What is Off page SEO:A Suggested Approach to Link Building

The off-site phase deals primarily with inbound link building. Amongst the major engines
Google places the greatest emphasis on links. The relevance and quality of these links has
a significant influence on the ranking of your site in all of the major engines. The search
engine algorithm interprets each inbound link as a “vote” for a site. Not all links are equal
and therefore the quality of the vote is important in determining the value of the vote.

Key Factors Effecting Link Quality

According to SEO convention and the information gleaned from the Google patents, there

are a number of factors affecting the quality of your inbound links.

Google Page Rank

For Google ranking purposes a link from a high Page Rank site has even greater

influence. A link from a PR 6+ site is extremely valuable. At the other extreme, I suggest

you are prudent when exchanging links with sites of a PR of zero. The PR0 category

contains a number of banned sites.

Site and Page Relevance

A link from a site and page carrying similar content would carry more influence than

from a site without the similar content.

Link Density

Links from pages with fewer outbound links have more influence than from pages where

there are huge numbers of links – see FFAs. Additional outbound links dilute the value of

existing links on a page. My suggestion is to accept links from pages with no more than

10 to 12 links. Avoid pages with 20+ external links.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that contains or sits alongside a link. This text provides additional

relevance to the quality of a link. Anchor text is written in HTML. On-screen part of the

text shows up as highlighted (usually coloured) or underlined type and part in normal

type. The anchor text for your site could be written in HTML code as follows:

<a href="http://www.blogger.com"> Your Site Title </a> - A short description of what

you do. <BR>

Link Age

A long established link is deemed by Google to have more value than a recent link. A

rapid build up in links may also be deemed spam. However Google apparently makes an

allowance for a rapid build-up of links generated by news stories.

Originating Site has been Crawled and Indexed

It may sound obvious, but for search engine purposes a link is not a link if the search

engines are not aware of it. The link will only exist in the records of the search engine if

the page on which it is situated has been crawled and indexed whilst the link was there.

A Suggested Approach to Link Building

Obtaining a portfolio of good quality links can be a time-consuming task. There are

proprietary software packages to help you in your task of tracking down web sites with

relevant content. Many organisations work on a reciprocal basis. Sites with high Page

Rank may even charge for links. There are also link marketing and exchanging

specialists. 

However, according to Google, any attempt to exchange or buy links with the

explicit attempt to influence the ranking of your web site is considered link spamming.

My suggestion is to start close to home, exchanging links with businesses you may have a

trading relationship with. Do not rush into the link building process and do not trade links

with just anyone. Poor quality links may have a negative impact on your site.

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