Off-Page Optimisation

A Step-By-Step Guide to Small Business SEO

If you have followed the last few chapters of this guide you should now have a better idea of how to develop and format content for your website. This formatting of your content is known as on-page optimisation. However, for web pages to rank well on Google and other engines, you need to build trust and popularity. To do this you need to employ a variety of off-page optimisation techniques (so called because the optimisation work does not involve directly editing the HTML or content of your web pages). Off-page optimisation aims to generate links from other trustworthy, relevant and popular third party web pages back to your website. This link-building process is fundamentally the most important element of SEO. However, link-building is also one of the trickiest and time consuming parts of the SEO process. For bigger businesses this process is made inevitably easier as a result of large budgets for online and offline PR, promotions and general marketing. Bigger businesses may also employ large teams of marketing staff to execute the “linkable” creative. Small business SEO, on the other hand, may be hampered by smaller budgets and limited human resources. This chapter of my guide offers general advice on the kinds of links that need to be sourced and the tactics small businesses can employ to attract inbound links and improve search engine placement. This article follows on from Part Seventeen: Optimising META Titles & Descriptions. To go back to the start of this guide you can read my Introduction.

General Guidelines

Some key considerations to remember when sourcing links for your website:

• Don’t purchase links for PageRank (from here on referred to as PR).
• Always aim to develop trust and relevancy. A link to your website from a web page about fishing is not relevant when your web page is all about how to purchase cheap 2nd hand cars.
• Use link analysis tools such as Open Site Explorer to determine the domain and page authority of the web page you hope to secure a link from. This will help you to assess the trust of a particular site.
• If you do purchase or rent links (be aware that Google officially frowns upon “paid links”), ensure that you use natural and varied link anchor text. If your brand new website is all about used cars and all of sudden there are 1,000 links pointing at your site all using the words “used cars” to link to you, this is likely to result in a penalty.
• Use local and long-tail key-phrases in your anchor text. Encourage natural looking links to your site too (“click here” and “this great site” look more natural than very specific search terms).
• Links within content are much more valuable than links on the footer, blogroll or links page of an external website.
• Links from a web page where you are the only recipient of a link is far more valuable than a link from a web page that also links to 100 of your competitors.
• Ensure that you don’t secure links on web pages that also link out to completely irrelevant or SPAMMY websites. This will contribute to placing you in a “bad neighbourhood”, also known as bad co-citation.
• Avoid reciprocal linking with low quality sites. However, reciprocal links are not a bad thing per se. Reciprocal links are fine if they are with trusted, authority sites and put you in a “good neighbourhood”.
• Think about the user experience. Does a link from a certain web page back to your website help the user to find what they are looking for?
• Promote your quality content as much as possible – over time this will generate natural, authority links.

Small Business Link Building Strategies

Link-building for small businesses is a question of finance and human resources. Most small businesses do not have unlimited budgets for marketing, promotions and PR. Smart small business link building strategies therefore need to place emphasis on what’s unique and compelling about their online proposition. This together with a careful consideration of your budget and human resources will help you to determine your off-page optimisation strategy. Here are a selection of options:

• Think Big, Start Small – Small businesses need to think big by keeping high traffic, competitive key-phrases in mind as long-term targets. Use your key-phrase strategy, as discussed in part nine of this guide, to determine your link-building strategy. Start small by targeting lower competition long-tail or local search terms (“cheap pizza delivery Brighton”, for example). Ensure that your individual web pages offer a high degree of relevancy to these specific searches by following the on-page optimisation techniques discussed in parts fifteen to seventeen.
• Niche Networking – An inexpensive way for small businesses to get the word out about their services is to network via phone, email and comments boards with other webmasters and users. Draw up an exhaustive list of websites, blogs, review sites, forums and directories that relate in theme to your website. Comment on other authority sites and engage in conversations. Link out to authority websites. Offer to write a review of an authority site on your blog. Ask nicely if they’d be prepared to comment or review your unique content. Explain what’s so good and unique about what you have to offer.
• Hosted Content – As mentioned in the general guidelines, links within content are amongst the most powerful you can receive (if they connect to your site from a trusted domain). Use your networking skills and powers of persuasion (you don’t necessarily have to offer payment) to convince other trusted websites and blogs to host a well-written piece of your content on their website.
• Directory Submission – Another relatively inexpensive way for small businesses to generate some trusted inbound links. The key is to ensure that you only submit your site to high quality, human edited directories. Niche or local directories can be even more valuable. Avoid submitting your site to hundreds of low quality directories.
• Chase Competitor Links – If a website links to one of your competitor’s websites, the chances are they may well be prepared to link to you. Chase as many of your competitor’s links as possible; the more you can get the more likely you are to rank or outrank your competitor. Link Diagnosis and Open Site Explorer are two great, free tools you can use to carry out this work. Be aware that Link Diagnosis assesses links in terms of PR, which is no longer an entirely reliable method for assessing the potential of a link.
• Offer Things for Free – A great way to attract links is to offer things for free or at a discount. This could be free information, a download or e-book, a gift or voucher. The crucial key here is to drive your incentive online and to make your offer genuinely engaging and compelling. Use email, viral and word of mouth marketing to get your offer out there and ensure that your website is set-up to encourage “linkability” and sharing through social media bookmarks and incentives to link to you.
• Viral Marketing – Viral marketing can be a relatively cheap way for small businesses to drive high volumes of traffic when deployed correctly. Often simple and amusing ideas can capture people’s attention and result in links back to your website. Devising an original computer game or video might be a more expensive option, but if the quality and the delivery of the content is of a high enough standard it will deliver both traffic and links.
• Social Media and Online PR – Devise a cunning marketing strategy to get people talking about you online (more on this in the next chapter).
• Offline Marketing and PR – Devise an offline strategy aimed at driving people to your website (again, more on this later).

Off-page Optimisation Checklist

• Follow the general guidelines above when conducting link research
• Small businesses need to be realistic with their link building objectives
• Network, communicate and be create with your off-page strategy

Part Nineteen

These are just a few methods and strategies that small businesses can employ to increase links and improve their SEO performance. In the next chapter I will look at another area of off-page optimisation in more detail – social media optimisation.