SEO is all about optimizing your website right? Well a big part of that optimizing doesn’t even take place on your website, this is called Off Page SEO. Consider this your website’s “reputation” on the online community. The better your sites reputation, the more search engines will see your website’s content as valuable and raise it in the search ranks.
Off Page - Part 3
Back links
These are links from other websites to your website. The more links you have leading users from other sites to your site the better! There are in essence recommendations from other sites to view your content. But just like recommendations, the source determines if it is a good recommendation or a bad one.
1. Spam Back-links
If there are blacklisted websites linking to your website, search engines will see this as a bad recommendation and likely consider blacklisting your website as well.
2. Authority Links
Authority backlink are websites with really good organic SEO, a lot of visitors and a good reputation linking to your website. An example of this could be a News Site, University or School website.
Connected sites (Social Media, Maps, Listings, etc)
Social and Listing sites will be indexed by search engines apart from your website, so it is important that the correct website link can be found on these connected sites. Often users will click on a Facebook page or Google Map listing and then follow through to your website. These would be considered Authority links as well.
Search Engine Indexing
Major search engines offer indexing services. You can create a webmaster account and request that they crawl your website. This will speed up the indexing process. You can also give them more information like, that your website is mobile friendly, what country you want to rank it, and if there are any variations of your website that should also be indexed.
Site Map
Site maps can also be submitted to search engines, detailing the number of pages and their direct links. Site maps can be submitted from webmaster consoles on major search engines. The more a search engine knows about your website the better it will rank.
HTTPS - Secure Connection
If your website uses a https connection it will grant you bonus points with search engines and rank you higher.
Final Thoughts
We hope you have found this 3 part SEO overview helpful! This is a subject that is constantly being updated, as search engines get better and change their algorithms. SEO strategies will have to change with it.