Continued from this page

Marketing a new website - considerations and advice pt II

So we were talking about DIY SEO versus DIFM SEO and covered the basic tools and skills needed to perform your own SEO at a rudimentary level.

Given that the theme of this article is really understanding what work is involved and how to prioritize it, we should talk about the basics of on-page SEO versus off-site SEO.

Let's be clear on this. On page SEO is performing optimization tasks on your actual web pages. Things like adding Meta tags, Heading tags etc, are all on-page optimization tasks.

Off-site SEO is basically the task of developing incoming links to your website. Which is most important? - That's fairly easy, off-site SEO will have a bigger impact on your rankings than anything you can do on your actual website. Of course this assumes that you have the basics in place on your website, like sufficient textual content, basic optimization techniques in place etc. Off-site SEO has an effectiveness rating of around 70%. That means that 70% of the influence on your rankings/positions in search engines like Google will come from what you do away from your website, and only 30% by the actual website itself.

Looking at off-site elements and primarily link-building, it basically comes under the following hierarchy, (all important but least important first) -

1. Any incoming link to your website from another website
2. An incoming link to your website with relevant link anchor text.
3. Any incoming link to your website from a higher PR rated website
4. An incoming link to your website from a higher PR rated website with relevant anchor text.

If the website pointing to you is also of a similar theme to yours then that will help too.

So as soon as you get your website live, and have taken the basic on-page steps for SE optimization, you need to start developing incoming links.

There are a few do's and don'ts to consider -

Avoid spammy sites that are completely off-topic. Casino websites, via**a sites and the usual junk.

Start out with directories, it's OK to occasionally pay for links but don't overdo it.

Mix up the link texts so they don't all look the same*

Reciprocal links are OK when it's requested, but one-way links have more value

Look for higher profile websites with good traffic and a good Google Page Rank

Keep working at it. Set a routine so you add a new link or two daily, and keep at it even when you feel that you're running out of places to go!

*Just a quick explanation on different link types -

This website is related primarily to Joomla Web Design Services. That search term is one of our most relevant. Having a link coming into us, as in #1 above might be like this -

Visit www.webdesigndoorcounty.com for Joomla web design services.

But having the keywords in the anchor link text would look like this -

Joomla Web Design Services

The latter would carry more juice, but remember to mix it up a little so it doesn't always read the same way. Remember that you can also link into a specific page with link anchor text relevant to the content of the page.

More on link building

Most people are confused at the importance of off-site SEO. How can what I do away from my website have more influence than what I do on my website? In basic terms, Google struggled in the early years trying to combat website owners who adopted all manner of techniques on their websites to try and improve page rankings. Then the brains at Google caught onto the simple idea that when people link to you, they are essentially casting a vote for you, pretty much like a recommendation. So they use this system heavily to rank websites, the more links, the more votes and the higher ranking. Of course as these things evolve, people find ways to manipulate the system, such as buying links in large volume. This is why we suggest that you do not focus your link building campaign on purchased links, Google is wise to this strategy and will penalize your efforts.