Off page optimization is the term used for the actions taken off the actual web page that positively affect the performance of the page and the site. This includes everything from links from other sites, exchanges of links and the actions taken offline that affect performance of the web site.

Due to the ease with which on-page factors can be manipulated search engines now place more weight on so called off-page factors. Google made this form of ranking famous with its patented PageRank algorithm but researchers discussed using ideas such as link anchor text as far back as 1994. Off-page criteria are obtained from sources other than the website.

Probably the most important of these criteria are the quantity of inbound-links using anchor text containing your target keywords. These should come from pages covering similar topics, preferably from large, long established authority sites. Link popularity is a score that adds up the total number of links you have pointed to your site over various search engines.

Search engines heavily weigh how many links there are pointing to your site. Search engines believes in the fact that more the links more useful the site for visitors. The inbound links are like recommendation to view your site. However, all links aren't equal in terms of quality. The more links you have the better. Evaluating a links importance is quite complex and is determined on various factors. Some of them are content relation, page rank and page traffic.

Content relation: Any link from content rich site is most valuable in terms of quality. Of course the content should be related to the topic of your page/site. Any website that operates the same target audience is very valuable. For example if you are a ‘SEO’ company, then the links from SEO related sites will certainly create more value for your rankings.

Page Rank: It is a number between 0 to 10 that Google assigns to every web page in it’s index. In the case of Google the higher the PageRank the better! All other things being equal, a link from a PR6 site is worth around eight to ten times that of a PR5 site. But determining a link’s value solely on page rank is unwise as there are lots of PR0 pages that might have lots of targeted traffic.

Continue ...