The SEO factors that influence the ranking position of your web page can be classified as on-page factors and off-page factors. You can directly control on-page factors, such as content relevance, by implementing SEO techniques. You can also indirectly influence off-page factors, such as link popularity and authority, by creating unique, high-value content that benefits users.
An example of on-page SEO is a situation where you reposition legacy content to solve user problems in the specific context of users. For example, you may create an FAQ page and link it back to an enterprise knowledgebase comprising numerous pages of content. You may frequently update the FAQ to address ongoing user queries and add keywords as metadata to make the FAQ searchable. The FAQ provides a search-friendly interface that quickly points users to the most relevant topics using links.
Improve your page rank by using Adobe® Technical Communications Suite (TCS3) to implement authoring guidelines for SEO.
In this blog post, we will focus on influencing off-page factors to boost your page rank.
Understanding off-page factors
In addition to on-page content relevance, search engines rely on off-page factors to distinguish between valuable content and irrelevant content created solely to achieve a high rank. Search engines consider the number and quality of inbound links or back links to your page as the greatest indicator of link popularity and authority. The more people link to your page from relevant websites naturally over time, the more search engines consider your content popular and reliable.
Search engines also analyze the anchor text people use to reference your content to determine the relevance of your content. For example, people may link to your TCS3 online Help topic Rich media using phrases, such “rich media publishing”, “Flash PDF”, and “rich media PDF”. Search engines will rank the topic higher if the content reflects the referenced phrases and builds around them.
Here are some backlinking strategies that may help attract links naturally to your web page. Learn more Legitimate Link Building Strategies from Robin Noble, Eric Ward, and John Alexander.
Create quality content
As the saying goes, content is king. Create content that is unique, informative, and interesting to engage your target audience. The more appealing the content, the more it attracts search engine traffic. Such content compels readers to revisit it, especially if you update the content regularly. See creating unique content.
Frequent revisits increases the likelihood of quality links from other sites. In other words, dynamic, high-quality content is arguably the most effective link bait (positive connotation intended).
Most importantly, relevant, well written content provides a solid foundation for all the other link building strategies we discuss subsequently.
Request for links
Write to the webmasters and site owners of popular websites in your niche, requesting them to link to your content. Be polite, professional, and clear in your communication with them. Provide a brief description of your web page content and explain how it relates to their site.
Write personalized emails to each webmaster. (Do not send blanket emails).
Try to convince the webmasters that you actually read through their site and appreciate it. Explain how they might benefit by linking to your content. You may probably receive a number of similar back link requests in return. Exercise your judgment before you oblige.
Share on social networking sites
Link to your content from your profile pages on social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. Consider creating a special-interest group that people can join to get information about the topic. For example, create a special-interest group to provide information and updates about for your topic “Rich Media Authoring using TCS3”. Post a synopsis of the content on YouTube and Slideshare to let people searching for the topic on these sites know about your web page.
In addition, bookmark your content on sites, such as StumbleUpon, to create a dynamic audience for your content. The more people see your content, the more likely it will attract links.
Use social networking sites to establish long-term relationships with key social media influencers, who can help your content travel far and wide. You may also use their recommendation to promote your content in social networks to attract traffic and back links.
Write guest posts
Write guest posts on popular blogs and other content sites to prepare the background for back links to your web page. Contribute valuable content that benefits users. Generous content contribution enhances your reputation and prompts users to link to your web page.
Include a link to your web page in the byline of your blog post. Some websites may also let you link to your web page from within the body of the content of your blog post. Use this strategy only if the content in your web page is absolutely relevant to the context.
Link to other sites
Identify popular websites that discuss your topic and link to them from within your content. Proactive linking may help draw the attention of the site owners and key influencers in your field. They might return the favor by providing a back link to your content.
However, linking out casually does not help much. To make an impression, contribute something useful on these sites by way of comments. Mention about your web page naturally in the context of your conversation to bring it to the attention of the influencers.
Publicize on social media news sites
Publicize your content on social media news sites, such as Digg and Technorati to drive traffic to your web page. If your content is engaging, many people may be prompted to link to your web page. Subscribe to blog aggregator services to create more exposure for your content.
Moreover, you can publish your content on other websites relevant to your niche to drive quality traffic to your web page. For example, if your content pertains to a specific technology, publish it on technology news websites, such as SlashDot.
Submit to article directories
Submit your content to article directories, such as Article Circulation (http://www.articlecirculation.com) for publication. Publishing content on article directories showcases your content and drives traffic to your web page. Steady flow of traffic creates opportunities for your content to be referenced in other posts and articles. Backlinks from reputable sites greatly enhances the link popularity of your content.
Submit to link directories
Submit your content for listing on link directories, such as DMOZ and ExactSeek. Listing your content in these directories causes new backlinks to flow to your web page quite rapidly.
Reputable link directories usually have a strong and clear editorial policy to review all submitted content to identify quality content. They only list websites/pages that have high-quality content.
Summary
Achieving a high page rank depends not only on content relevance (on-page) but also how well you showcase your content in relevant ecospheres by influencing off-page SEO factors.
If you implement the backlinking strategies effectively, you can carve out an impressive web presence. However, you must supplement this effort by supplying valuable, up-to-date content to achieve maximum impact.
