This section explains WHAT Off Page SEO is while the next section actually explains techniques for getting your site higher on the Google Search Engine. All users should read through this section before proceeding to get an understanding of how search engines rank websites. This section is a bit lengthy and word heavy, so bear with me. It’s important so don’t skip it!
The most important part of Search Engine Optimization is “Off Page SEO”, also known as ‘link building’. The #1 thing that search engines ‘look at’ to determine where a site should rank on searches is the number of quality links pointing to that site. What does this mean? Well, for every link that points to your website on the internet, it helps your site on the search engines. for example, if I was to link to the website http://slickdeals.net , this particular link would help Slickdeals.net rank better on Google search results, BUT since I’m linking directory to the website by just typing out the URL http://slickdeals.net I’m not helping Slickdeals.net that much because I’m just typing out a url, but If I were to link to the same website like this: Good Deals SlickDeals.net would now rank better on Google for the search ‘Good Deals’. This is so because I’m linking to Slickdeals.net with the words ‘Good Deals’ as the text. The way Google sees this is that since the words ‘Good Deals’ point to Slickdeals.net, it means SlickDeals.net must have something to do with ‘Good Deals’. It associates the words ‘Good Deals’ with the URL for Slickdeals.net
Now my link to Slickdeals.net is not exactly worth ‘a lot’ because SiteBasics101.com has NOTHING to do with what slickdeals.net is about. Slickdeals.net is a website about ‘Good internet deals’ and ‘coupons’ while Sitebasics101.com is a website about creating a website, which means that the two sites are not even remotely related. Google can see that Sitebasics101.com has nothing to do with ‘good deals’ so my particular link didn’t exactly help slickdeals.net too much in the eyes of search engines, BUT lets say a website like…. http://fatwallet.com linked to slickdeals in the same way that I did, then Google would see that FatWallet.com is A LOT like Slickdeals.net, so Google would give a lot more weight to that particular link, as it’s more relevant. If lets say a website about video games linked to my website about Earl Grey Tea, it really wouldn’t help me that much because Video Games have nothing to do with Earl Grey Tea. The key to ranking well on Google and all other search engines is to have relevant links from other websites pointing to your website. Getting relevant links is explained in more detail in the next part of this guide.
Aside from ‘relevant’ links, another important aspect of ‘Off page SEO’ is quality links. A quality link is a link from an authority website. If lets say Microsoft.com decides to link to Sitebasics101.com on the front page of Microsoft.com it would INSTANTLY do wonders for Sitebasics101.com because it makes Google think ‘Woah, Microsoft.com, which is a huge website, is linking to Sitebasics101.com, That must mean Sitebasics101.com is a pretty amazing website’. The best way you can tell the quality of a website by checking it’s ‘Page Rank’. Google assigns every website on the internet a Page Rank, which is basically a score from 0-10. New websites start off with 0 Page Rank and the more quality links a site has pointing to it, the higher the Page Rank is. Google.com for example has a Page Rank of 10 wile Youtube.com has a Page Rank of 9, Facebook has a Page Rank of 9 and Bloomberg.com has a Page Rank of 8. The higher the Page Rank, the more important the site is in Google’s eyes, and the more weight links from that site has. If a site with a Page Rank of let’s say 7 linked to Sitebasics101.com it would greatly help Sitebasic101.com’s rankings in Google and also help improve Sitebasics101.com’s Page Rank. You can check a website’s Page Rank by downloading the Google Toolbar, or you can use one of the Firefox SEO Plugins that I recommended in the ‘Useful tools’ section of this site. I strongly recommend people to have SEO Quake downloaded before moving on to the actual link building section of this guide because its the best way to quickly check what the Page Rank of a site is. You’ll see why it’s this is important in the next part of this guide. The thing about Page Rank is that Google only updates ‘Page Rank’ once every four months or so, so new websites tend to have a Page Rank of ‘N/A’ or ‘0′ for a very long time, so you shouldn’t worry about your site’s page rank right away, as it’s not really that important. Page Rank is only important to know when you’re trying to aquire links from other websites.
Now that you read through this, you should have a basic understanding of how Google ranks the websites in its search engine. Whichever sites have the most relant links and the most powerful links pointing to their sites tend to rank highest. One last thing that i’d like to clear up before we move onto the next portion of this guide is the myth that Google ’sells’ high ranking positions on its search engine. NO SEARCH ENGINE does this! Google DOES sell ‘SPONSORED’ search positions on the RIGHT side and sometimes towards the top of the search engine results page, but it never sells actual search engine rankings for money. The sites that actually appear on the search engine results page are the ones with the most links pointing to them. There are a lot of other factors that Google looks at, but the #1 factor in determing a site’s ranking is without a doubt the number of links pointing to it.