All of us are aware now that field of Search Engine Optimization is booming with every day. People might be unaware that what they learnt yesterday might become absolute tomorrow. The only way not to log back in race of SEO, one has to update his knowledge regularly by reading SEO articles.
Being a SEO expert, I feel it’s our duty to make people/clients aware of some factors that deal with Offpage SEO. Most of things you might be aware of and some might be hidden treasure for you.
(1) Community Creation: Also termed as online reputation management, it is first step which you should do. Signup with popular social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn and create a profile for you/ your website. Connect with friends, share among them and promote your company. This will help you to build an online reputation. This is all what is popularly called Web 2.0.
(2) Blogging: It is one of powerful strategies to promote your or any company’s website online. Write a blog with unique content. Convey precisely to your readers but don’t forget to promote your blog in blog search engines and blog directories. You can post comments at other websites too. If you are not good at writing content, hire someone!
(3) Forums: If feasible, create online forum/discussion board hosted on your site. Invite your friends to start new discussion. Post replies/thread in other related forums. Your signatures can provide you valuable links.
(4) Submission in Search Engines: This is one of important steps. Submit your website in popular search engines. To name a few: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Alexa, Alltheweb. Submit in as many search engines as you can.
(5) Directory Submission: These days’ people think that directory submissions are useless. However, in my views it is still alive. Only thing you need to be careful is about directory in which you are going to submit your website and the category in which it will be submitted. Try of submit your site in DMOZ, Zoominfo, Onemission. Never go for paid listings.
(6) Social Bookmarking: It can be a powerful tool but don’t abuse them. People submit content in social bookmarking sites without having knowledge about the right ways to extract benefit from them. Handle tags properly. Few do follow links can give a big boost your SERPs.
(7) Link Exchange: Try to exchange links with industry related websites. This can give a major boost to your SERPs but beware of black hat techniques while exchanging links with other sites.
(8 ) Link Baiting: Many people don’t understand link baiting and consider it black hat. It is giving due credit to author/original resource from where you copied content. If you follow it, chances are there that other might also follow the same practice.
(9) Photo Sharing: Done correctly, it can bring handsome traffic to your website. Share product images and make them public. Invite your friends to view them/comment on them.
(10) Video Promotions: As with photo sharing, you can share or publish your product videos, expert opinions in major video publishing sites like YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion etc.
(11) Business Reviews: Write business reviews and ask your friends/clients to do it for you. Few major sites are Shvoong, RateitAll, Stylefeeder.
(12) Yellow Pages and Local Listings: If nature of your business is service oriented, try to dominate your local market. Google maps, yahoo Maps, yellow pages, hotfrog, supermages are few sites worth trying.
(13) Article Submission: It is one of oldest ways to earn backinks. Submit your website in good article directories like Ezine, Go Articles,Buzzle etc.
(14) Press Release: Submit your PR in sites likes OpenPR, PR leap, 1888pressrelease. This might help your site to get published in Google News.
(15) Classifieds Submission: Post your products/services on classifieds sites like Craiglist, MySpace, Vivastreet.
(16) Social Shopping Network: If you have an e-commerce site, this can be good strategy and can help you get branding for free. Submit your product feed into MSN Online Shopping, Google Product Search and Yahoo Online Shopping.
(17) Answers: Try to help people; people will in return help you. Answer questions asked by people. Sometimes you can place a link of your site in resource box. Some great sites are Yahoo answers, Answer Bag, Cha Cha etc. But don’t spam!
(18) Document Sharing: Share your business documents, slides in Slide share, google docs. This helps in building brand.
(19) CSS, W3C Directory Submission: If you offer website design or related services, submit your websites in W3C and CSS directories along with RSS sites.
(20) Gadget/Widget Development: Develop some interactive gadgets for your site. Publish them on your website/blog and other social networking website. Let your friends and world be aware of your brand.
(21) RSS Feeds: If you have a blog/RSS feed, then you can always submit your site in RSS directories.
(22) Citations: Build citations to your website in authority sites. This will give a big boost to your search engine rankings.
(23) Link Wheel: Also called Google Wheel/Wonder Wheel, it involves cross linking web 2.0 sites and your website. This can help you drive good amount of traffic.
(24) PPC/ Adwords: If you don’t have time to put all these strategies to work and still in need of traffic, PPC is answer for you.
