Use this link to see all the posts in this series: Do-It-Yourself SEO. 

Off Page Optimization

Anything that doesn’t have to do with how your website and your web pages are set up is off page optimization.   Most often, the term refers to obtaining incoming links – also called backlinks or inbound links.

Incoming  Links - And Why You Need Them

An incoming link is a link from another web page to one of your web pages.  You need them because the search engines put a lot of emphasis on incoming links to determine the popularity of your web pages.  Each incoming link is counted as a “vote” for your web page.

What’s The Best Way to Establish Incoming Links?

First, keep in mind these basic guideslines for obtaining incoming links.

1.  Build Incoming Links Slowly – The search engines are looking for a natural pattern of establishing incoming links.  Ideally, you wouldn’t need a strategy for obtaining incoming links.  Your site would be so interesting to so many other people with websites on the Internet, that they would just naturally link to your web pages.  Unfortunately, the world isn’t ideal, so most webmasters need to have a strategy in place.

But the natural pattern is still important to the search engines.   Even if you could establish 100’s of incoming links each month, you’d never want to do that because it would raise a big red flag with the search engines.  And, no one knows how many new incoming links per month are OK, and when you cross the line.  But, if you do what needs to be done to get quality incoming links, the time you have available to work on it will just naturally limit the number of links you establish each month.

2.  Obtain Only Quality Links – You want to focus on getting quality links, which should include links from real estate related websites, sites that make sense from a market standpoint. etc.  For example, your  Chamber of Commerce is not strictly real estate related, but it is a good link to have because it is related to your marketplace.  An example of a non-quality link would be one coming from a gambling site;   those links are easy to get, but don’t do a thing for you.

It is true that the strength of the site that is linking to you determines the strength that will be transferred to your page.   Page rank is one indicator of the strength of a web page.  So, if you have lots of links coming from PR6 pages, you’ll be better off than lots from PR0 pages.  But, in my opinion, it isn’t a good idea to limit your link strategy to sites that meet a page rank criteria.  There are also good reasons to go after links from pages that are on a site with overall good PR, or where the page containing your link will achieve good page rank over time.

3.  Use the Right Anchor Text – Anchor Text refers to the words that are actually used to link to your site.  When you first start obtaining incoming links, you can concentrate on your main keyword phrase.  So, if your main phrase was Atlanta Real Estate, that’s the best anchor text to use.

Over time, though, you’ll want to vary the anchor text for a couple reasons.  First, using reasonable anchor text will be required to make your links on other sites make sense.   Second, since the search engines are looking for a natural link structure, it’s only reasonable that not every site linking to yours would use the same terms.

4.  Look For “Deep Linking” Opportunities – If all of your incoming links lead to your home page, the structure won’t look as natural as it could.  In addition, your internal pages should focus on different keyword phrases.  You want to get those internal pages noticed by the search engines, so it would make sense to get links to those internal pages to increase your standing as an authority site.

5.  Be Patient - It will take time for the search engines to find your incoming links.  And, your links will gather more strength the longer they’re in place, since the search engines weight links according to age, the same way they do with the age of a website.

Where To Look for Incoming Links

There are many ways to obtain incoming links.  Here’s a great list of ideas for obtaining links,  and there are others around the Internet.  Some of the most frequently used approaches are discussed below.

1.  Internet Directories - Probably the easiest place to obtain incoming links is from well-established Internet directories.  It’s even better if the directories are real estate niche directories.  Some directories charge fees for a one-way link and some are free.

You may have read that paying for links is a bad thing.  Keep in mind that the discussions about paid links usually refer to a situation where a topic website is charging others to provide links.  The directories are not involved in that issue.  The best example is the Yahoo Directory - $299 annually to be listed.

Here are some places to find good directories:

• Some of my favorite real estate authority directories 
• Best Free Web Directories
• Best Paid Web Directories
• Suggestions from RealEstateABC.com
• A list of real estate related directories evaluated by OverlyReal.com 

2.  Online Press Releases – Internet press release sites such as www.PRWeb.com give you the opportunity to write a press release that can provide you with good links.  You should at least get a link from your own press release page.  And, if you have written a newsworthy release, other news sites will pick it up, which can give you additional links

3.  Writing Articles – There are many, many online article websites where you can publish an article that will provide you with incoming links.  One of the more well-known sites is at www.EzineArticles.com.  But, just do a search for article submission, and you’ll find lots of others.

I’ve been neglecting link building for our main website, and losing ground on our main keyword phrase Real Estate Marketing to some of the big boys like the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog.  I recently took a blog post that I wrote as part of the SEO series and edited it to be applicable to SEO basics in general, as opposed to real estate SEO.  I posted the article on the IdeaMarketers website as SEO Success: Learn to Think Like a Search Engine. 

In the first week of the article being on that website, the page containing the article has been cached by Google, there were 136 hits on the page, and 13 syndicated hits.  You may get better results from other article sites or other topics.  But, over time, that article should provide some good incoming links to our main site.

Is Linking the Only Off Page Factor the Search Engines Consider?

Not by a long shot.  There are hundreds of factors that the search engines take into account.  If you want more information, there’s a good resource at SEOMoz that discusses both on page and off page search engine ranking factors.  The evaluation of the ranking factors was done by a team of around 40 SEO experts.

If you ever wondered why you keep reading contradictory things about SEO issues, notice that the SEOMoz report ranks the importance of particular factors and the level of consensus among the experts who participated!