Off-Page SEO

How Links Boost Your Ranking

Link Popularity

• Inbound links play a key role in determining rankings

• It’s not just about quantity (“link popularity”); it’s about quality (importance of the page, topically relevant/authoritative)

PageRank

• PageRank™ – Google’s algorithm for measuring a page’s importance; Yahoo & MSN have similar measures

• Each web page (not site) has its own PageRank score

• PageRank scores from 0 to 10; logarithmic scale• Who’s at the top of the PageRank food chain?

– 10: Google, Apple, NSF, FirstGov; 9: Yahoo, MSN, Stanford

• Sites with higher PageRank get crawled earlier, faster, and deeper by Googlebot

Google Toolbar

Problems with PageRank Meter

• Take the PageRank scores with a grain of salt• PageRank scores are merely indicative• Scores displayed in the PageRank meter are:

– Months old– Imprecise– Not the same as the PageRank as what is used in

Google’s ranking algorithm– Not representative of the home page PageRank when

a redirect is present

Find Link Targets

• Review links of competitive sites, sites in your keyword market– Check sites with high rankings for relevant keywords– The fewer the number of links on their page, the

better

• Review links to your site; look for opportunities to get the link text revised

“Google Bombing”

• Inbound contextual links alone can drive a site to the top of Google (e.g. “miserable failure”)

• Also works on Yahoo, MSN Search, etc.• THE LESSON: Link text is your secret weapon!

An unintentional “Google

bomb”

PageRank Dilution

• Careful about having multiple URLs serving up the same content– Multiple homes for your content– Multiple domains registered and resolving to your site – abccompany.com vs. www.abccompany.com– https:// version of your site– Session IDs or User IDs in the URL– 301 redirect them all to the definitive version of the page

• Removed pages– 301 redirect rather than 404

Best Practices

• Try to get good keywords in the hyperlink text• Offer link-worthy content. Keep it fresh.• Provide RSS feeds• Simple keyword-rich links encourage deep

linking• When you redesign your site, keep your old

URLs or 301 redirect them to the new URLs• “Nofollow” any links you don’t vouch for

– <a href=“/privacy-policy.htm” rel=“nofollow”>

Worst Practices

• Participating in “link farms” or FFA (“Free For All”) sites– Hallmarks of a link farm = more urls per page & less

organization

• Splogging, comment spamming, guestbook spamming

• Linking to “bad neighborhoods”• Hiding links• Hoarding all your PageRank• Unnatural link structures

Blogs

• Search engines – and Google in particular – love blogs

• Inherently link-rich– “Hat tips” – part of blog etiquette– Blogrolls– RSS feeds– Trackbacks– Comments

• The dark side of the blogosphere:– Blog comment spam– Splogs (spam blogs)

RSS Feeds

• Not only an unspammable content delivery channel to your consumers, but also…

• A powerful way to syndicate your content to other web sites– Propagate deep links that drive traffic and PageRank

– Careful! Some spammers lift your content from your RSS feeds, strip out the links, and use as keyword-rich content

RSS Feeds

• Facilitate propagation of your feeds across the web:– Set up feed “autodiscovery”

• e.g. <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://feeds.stephanspencer.com/scatterings" />

– Make your search listings in Yahoo! display the “Add to My Yahoo!” link

• Instructions here: http://my.yahoo.com/s/publishers.html– Send out “pings” (to Technorati, My Yahoo, Pingomatic, etc.)– Make sure “trackbacks” are enabled

• Submit to RSS directories & search engines– List at www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

• Pay attention to each item title; it’ll become link text

Buying Text Links

• What is a Yahoo directory listing but a paid text link!– Ok by Google because of the “editorial review”

• Brokers like Text-Link-Ads.com and can help• Google’s perspective:

– “Selling links muddies the quality of the web and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results. The rel=nofollow attribute is the correct answer: any site can sell links, but a search engine will be able to tell that the source site is not vouching for the destination page” -- Matt Cutts, Google engineer

Buying Text Links

• Google discounts the voting power of sites that it knows are selling text links:– “…parts of perl.com, xml.com, etc. have not been

trusted in terms of linkage for months and months. Remember that just because a site shows up for a “link:” command on Google does not mean that it passes PageRank, reputation, or anchortext” -- Matt Cutts, Google engineer

Evaluating a Text Ad Opportunity

• Good– High rankings for the search terms targeted with the existing ads’

link text– Stats showing the page you’ll be on gets good traffic numbers– Stats showing a respectable amount of traffic is sent to the

advertisers– Site is topically relevant to your business– Site is likely to be considered an authority site– Inbound links from .gov, .edu, .mil sites – Good Alexa rank– Extra good if the site you’re placed on is a .gov, .edu, or .mil– Reasonably good PageRank score on the page you’ll be on– Reasonably few other links on the page you’ll be on– Link is within the main body of the page

Evaluating a Text Ad Opportunity

• Bad– Sitewide link– Site has been greybarred (i.e. banned)– Neighboring ads are of dubious nature (casinos, Hoodia, Viagra,

etc.)– Acquired PageRank through dubious means (e.g. hidden or

obscured links)– Advertisers have left in droves (evidenced by Wayback Machine

archives)– “Advertisers”, “Sponsors”, or “Sponsored” closely associated

with the ads– No visibility in top 10 pages in Google for advertisers’ targeted

keywords

In Summary

• Best links are:– Topically relevant– One way (not reciprocated)– Not in footer and not site-wide

– Earned by merit, rather than bought, bartered or stolen

– Not crowded with many other links on the page

– On a high PageRank-endowed, high Alexa-ranked, .edu/.gov/.mil authority site

Q&A

• Thank You!

• Time now for some Q & A!• Also, feel free to email US : enquiry@learningcatalyst.in