Off page SEO

The popularity of the links directing users to your site can vastly improve your ranking! Keep in mind that is not just the amount of incoming links (backlinks) to your site that is important, but also the quality of the content on your sites

So it is imperative to communicate your site via different media types, while paying strict attention to the quality of your links.

Use different media

The higher your site’s ranking, the better your SEO. But, don’t rely on your website to promote itself! The more your site is visible, the better it will be indexed. Don’t forget to add a link to your site in your email signature, on your business cards, brochures, and on every single item used in your marketing strategy.

Look for quality backlinks

Links are clickable words or images used to navigate from page to another or from site to site.

Links are very important for your site’s optimization strategy. Links can increase the number of visits to your site, and also serves as a crucial part of its SEO. In fact, search engines attach great importance to the number and quality of links that direct users to your site.

Search engines analyze the amount of links to your site. The more links to your site imply that is featured by other websites and that your content is rich and interesting. If another

Webmaster felt that they should link your website’s content to their public, it’s because your content is relevant or complementary to their own. Search engine algorithms love relevant content!

Several factors come into play to when determining a quality link. Among the most important, the following:

  • The link must be a "hard link”. A hard link is a direct link to a page without using a redirect script. This is a link that search engine robots can follow and therefore rank.

The link text must contain the keywords or phrases associated with the content of your site.

Example: Avoid having a link simply titled "here" or "read more". In the case of a florist site, it is preferable to name your link "New York City Florist".

It is better to have a link from a site within the same activity sector. Don’t just add a link to your florist site from a mechanical workshop site. Instead, choose a site that offers complementary services such as wedding venues, event management, horticulture, etc.

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Capitalize upon your professional connections to increase you visibility. Propose a link exchange with the website of your partners, suppliers, customers, etc. This strategy called is ”backlink”, and is great way to get a lot of links (popular and relevant) to your website in order to improve the SEO of your site.


Resources

Below, you will find some resources that will enable you to have links pointing to your site:

● Directories

Most directories provide free registration and listing (via links), and only require a simple registration. They require you to add a link to the directory on your site in order to keep track of your ranking in their directory. Remember that some are not free.

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Do not abuse the directory links. Google will negatively detect the simultaneous introduction of a large number of links to your site. Plan a Links section for this purpose on your site in order not to affect the aesthetics of your site.

● Blogs

It is not easy to make your site appear on the top of the first page of search engine results.

Having a blog on your site can improve your SEO. The more your blog contains relevant and interesting articles, the faster you can gather an audience who can potentially share your articles on the web. Article sharing will generate links to your site—a good reason to have your own blog!

● Social networks

They are free, easy to access, and widely used—so why not utilize them to your benefit?!

Social networking sites allow you to add backlinks for free, increasing your visibility on the web!

When ranking your site, the most popular search engines take these networks into consideration, providing a score based on the social activity on your site (e.g. number of tweets on Twitter or likes on Facebook).

To add a social networking share button, access the “Social” section on the left side of the editor, then drag the Badge icon to the desired location on your page.

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We recommend installing sharing buttons for the most popular social networks (e.g. like Facebook, Twitter and Google+) on your website. There are several other social networks, so make sure you add the ones that are most relevant to your business. Example: If you sell jewelry, Pinterest could be a more valuable resource than Google+.

● Don’t forget

In terms of SEO, what often makes the difference between competitors is the number of links that point to your site.

Partner with customers, suppliers, friends, blog followers, etc. Ask them to add links to your site on their site.

The strategy, called "backlinking", can connect a large number of quality links (popular and relevant) to your website in order to improve the site's SEO. The more links directing users to your site brings more popularity, resulting in an improvement in your ranking score. This is a long-term constant work. The WebSelf team is here to guide you; our blog is filled with tips for backlinking and SEO in general.

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It is important to vary your links: a page must not receive too many hits with the same link text. If you always include the same strategic keywords in the text of your links on a page, it can play against you and your ranking on the search engines may decrease.

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