Off-page Optimization refers to all the measures that can be taken outside the website to improve its ranking on search engine result pages.

It is a long-term process which is mainly focused on acquiring backlinks to your webpages from the social media, authority sites and social bookmarking. Thus, in off-page optimization we are supposed to create as many quality backlinks as possible using different techniques outside the website.

PageRank

PageRank is an algorithm used by Google for link analysis. It was invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; the owners of Google. It was developed by Google to rank pages on their merit and not on meta tags as people had started misusing meta tags to improve their rankings.

It is an important off-page optimization factor. It decides how easily and quickly your users can find your webpages on the world wide web. If your PageRank is good the user will find you easily as the search engine will keep your site higher on the search engine listings.

Some important link building strategies to improve your Google PageRank:

List your site on renowned and popular directories and stay away from link farms that are not useful.

Be a part of online forums and share valuable comments with backlinks to your site.

Publish relevant articles on trusted and popular article submission sites like EzineArticles and Associated Content.

Find out popular sites and encourage them for link exchange

Be active on social media; use different techniques like Social Bookmarking, Twitter profile links and Google+ shares for building links.

Link Popularity

Link Popularity is an important Off-page SEO strategy. It refers to the total number of links that point to a website. These links are of two types; internal and external. Internal links are the links from your own webpages and external links are from other webpages or websites.

The high link popularity shows that more people are connected to your site and it contains useful content and information. So, it is one of the important factors for the search engines to rank websites in search engine result pages, i.e. if there are two websites with same level of search engine optimization then the site with higher link popularity will be ranked higher than the other by the search engine.

Directory Submission

Directory submission is an off-page optimization activity. It involves submission of your site to a specific category of a web directory, e.g. if you have a tutorial website then you are supposed to submit your site in the education category of a web directory. Some directories are free and some charges a fee to list your site in the relevant categories.

Every directory has its own guidelines which you need to follow to submit your site. Some basic guidelines that most of the directories follow to approve a site into their database are; Title, Description, Keywords, Url, Category, Email and Site Content. Some directoris

Some of the popular directory submission sites are; www.dmoz.org, www.directorylisting.com and www.seofriendly.com.

There are plenty of benefits of having your site listed in popular directories. Some of the benefits are listed below;

1) Fast indexing:The search engines can easily find your site for crawling and indexing.

2) Higher link popularity: You get two additional links; contextual category link and unique directory listing link.

3) Higher page rank: Quality directories are used in Google Algorithm to calculate Google PageRank.

4) Social Media Sharing: Most of the popular directories have social media sharing buttons. It allows users to share your link with other users.

5) More traffic: The heavy traffic of popular directories can be diverted to your site.

6) Brand awareness: Your brand gets more exposure that helps increase brand awareness.

Social Bookmark Submission

Social bookmark submission is an off-page optimization activity that enables you store your links on online bookmarking sites. These links or bookmarks are the tagged pages on the web that can be accessed from any computer with internet access. Thus, every such bookmark acts as a backlink that helps improve SEO of a site.

These stored links are considered quality backlinks as in most of the bookmarking sites you can give a title to your URL and can also add related description and keywords. Thus, title is stored with the link which acts as an anchor text for the backlink. You can also incorporate your main keywords in the title to transform your social bookmark into a keyword-anchored backlink.

Some of the popular social bookmarking sites are twitter.com, pinterest.com, digg.com, delicious.com and reddit.com.

Social bookmark submission benefits

Increases website traffic: It helps you get lots of free website traffic as bookmarking sites are visited by hundreds of visitors daily. If your content is good these visitors will click on the link and visit your site for more information.

Free online promotion: You can promote your products or links free of cost as social bookmarking sites do not charge for their services.

Quality Backlinks: It helps build permanent and quality backlinks as most of the social bookmaking sites allow webmasters to create backlinks for their sites.

Improve Google PageRank: The backlinks generated by bookmarking your webpages on social networking sites help improve your Google PageRank.

Faster indexing: Social bookmarking sites are known for fresh and useful content and are frequently visited by search engines. So, if your content is useful and users are sharing it then the search engine will index you link quickly.

Portability and Security: It enables you to secure and remember your favorite webpages. You can access your stored webpages online from anywhere with any computer. Thus, you will not lose important information that you have stored in social bookmarking sites.

Blog Submission

Blogging is an important off-page optimization activity. It enables you offer your users fresh content on a regular basis so that users keep visiting your site. Today, it has become an important SEO activity for the website owners who want to convert their visitors into actual customers. Blogs are also popular as weblogs.

Blogging is a continuous process. You need to write and post the blogs at regular intervals. Your blogs should offer unique and useful information so that they could attract users as well as the search engines.

Benefits of blogging

Improves SEO: You can offer your users fresh and meaningful content by blogging consistently. The search engines also love to index fresh content where you can incorporate your keywords to get more exposure on search engine result pages.

Improves relationship: It helps you connect with your readers by asking relevant questions, feedback or comments at the end of the blog. You can also share your product and business updates with your clients and potential customers to maintain relationship.

Free marketing: If your blogs are useful the readers will share it with others. They can share your link, tweet it or email the information to others. Thus, indirectly they are doing the free marketing for you.

Helps Build authority: It gives you the opportunity to share industry related news and information which helps you establish authority in your niche.

