What is external SEO all about? External SEO, more commonly known as
off-page SEO is basically link building/marketing – Acquiring the most relevant
backlinks from as many relevant high authority sites to achieve and maintain
high rankings on the SRPs. A relevant backlink is an inbound link from one of
the pages (with relevant meta information such as the title, description, etc.)
of another similar-topic website.
Planning a successful link building campaign
In order to plan and execute a successful link building campaign for your
site, you first need to understand that link building is a long and tedious
process. One that requires skillfulness and extensive knowledge on the topic of
SEO.
However if you persevere, stick to white-hat rules of SEO, animal-proof
(Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird) your SEO campaigns by staying updated, you will
eventually taste the fruit of success.
Fundamental off-page SEO concepts
Before we begin the link building process, let’s first go through and
understand some fundamental concepts.
What is a backlink?
A backlink is an inbound or incoming link (hyperlink) to a particular
website, referenced from another website. Search engines rely on links to crawl
the web and evaluate the authority and relevance of millions of websites.
What is an anchor text?
An anchor text is the text you click on that takes you to a referenced url.
i.e. (This
sentence is an anchor text).
It is recommended that the anchor texts of inbound links be diverse (mix of
target and non-target keywords, brand mentions, synonyms of target keywords,
non-related words, etc.) and not all “exact match” to the target keyword that a
site is aiming to rank highly for on the SRPs.
A link profile with majority of inbound links that have exact-match anchor
texts looks very unnatural, and search engines will devalue these inbound links
or even de-index the site.
Anatomy of a Strong Backlink
- High
domain authority
- High
PageRank
- High
TrustRank
- Relevant
co-citations
- Relevant
page title
- Relevant
content topic
- Target
keywords in anchor text
- Placed in
main content area
- Age of
page
- Age of
backlink
- Dofollow
link
All inbound links pointing to a website’s main domain (www.example.com) as
well as its internal pages contribute to the domain authority.
Getting a backlink from a high domain authority site is always valuable.
Sometimes, that is all you need in order to get on the 1st page of
Google for a target keyphrase.
High PageRank
PageRank is only one of over 200 ranking factors which Google uses to
calculate and decide which page should rank over another.
Inbound links pointing specifically to an internal page of a particular
website contributes to the PageRank of the specific page.
However if a page of say PageRank 6 has two outgoing links, the outgoing
PageRank is diluted into half (PageRank 3 each).
With everything else equal (i.e. Relevant page title, equal number of
backlinks, etc.), a site with a higher PageRank will rank above the site with a
lower PageRank.
High TrustRank
Sites that receive a lot of quality relevant inbound links are more trusted
than sites that receive lots of inbound links from low-quality, spammy sites.
Getting a link directly from a very trusted site such as Entrepreneur.com
will increase your site’s TrustRank tremendously. Obtaining a second-tier,
third-tier, or fourth-tier link will also increase your site’s TrustRank but
the value starts to drop the further it goes.
Let’s have a look at the following
scenario:
Your website provides financial consultation and you are not able to get a
link directly from Entrepreneur.com. However you’re able to obtain a third-tier
link from one of the websites that Entrepreneur.com links to.
Entrepreneur.com => Financesite.com => Bizservices.com =>
Yourfinancialsite.com
100% TrustRank => 50% TrustRank => 25% TrustRank => 12.5% TrustRank
The above figures are made up and only used to demonstrate the point.
Relevant Co-citations
If you are getting inbound links from an external page (Page A) and it is
linking to Page B and Page C which are both relevant to your site’s content
topic, this is a strong signal to search engines that your site is relevant to
that particular topic.
Relevant Page Title
The page title should summarize the page’s content topic. Or rather, the
main content topic should reflect the title of the page. Search engines use the
page title as an important ranking factor when it comes to displaying relevant
search results to the user.
Relevant Content Topic
Similar to the above Relevant Page Title ranking factor, an inbound link
from a page with relevant content topic to your site will increase your
relevancy score.
Target Keywords in Anchor Text
The anchor text of a link is another ranking signal that search engines use.
The wide-spread belief before the 2012 Google Penguin Update was that a keyword
rich anchor text was a strong ranking factor.
As a result, many webmasters started over-optimizing their inbound anchor
texts by stuffing their target keywords in (exact match), in attempt to
manipulate their rankings. Majority of the sites with over-optimized
keyword-rich anchor texts who were hit by the update saw a big drop in
rankings.
Post-Penguin, anchor texts should not be over-optimized. i.e. If you want to
rank for “financial consultation”, your anchor texts shouldn’t all be
“financial consultation”. There should be a good mix of different types of
anchor text. It should sound natural as if someone were to mention your brand
name in a conversion.
Here are a few examples of the different types of anchor texts a
property/real estate website should have a good mix of:
Exact match – “Properties for sale”
Broad match – “List of properties for sale” or “Properties for sale in
[country]”
Synonyms and related search terms – “Condos for sale” or “Private property
for sale”
Brand mentions – “Realtoria Property Investment Firm”
Non-related – “visit this page” or “click here”
It’s good to have a couple of inbound links with exact match anchor text
from high domain authority sites. Just make sure it looks natural and doesn’t
make up the majority of your backlink profile.
Placed in Main Content Area
The location of the backlink is also an important factor. A footer link
isn’t worth as much as a sidebar link, and a sidebar link isn’t worth as much
as an editorial link in the main content section.
Age of Page
How long a page has been in Google’s index is also a ranking factor. Creating
a website is getting much simpler. There has been an increasing number of
fly-by-night sites and many webpages come and go frequently. Therefore the
older the page, the more trustworthy it is (provided it is frequently updated).
Age of Backlink
Similarly, the older the backlink, the more TrustRank it gets.
Dofollow Link
Dofollow links are regular links without the rel=“nofollow” attribute in the
HTML code and they allow PageRank or Link Juice to be passed on to the linked
page.
Example of a regular dofollow link
(allows PageRank to be passed on):
<a href=“http://example.com/”>anchor text</a>
Example of a no-follow link (doesn’t allow
PageRank to be passed on):
<a href=“http://example.com/” rel=“nofollow”>anchor text</a>
While you’re in the process of acquiring dofollow links, you also want to
obtain nofollow links.
Although you won’t get any PageRank from a nofollow link, the main reason
you also want to include nofollow links in your link profile is that search
engines are able crawl a nofollow link and read its anchor text.
Even though you don’t get any PageRank flow, you’d still be awarded points
for relevancy. Not to mention a link profile with thousands of dofollow inbound
links and without a single nofollow backlink looks a little fishy.
External SEO is mainly link building. And although link building can be
a very tiring process, you will taste the sweetness of success if you
persevere. Let’s summarize some of the ways you can build backlinks.
- Joining blog networks
- Social Bookmarking
- Participating in forums
- Guest posting
- Directory submission
- Business Listings
- Blogging
In order for your site to rank well
on top of the search engines, you need to have both your site’s internal and
external SEO well taken care of. The keywords you want to rank for should
always be present in your page titles, a couple of them as anchor text links,
and a well diversified portfolio of backlinks. Also take note of white-hat and black-hat SEO.
