Offsite Optimization

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by: Brian Queenan
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Offsite optimization is an important part of your SEO strategy. Actually, offsite optimization is probably the most important part of your SEO because if done right it will get you ranked well on the search engines and will bring you tons of traffic to your website. The problem that most webmasters have with their offsite optimization strategy is that they leave out a super important key ingredient. I’m guessing it is because most don’t consider it in the first place.

The biggest offsite optimization that you will ever do is getting other websites to point to your website. Offsite optimization is super important to getting traffic to your website.

I get really annoyed when I read that you must have incoming links from websites that are related to your own for the link to be worth anything. I can tell you that this is not true. While having inbound links from websites that are relevant to your own may be helpful it is not the most important or deciding factor to your offsite optimization.

The most important thing is that the inbound link itself is relevant to your website. That’s what the search engines rely on to determine the relevancy of the search. The search engine has no idea what your website is about when it finds your website through a link on an outside website unless you tell the search engine through your text link. That’s what this article is going to address.

Another fallacy is that free link directories are no longer as effective as they once were. The fact is, they are still very effective. The problem is that most don’t take the time to learn what they need to do in order to submit quality links that will count with the search engines. Ignorance may be bliss but it is disastrous when it comes to offsite optimization. The sad thing about it is that it isn’t any more difficult and it doesn’t take any longer to do it right. The problem is that everyone listens to the so called SEO gurus who don’t know anything more than anyone else when it comes to offsite optimization. If you submit your link correctly to free directories it is extremely effective.

Before I tell you about using directories for offsite optimization I’ll tell you what you need to have for a quality effective inbound link. The most important thing to have with an inbound link is that you use the most relevant anchor text that best describes what your website is about. Anchor text is the text that displays in front of the URL to where the user will be taken when the text link is clicked in case you didn’t know what anchor text means.

I’ll use my website as an example to help you understand what you need to have for a quality inbound text link. Your anchor text should contain the main keyword to your website. For my website my main keyword is strategic internet marketing. You can find this keyword throughout the website including the title, website name, and the URL itself. It is really important that your website name and title are the same because those are the two things that the search engine will look for first and carries the most weight when your website is crawled. For my website I would want my anchor text for my inbound link to be the same as my main keyword for the website. For my main keyword (strategic internet marketing) I want my text link to look like this. Strategic Internet Marketing. That’s what I want to submit for my inbound links.

When the search engines find my link on another website it will follow that link to my website and will find that the title, website name and the URL are all the same and will determine that my website is very relevant to the link that it followed and will consider the link a reliable relevant source and will add the link to its directory.

I have run searches on Google to check out websites to see how they optimize their websites and have found that there are websites that rank above other websites that have far more inbound links. I have seen websites with just a couple hundred inbound links beat out sites with thousands of inbound links. The continuing constant between the two is that the better ranked website has relevant anchor text while the lower ranked site doesn’t even though the lower ranked website has more inbound links. While quantity is important, quality far outweighs it.

The thing that you need to understand about the free link directories is that most are very anal when it comes to accepting websites for inclusion in their directory. Some directories will require that your website has a minimum page rank. There is nothing that you can do about this if your website has no page rank. For the rest there are things that you need to know before you submit your website for inclusion.

Free link directories go about the inclusion process differently from others. Some will be exactly the same while others will be different. Before submitting to any directories make sure that the title and the meta description of your website are what you want and both contain the main keyword for your website. The meta description and title for your website should be the same as what you will submit to the link directories.

Some directories will only ask for the URL to your website and will import your title and meta description and will leave you no choice of how your text link and description will look like. That is why it is important that your main keyword is in the title and meta description and everything reads the way that you want it to so that you end up with what you want. The title to your website will be used as the anchor text for your submitted link.

Most directories will require you to add the link and description yourself. Use your title and meta description so that every link in every directory looks the same and matches what’s on your website.

Make sure that you submit your link to the most relevant category otherwise you will get rejected. If you submit to the wrong category your submission will almost always be declined.

Make sure that your website has enough content on it as well. If your website has just a page or two on it your website will almost always be rejected. As of this writing I have not yet submitted to any link directories for my website because of the lack of content there. Once I have enough content I will submit.

Some link directories will accept you right away to a couple of days while others will take weeks, months or even up to a year to include your website in their directory.

The bottom line to your offsite optimization where directories are concerned is that your anchor text is relevant and matches what your website is about so that the search engines can follow the link and determine what your main keyword is.

Here is a website with a considerable list of directories that you can submit to.

directorymaximizer.com/seo-friendly-directories.php

About the Author

Brian Queenan is the owner of an Internet Marketing website that teaches strategic Internet marketing to new as well as seasoned Internet marketers to market successfully on the web for free. You Can learn more about  strategic Internet marketing at http://strategic-internet-marketing.us.

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