Off Page Optimization Factors

    Aside from focusing SEO efforts on factors located within the page, there are factors that you still need to monitor outside of your site, to be able to have better rankings on search engine results pages. These are called off page optimization factors, and some examples include: backlinks, link building, social book marking, and 301 or 302 redirects. Each one will be explained briefly.

Backlinks (Link Popularity)

    Inbound links, as they may also be called, are the ones that are found on other sites and that are linked towards your site. Backlinks may be found on sites that are within your niche, or are related to the same field or industry as you are in.

    To be able to determine if a site is popular, it should have a significant number of backlinks. This means that the chances of more traffic coming to your site are greater, since you are able to establish your link on other sites.

    Remember that spiders crawl content on websites, as well as the links found on them. Whenever these bots find a link, they follow it, so they have more content and pages to index. Think about this when you are trying to build up your link through partner sites. It will also be ideal to have sites related to yours with your URL in their pages.

    As part of more improved SEO efforts, you should also check your anchor text on the sites that have agreed to post your link. Are the keywords there? How are the keywords integrated? You can check these without personally going through every site, as there are tools available online for backlinks.

You can try out the domain stats tool from Web Confs at this link: http://www.webconfs.com/domain-stats.php.

Link Building / Link Baiting / Link Campaign

Remember how presidential candidates campaign to get votes? In the same way, you can optimize your site to be popular among search engines by launching a link campaign. As you know, you get more spiders to crawl your site if they come from other sites that link towards you. Link Building should be done for links from highly relevant article pages, doing which you get the targetted audience/visitors that you are looking for.

    In the most basic sense, link building is achieved when two websites have an understanding of exchanging links. Site A will post the link to Site B, and vice verse. In some SEO expert pages, this practice is called reciprocal link building. Link building will surely help to improve your SERP's. But make sure you don't pick up random links, but go in for quality and relevant link building which will not only improve rankings, but will also get targetted traffic.

    However, it is not enough that you find a site that is willing to post your link. You have to keep in mind the quality of that site, and they should not be including links in their page just for the sake of doing so.

    As much as possible, maintain it within the relevance of your site theme. Find pages related to your content, and attempt to exchange links with them. It is not advisable to have yourself included in a site that has already listed down dozens of links. You can automatically get inbound links by creating great content. Do not waste your time with automated Search engine or directory submission software.

Social Book marking

    Social book marking is a practice wherein you save a link or a webpage on a website so that you can access that book mark from anywhere, regardless of what computer you are using. This is a helpful method of easily sharing relevant content among family and friends, and the contents of that site may be accessed publicly.

    Regarding social book marks and SEO, this can be a perfect opportunity to get more inbound links towards your site. Examples of sites that offer social book marking are Digg, Squidoo, Furl, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Yahoo MyWeb, Shadows, and many more. You simply need to register to these sites so you can book mark any page you want and share them more rapidly over your network.

    There are sources that explain how unhealthy it can be to book mark every page of your site. In order for you to appear reliable to potential site visitors or customers, be wise about how you use social book marks.

301 and 302 redirects

    There are instances that you really need to perform site maintenance, and in this regard, you might have to temporarily make your site unavailable. Also, if you have moved to a new web address, made changes to domain names, and the like, you will need to show your visitors the direction to prevent them from getting lost.

    Such is the purpose of the redirect. 301 and 302 redirects refer to the number of the HTTP status code which the server sends as a message to your web browser.

    If you get a 301 response from your server, it means that the site you requested has permanently moved to a different web address, and you will be brought to that site shortly.

    On the other hand, the 302 redirect means that the site has moved temporarily, either because of constant updating needs, site repairs, and the like. According to blogs and forums on SEO, it is more ethical in SEO terms to use the 301 redirect as opposed to the 302.

    How can you use these on your site? These can be set up using the control panel provided to you by your web host. If you have trouble with this, you can request your web host to do it for you.

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