Off page optimizations consist entirely of link building strategies. Because it involves third parties, you will often be limited in the amount of control you can exercise. However, knowing what search engines are looking for can help you optimize for those opportunities where you do have control.

Search engines evaluate the relevance of pages that link to yours. Having a link to a page that discusses widget training services will be more useful to a widget store than a link to “Joe Bob’s Land of a Million Free Links.” In addition to relevancy that search engines will appreciate, topic-related sitelinks can and will drive traffic to your site in their own right.

General tips to maximize the value of links

Every link is a good link, but some links are better than others. When soliciting links from link partners, directories, or other places, you should be aware of the following:

• Always link to your home page using the root of your domain name. Don’t link to the page name of the default home page. For example, all links on the home page of this site link to http://www.measuring-up.com/ and no http://www.measuring-up.com/index.HTML. Of course, the file name must be included when linking to pages other than the home page.
• Be consistent in your use of www. prefix in the URL. Treatment of search engines http://measure-up.com/ Y http://www.measuring-up.com/ Like two different places.
• Use your keywords/keyphrases as/in the anchor text for all links where appropriate. You generally don’t have much control over third party links to your site, but you can control the anchor text for all links within your site and from any third party links you can define/edit.

Link building campaigns

With a new site, it can be helpful to participate in a link building campaign to get your site immediate exposure. As your site matures and you develop more content, you will find that other sites will begin to link to it without prompts.

There are several avenues you can take to expand your link building campaign:

• free directories – These human-edited directories are used by crawler search engines to find (and categorize) websites. Be sure to get listings from all applicable directories:
• – largest free directory. Used by Google to power the Google directory. It can take a long time (months in some cases) for an application to be processed, so patience is gold when applying to DMOZ.
• You must apply to become a publisher if you do not wish to pay for inclusion.
• It only accepts sites that offer some interactive features. Be sure to check their guidelines before applying.
• – Only non-commercial sites are accepted.
• When applying to these directories, please adhere to their instructions and make it as easy as possible for their editors to approve your submission(s). Consider becoming a publisher for a few directories and you may be able to speed up your own submissions.
• thematic portals – Search for magazines, discussion forums, vertical specific directories, etc. that is relevant to your niche. Request listings when applicable.
• press releases / articles – Many websites will be happy to publish a press release or content article and include a link to your site.
• industry organizations – Many non-profit organizations offer directories of their members with links to their websites. Join as many as make sense for your business.
• participate in discussion forums – Many Internet discussion forums allow hyperlinks in “signature files”. Participate in discussions and offer advice and wisdom. Don’t spam the forums with blatant advertising. This will reflect badly on you and possibly get you banned from the forum.
• set up a search engine friendly affiliate program – offer commissions on the sales of your product(s) to get others to advertise your products and link to your site.
• RSS news feeds – publish company news via RSS syndication. Other websites pick up the RSS feed and post your news (which can include a link to your site, of course).
• paid advertising – There are many directories (such as Yahoo), portals and websites that offer paid advertising options from text links to banners.

reciprocal links

You can use search engines to find websites that may link to you. Search your keywords and your competitors’ backlinks to find sites that link to websites in your industry. Visit those sites and try to determine the name of the owner (or an administrator, as applicable). Send them a personalized email introducing them to your site. Request consideration for a list on your links page (and include the URL of that page) where your website would be of value to your audience.

Many owners/managers/webmasters will be happy to link to your site if it is relevant, quality and useful to their audience. Some might request reciprocity. If your site is useful to your site visitors, you should consider reciprocity. We do not recommend exchanging links with websites that do not have a thematic connection to your site. It looks unprofessional and some search engines may be starting to penalize sites for it.

When requesting a link from another site, be sure to format the requested link to match the format posted on the destination link page. Make sure you use your password…