SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is where you construct your web pages and implement definite techniques to help you rank as high as possible on search engine result pages (SERPs). The higher your pages can rank on Google/Bing/Yahoo/ etc. results pages, the more traffic your site is likely to get.

On the other side, there are people (spammers) who try to search engines and bring organic traffic to their websites without following any rules but breaking them instead. That’s the dark side of SEO.

Now, SEO can be split up into two separate categories;

On-Page SEO & Off-Page SEO.

On-Page SEO refers to all the things that you can do ON your website Which help you to rank higher, such as page titles, internal linking, Meta tags & descriptions, etc.

Off-Page SEO refers to all the things that you can do directly OFF your website to help your website rank higher, such as social networking, article submission, forum & blog marketing, etc.

 

Off-Page Search Engine Optimisation

1. Social Networking Sites

Social Networking is bigger than ever these days, getting involved with social media sites is the primary step with which you begin to advertise, market, and build your online reputation within your niche.

You need to create an account on the most popular social networking sites, such as; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc., and create a profile of your own. This helps you to expand your online network of contacts, to connect and interact with your friends, share things with each other, and most importantly promote your website/blog and help build your online reputation.

2. Blogging

Today’s Blogging is one of the best ways to promote your website online! By writing a blog for your website, where you give a reason for your visitors to keep returning to your site and keep up to date with your latest posts. It also helps search engines to crawl your site more often, as they have to update your latest blog post entries, which ultimately helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

You need to write unique content for your blog, such as; Infographics, Top Lists, How To…Tutorials, Viral Videos, etc. Try to remember to be clear and concise in what you are trying to convey to your readers through your blog posts, don’t waffle.

Directories and blog search engines. (See below)

If you’re not very good at writing content for your blog, then you could always hire an experienced blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine.

3. Blog Marketing

Post comments on other blogs within the same niche as yours, which helps you to add a link in the comments section. These links then are crawled by search engines, helping to point out them towards your site.  These blogs are generally referred to as “Do-Follow” Blogs (Just like ours, where you can comment below!).

4. Forum Marketing

Search forums online that are related to your site’s niche and get involved within that community. Reply to threads, answer folk’s questions, offer advice, etc. This all helps to build up your reputation as someone who is an expert within that niche. Try to use “Do-Follow” Forums so that you can add a link to your site within your signature, which helps search engines crawl your site.

5. Search Engine Submission

Search engines will automatically find your site online, but that can take a while. To speed everything up, you should submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

6. Directory Submission

Many people may say that directory submission is dead! I believe that it isn’t as you are increasing the probability of people seeing your website. It is purely based on how effectively we are selecting those directories and how efficiently we are choosing the right category for submission. You could submit to general directories, but for a better result, you are better off submitting to niche directories. Of course, I agree that it gives quite delayed results, but it is worth doing it.

7. Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is another popular way of promoting your website. Submit your latest blog posts and pages to the most popular bookmarking sites, like Stumble Upon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc. Search engines like these types of sites because the content on these sites is updated continuously.

You should be careful while doing this and you must handle well the tags which are essential to broadcast your news on a wide area network. This may improve your website traffic based on how effectively you have participated.

8. Photo Sharing

If you have used any of your own photos or images on your site, then you can share many of the popular photo-sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, etc. Other people can see them and comment on them, hopefully following a link to your site.

9. Video Marketing

Just like photo sharing, if you have any work videos that you have used on your site, then you can submit them to sites like; YouTube, Vimeo, etc. this may allow people to find your content in other ways.

10. Business Reviews

Write down reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review for your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Stylefeeder, etc.

11. Local Listings

According to your site’s niche, you might find that listing in local directories may be useful. You may have a website promoting your local business, therefore instead of going global and facing huge competition, listing your website locally, so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content. This may help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to sites like; Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, etc.

12. Article Submission

If you write down articles yourself, then you can submit them to popular article directory sites like; Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, etc. This can help drive traffic to your site, with this you can also gain some links to your site from other people (though it’s usually a slower process).

13. Social Shopping Network

If you run an e-commerce website, then a good strategy for advertising and branding your products for free is to submit to online shopping networks. By submitting your products to sites like; Google Product Search, Yahoo Online Shopping, MSN Online Shopping, and other major social shopping network sites like Kaboodle, Style Feeder, etc. then you increase the interest of people finding the products that you are selling.