More Inbound links: Blogging is one of the smartest ways to generate authoritative links to your website. Your meaningful blogs are resources for other writers who can mention your website in their articles which will generate inbound links.

Article Submission

Article submission is an off-page optimization activity. It refers to attracting traffic by submitting SEO optimized articles to popular article submission directories. It is a long term SEO activity which helps increase backlinks and boost pagerank of your website or blog.

Keep in mind that articles should be submitted in the relevant categories of popular article submission websites. Also, you are required to produce quality articles only then you can reap maximum benefits of this activity. You can consider the following points to produce quality articles;

The article should be unique and informative.

Incorporate main keywords in the article but not to the extent of keyword stuffing.

The article should have optimum length; between 500 and 700 words.

Title should be unique and must have the main keyword so that web crawler can easily identify and index it.

Write short paragraphs and use subheadings and bullets to make your article more presentable.

Article Submission Benefits

It is a simple yet effective way of building backlinks.

It helps generate long term backlinks from popular websites.

It boosts the marketing results and popularity of your product or brand on the World Wide Web.

It helps you establish yourself as an expert in the industry.

It allows you provide valuable information to customers that helps build trust of your potential customers.

Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal Linking refers to creating reciprocal link between two websites, i.e. it is created when a website 'A' links to website 'B' which in turn links to website 'A'. It is an agreement between two websites where each website is hyperlinked to another website.

It is usually done between the sites that provide related services or information. The purpose of reciprocal liking is to provide readers a quick access to the related sites and to boost search engine rankings of the sites.

The reciprocal links should be built between related websites otherwise it will irritate your users that will harm SEO of your site, e.g. A car wash and dent repair company in the same city may link each other sites to attract more customers.

Forum Posting

Forum posting refers to generating quality inbound links by participating in online discussion forums. It allows you to post new posts and reply to old ones to drive traffic to your site.

There are a number of forum websites which offer a platform for online discussion, i.e. message board, discussion groups, discussion forums and bulletin boards are some of the popular types of forum websites. You need to sign up on these websites only then you can submit topics for discussion.

Some of the popular forum discussion sites are:

Yahoo Answers

Digital Point Forums

WarriorForum

Mylot

Webhostingtalk

Stackoverflow

Google Product Forum

Forum Posting Instructions:

Choose relevant forums: You should post on related forums, i.e. if your post is about computer technology then you should prefer computer technology related forums.

Choose proper title: Your title should clearly reflect the content of your post. An unrelated title may take your reader away from your site.

Incorporate main keywords: Insert your main keywords in the title and body of the post. It helps your post appear in the search results for a query with the same keywords.

Forum guidelines: Every forum has its own registration process and guidelines which you should follow. It helps you gain respect and attract serious and focused readers.

Place your link: You can add your link in your signature at the end of a post. It will help generate backlinks to your site.

Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is an off-page optimization strategy in which a website is directly submitted to a search engine for indexing and to get it listed in search engine listings. It is considered an initial step for website promotion or to get search engine traffic.

There are mainly two methods for search engine submission. The first method allows you to submit one page at a time by using a webmaster tool like Google Webmaster Central or Bing Webmaster Tools. The second method allows you submit the entire site by submitting the homepage.

Search Engine Submission Benefits:

1) It allows you to inform search engines about your presence and the product or services offered by you.

2) You can get your webpages indexed in multiple search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

3) It helps your site to be discovered quickly by web spiders and you don?t need to wait for the web crawler to find it organically.

RSS Feed Submission

RSS feed submission refers to the submission of RSS feeds to RSS submission directory sites to boost your search engine ranking. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary and sometimes also for Really Simple Syndication.

The RSS feed contains updates of your website, i.e. updated content, videos, images, links, etc. The users who are interested in these updates can subscribe your RSS feed that helps get more free traffic and backlinks. Thus, whenever a visitor visits your blog or page and wants to be notified when it is updated on your site then RSS feed is an ideal option.

RSS Feed Submission Benefits

The updated content or information quickly reaches the interested users. It helps retain your readers and increases credibility of your site.

The content would also attract new readers who are searching updates related to your content.

You can incorporate your main keywords or phrases in the RSS feeds that can improve ranking of your site.

Your site gains more popularity if you keep providing fresh and relevant content by submitting RSS feeds.

All these benefits are directly linked to quality backlinks and quality website traffic.

Press Release Submission

Press release submission refers to writing about new events, products or services of the company and submitting it to PR sites.

It is an off-page SEO strategy the helps popularize your events, products or services on the web to improve SEO of your site. A press release should be keyword-optimized, factual and informative so that it could generate interest in the readers.

Some of the popular press release submission sites are listed below:

www.newpressrelease.com

www.briefingwire.com

www.bignews.biz

www.prlog.org

www.pressbox.co.uk

Press Release Submission Benefits:

Improves link popularity: It is one of the quickest ways to build backlinks to your site.

Boosts traffic and sales: Keyword optimization in the content of PR helps increase traffic and sales.

Reduces marketing costs: It enables search engines easily find your site; you don't need to spend much on other online marketing activities.

Online recognition: It helps you build online reputation and trust of the visitors.

Long-term benefit: Online press releases have a long lifespan, so they can work for you for many years to come.