Getting a top rank in Google can make or break your business . With more than 70% market share,no webmaster can afford to take it easy. Here are a few tips for optimizing your website and making sure you come on top in your keyword verticals in our industry.
There are two parts to your search engine strategy 1) Off page Optimization 2) On page optimization
Off-page Opimization consists of anything that is directly not connected with your own site,its all the external factors that fine tune your website and add value to your content offerings.While on page optimization is anything that is internally connected with your own website. Here are a few off page factors I have listed which plays an important role in getting a Good SERPs.In this post I shall be highlighting a few off-page Optimization techniques.
Positive Off Page Optimization Factors:
1) No of inbound links to your website: A higher number of relevant incoming links increases the PR and helps your SERPs.
2)Anchor text of your own link in other websites : Try to get links from website which the anchor text keyword your targeting. If you have a gaming site. ensure that you use the keyword games,gaming,online games.
3)Age of website linking to you: Older the page the better it is for your site. Google values old websites that have existed for some time , rather than new websites which has linked to you.
4)No of outbound links in the page which has your own link :Having a large number of outbound links is bound to decrease the PR of the site which has linked to you which in turn brings down your own page rank. This can play a negative role in SERPs.Make sure that the link page of the site which has your link does not, in any case have more than 50 links .
5)Page rank of the website Linking To You: try to get links from a higher PR site .Websites with PR:0 or a grey toolbar means that the site is either new or does not have enough credibilty to gain a Page Rank.
6) Acceleration rate of your inbound links:If you get links too fast .. you may be penalized by Google and they would dump you at sandbox .. Google algorithm assumes that you can only build links organically. A large number of links at a very fast rate is bound to raise suspicion regarding the authenticity of the links ( buying and selling links ,even though you are not doing so)
7) Theme of the page that has linked too. Similar the Theme the more favorable it is in terms of SERPs
8) Getting listed in Directories: try to get a listing in DMOZ( pretty Tough ). I have no idea how Dmoz accepts websites.
9) Page metrics Factors: Other Metrics like CTR, time spent on the website, Social Bookmarks. Dont ignore the social media, Try to add social bookmarks and social network buttons to your site,so that you cna get bookmarked by users more often,( more the number of social bookmarks, like sites like Digg,Reddit,Stumbleupon,Propellor, the more are the chances that Google will look upto your as site as favorable )
10.)Temporal Link Analysis : new links are not valued as much as the old links . Try to get all your links working. Keep a constant tap on them to see if they are broken or have been removed . Spent adequate time on maintaining your link partners.
11.) Stay Away From Link farms:Link farms are websites that has been permanently created for the sake of linking . Often you will see some Hotel sites linking to 20 other hotel sites often with identical content and links page.A link farm purpose purpose is to increase the Page Rank of the target page by driving one way links from multiple websites . The sole objective to these mini sites is to increase the PR of one site they wish to rank well in Google. Stay away from them or you risk bring a part of their network and face a permanent ban.
12)Excessive Crosslinking :within the same C block (IP=xxx.xxx.CCC.xxx)If you have many sites (10) with the same web host, prolific cross-linking can indicate more of a single entity, and less of democratic web voting. Easy to spot, easy to penalize.
“This does not apply to a small number of sites” .. “hosted on a local server”. . Matt Cutts July 2006
More About On Page Optimization in my next Post.