To Boost Search Results, Off-page Content Hits the Mark
By Sean Jackson
Lead Maverick is well known for its success in optimizing on-page content. However, off-page content is also a key ingredient to our success with search optimization. Here are some tips for utilizing off-page optimization to boost your website’s search rankings.
First some clarification. “On-page” optimization refers to the way information on the web page is presented to a search engine crawler. It includes optimizing the HTML of the page along with the content. On-page optimization is usually the starting point for any SEO work. “Off-page” optimization can be boiled down to getting your content on other websites with a link back to your optimized page. This is more than just generic link-building as you will see below.
Off-page content generally has three key elements, all of equal importance.
First, you must identify the “right” website to place your content. This is the hardest point as any good SEO practitioner will tell you. The right site could be a blog, an industry website, a business directory or a forum. It may even be the website of a client, customer or vendor. In terms of search marketing, the “right” website will also have a few other characteristics, such as a decent PageRank with Google (at least 3 or higher), has recently been crawled by a major search engine (Google the term cache:www.sitename.com) and gets some decent traffic (over 5K visitors per month; see Quantcast and Alexa). Other criteria will include target audience, online reputation, etc.
Once you have identified the “right” site, next comes the fun part, creating your snippet. The key to off-page content is to create short, compelling and relevant content that links to your optimized page.
- Develop a few key relevant headlines and body content to draw people to your main content.
- Be relevant to the right site you will post on.
- Keep your headline less than 80 characters and the body content less than 300 characters. Think of this as a signature line or news headline. Something straight forward, to the point, and if people want to read more, they can go to the link.
- The most important point about your snippets (different ones for different scenarios) is that they SHOULD NOT BE AN AD! I cannot stress this point enough. If you have something meaningful to say, then include your snippet. If not, DON’T. Craft your snippet to be short, to the point, and answering a question with the “read more” option for those who want to learn more. If your headline is a question or a declarative statement, it is an AD.
Finally, we come to the longest part of the process, getting a snippet of content posted. This is not hard, but it will take time. A few options:
- In some cases you can buy placement. For example, the Yahoo Directory or Business.com will charge you a $299 fee for a snippet of content.
- In other cases, it may be
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