Using Off-Page SEO To Increase Your Google Page Rank – Part 1

It’s one thing to optimize your blog on page, but what about off-page seo?

It’s great to understand how to optimize your blog with the right keywords so that you get amazing search results. But there’s a little bit of disappointing news that goes along with that.

As important as on-page seo is, the effect that it has on your ranking can be minor. Don’t get me wrong. On-page seo is important enough not to skip, but don’t get the false hope that that’s all you need to get good search engine rankings. There are some other things you need to do and it’s referred to as off-page seo.

Off-page seo has to do with factors that are not a part of your blog, but have a lot to do with how the search engines will rank you.

We’ll cover what some of the off-page seo factors are.

The first and most important off-page seo factor is the number of links from relevant, quality blogs and sites pointing back to your blog. This is also referred to as back-links.

In case you didn’t know… when you use off-page seo and have a lot of links to your blog, the search engines get the impression that your blog is an authority for the niche you’re writing about. To try to give internet searchers what they want, in return the search engines will rank your blog higher. But make sure that you’re observing the quality of the back-links that you get.

You can hurt your blog with too many irrelevant off-page seo tactics.

Here’s what I mean… Using off-page seo, you could get thousands of links from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with your blog topic or… you could get a single link from a site with a high authority within your niche. That one link to your blog from a high authority site will get you much more spider crawling juice and will help your off-page seo tremendously.

There are several ways to use off-page seo to get back-links to your blog, but the most cost-effective way is to just ask. Yes… it’s that easy. If you have a blog or site that you’re adding good quality, relevant content to that other readers in the same niche would enjoy reading, other bloggers will link to your blog and may even recommend or write about you.

So, how do you ask another blogger to link to your blog to help your off-page seo?

Start out by developing relationships with popular sites within your niche. First, I’m assuming that your blog really does have the kind of content that others in your niche would find valuable. So the simple thing to do to help your off-page seo would be to send an email to the person you’d like to link to your blog.

You can find relevant sites by simply searching the search engines for your main keyword. If the first blogs or sites that come up are commercial sites, don’t waste your time expecting to develop a relationship. You’re looking for “community” based blogs that are written by individuals who would be open to the idea of connecting with others. You can tell by reviewing the content on the blog.

Most personable blogs will have a “contact” page or some place on their blog where you can find the author’s email address. Others may also share a Skype ID or other method of instant messaging. These are the types of sites you look to work with for off-page seo.

For starters, when you find the contact information of the author, send them a message stating how you came across their site. You don’t want to tell them you were looking for link partners. Hopefully, you were truly looking for more valuable content within your niche that lead you to their blog.

Share with the author that you believe their blog would provide valuable information to your readers. Now, please be real here. If you like their blog and you feel that it offers really good stuff, let them know. If you don’t honestly feel that way, move on. You don’t want to recommend anything from your blog that you don’t think is great!

Next, suggest that certain posts on your blog would also be valuable content for their readers. You can indicate specific posts, which is also helpful. Go ahead and put their link on your blog to begin a mutually beneficial relation between your blogs, and (subtly) ask if they could do the same .

Please understand… Everyone that you send an email to won’t respond. Don’t sweat that. Along the way you will find those who will. Give it two weeks to give them time to answer back. It’s always best when your off-page seo tactics are reciprocated and mutual, but that doesn’t always happen. If you don’t get a response, it’s up to you if you want to keep linking to them or not.

Do this for the top 30 search results that you get. Before long, you’ll have quite a few really good, relevant sites linking to you. Wash, rinse, and repeat with more relevant keywords.

Now I am aware that there are many, many automated systems that you can use for off-page seo, as well. That’s a topic withing itself and for a different blog post.

But keep your eyes open for the next post where I’ll discuss further a few more methods of off-page seo.

Rosalind is the author of this blog and the founder of the 10K Inner Circle. She's an expert trainer on blogging and internet marketing, and a sought after speaker among her business peers. She also builds a successful network marketing business. If you enjoyed reading this post, be sure to get more tips here.

Tagged As: google page rank, off-page seo, web traffic