Beginner's Guide to SEO Marketing (Part 2/3)

  

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[By Fred Strahl]

This is part two of a three part blog.  In this portion I will be covering off-site SEO.  If you did not read the first one, I recommend that you check it out.  The past blog talks about how you can improve your on-site SEO.  On-site SEO is very important and a crucial part of improving your SEO.  However, if you are only interested in ways to improve your off-site SEO, than you are in the right place!

For off-site SEO there is one main area you should be covering;

Link Building

Link Building is the most important way to improve your SEO.  It is the best way to rank higher on any search engine.  While on-site SEO is still very important, if Google were to only use on-site SEO than it would just be a battle of who can get the most keywords in their content.  Since this wouldn’t be a very efficient way to find the best sites for the user, Google has to see which sites are the most trustworthy, the most reliable, and the most credible.  To do this, Google will look at your links from other sites and rate them.  You should strive to have either a lot of inbound links from many credible sites or links from a few very credible sites (It also doesn’t hurt to have both). 

However, there is an etiquette that should be followed when building up your inbound links.  Here are the Dos and Don’ts of linking. 

DON’T get involved with SPAM links

A lot of people fall into the pitfall of signing up for SPAM inbound links.  People will pay companies to give them a lot more links back to the site with the idea that the more links they have back to their site, the higher SEO they will receive.  This is COMPLETELY WRONG.  If you were to do this Google can tell!  Google will notice that the sources of those links are not credible and not trustworthy.  This will only hurt your SEO not help.  A good rule of thumb is to remember that Google is always one step ahead of the shortcuts people try to create.

DO guest blogging on other sites

Guest blogging is a great way to build links.  You can set up a mutually agreement between yourself and another site to share each other blogs.  It’s a “people helping people” idea.  Both of your sites get an inbound link and both sites are improving their SEO, everyone wins.  However, the pitfalls of this concept are agreeing to have an outbound link to a poorly viewed site or making this deal with a direct competitor.

DON’T submit your links to one large directory; DO submit your links to many web directories

Using a directory can be great for link building, however, you won’t get far if you only submit your link to one large directory.  There are thousands of directories that you should be submitting your links to.  The biggest advantages to this are the low cost, the ease, and the fact you don’t have to do anything in return.

DO Get involved in commenting on other blogs

When you comment on other blogs and engage with peers in your field, you may find a great opportunity to drop a link in one of the comments.  Be careful though, don’t start dropping your links in comments on as many blogs that you can.  The key here is to start a conversation, serve as an expert on the field, gain trust, and then drop a link.  If you don’t do this there are very simple functions such as “delete comment” or “block user” that could affect you and your reputation negatively.

See how well you are doing with link building by using our free grader!

Photo by:www.ironmonk.net