millions upon millions of people who visit these sites each and every day. Posting a link on your Facebook Page and Twitter Page that points back to your content can be helpful in building popularity for your pages.

Press Releases

Release an official statement for the press for new products, events, website launches and anything else you can think of. These can create a lot of buzz for a product that will get a lot of potential clients excited about what's going to come. And, of course, you will want to use keyword based anchor text to link back to your site.

 

 

Articles

Articles are one of the easiest methods for giving your website targeted backlinks. Blogs can also do this, but it takes awhile to build a new blog into an authority site. Links that come from respected, aged domains, count for even more points. With articles, you can submit to article directories like ExineArticles and use that domain to strengthen the quality of your inbound links.