Use all avenues and media (albeit judiciously) to ensure that your web page attains a high mindshare. Look out for changes in page ranking methods used by search engines, and re-adjust your SEO strategies accordingly to ensure your page always ranks high.
Last but not the least; always use ethical SEO techniques to achieve search engine ranks.
#1 by Anand Gupta on April 11, 2011 - 12:40 am
Interesting read. Will try using it for the product I am working on.
#2 by Shadab-Hindi Translator on April 18, 2011 - 5:24 am
Thanks for sharing this valuable information. I have been applying most of the rules mention by you above and also finding some good result, but the thing is that its a taking some time to update and rank the sites. my suggestion is that please do not try any wrong method like buying link or automated link exchange this will kill all your efforts and penalize you. because google is aware about everything.
#3 by Chiradeep Majumdar on April 18, 2011 - 11:02 pm
Thanks for your comments. It is great to see that you have been applying these and getting good results. I absolutely agree with your suggestion to refrain from using black hat techniques, for example buying links/automated link exchanges. Search engines severely penalize any website that is found using such techniques. In fact I have included a caveat toward the end of my post asking SEO practitioners to ensure that the techniques they use are all white hat. In fact, I would be quite willing to provide a link from my blog post to an article that identifies black hat techniques and cautions users about the dangers of using such techniques.
On a different note, I constantly keep thinking about ways to identify the most relevant natural language queries that users have about a specific topic you write about. Of late, search engines are increasingly focusing on optimizing search results based on natural language queries instead of just a bunch of keywords you type in the search box. If we have a way to aggregate the most common questions that users have about a topic, we can leverage this knowledge to tune our content based on the queries and thereby increase content relevancy.
I am willing to discuss about this (or any other SEO topic) either on this forum or any other forum. Do let me know your thoughts.
#4 by Shadab-Hindi Translator on April 22, 2011 - 11:49 pm
Ah.. what have you said “natural language queries” if we understand this from user point of view then we are top of the google search.. Do you have any idea finding these . Please do share with me.
#5 by Chiradeep Majumdar on April 28, 2011 - 12:17 am
As far as I can think of, I would type the name of my topic on the Google search box. Google displays a list of suggestions below the search box. So you already have a list of queries that Google itself thinks are most relevant. You can make a list of these and then evaluate whether they are the most relevant queries for your topic. Moreover, keyword research using popular tools, such as the Google Keyword tool and Word Tracker helps you identify the most relevant (and popular) keyword phrases. After you identify a working set of keywords/keyword phrases, type each of them in the Google search search box and look for Google’s query suggestions. You can make a note of these as well. I do not know of any other techniques. Can we open up a discussion on this. Please feel free to invite others to participate in the discussion.
#6 by Asim Chowdhury on May 17, 2011 - 1:06 pm
Your write-up on the off-page factors is very interesting. Its triggered a few questions in my mind. In case a backlink is provided for, say, a new website, by let’s say, the world’s most popular website, does it promote the new website to the same rank as the website to which it is backlinked? Is there any measure of this popularity buildup?
My next question is not exactly a question but a derivative of your discussion. I am thinking of a possibility. If a website B wants to be backlinked to let’s say A, is it not possible for the website B to setup a different website C with specialized content on a specific area and then include that in wikipedia, as a reference towards the end. The website editors may perceive this as an attempt to enhance the existing content and let it remain as it is. And then within the website C links are built to B. Could this be a possible way of earning high search results.
#7 by Chiradeep Majumdar on May 18, 2011 - 5:29 am
Hi Asim,
A referencing page distributes a small part of its page rank to each referenced page. However, I am not sure if there is a way to accurately measure the value of this contribution.
If the referencing page has a high page rank, the value of the page rank contributed works out to be higher compared to a contribution from a page with a lower PageRank.
However, the page rank contributed is inversely proportional to the number of pages referenced. The higher is the number of pages referenced, the lower is the contribution toward each referenced page and vice versa.
Note however, that the “damping factor” in Google’s PageRank algorithm limits the overall percentage contribution to a maximum of 15%. Meaning, any referencing page can contribute a maximum of 15% of its page rank to the referenced pages. Therefore, technically, the most popular web page cannot promote another web page to the same rank. To attain an equal rank, the referenced page will need similar inbound links from several other popular websites.
Regarding the second part of your query, leveraging the wikipedia to promote your website seems to be a briliant idea. However, it is difficult for me to estimate the quantum of benefits (in terms of %increase in page rank) such a strategy would fetch. Let me ask the experts for a more definitive answer.
#8 by Ben on June 11, 2011 - 12:52 am
post-panda update from google, it is even more important to receive links that other websites can’t. People who had their whole stock in article directories seemed to take the brunt of the algo update. Diversifying your backlink profile through the sources mention in the article above is the best plan of attack. Also diversifying your traffic streams (seo/social media/email etc.) is also good practice.
#9 by Chiradeep Majumdar on June 13, 2011 - 8:10 am
Thanks for your comments Ben. Yes, post Panda update, creating compelling and authoritative content that naturally attracts links and social network visibility seem to be the most sustainable strategies. I hear they plan to manually run the algorithm over their index of pages to hit sites that use spamming techniques. Which means if Panda/Farmer penalizes your site, it might take a while for it to recover on the condition that the algo provides a positive assessment the next time it is run on your site. Do you have similar thoughts?
#10 by Myriam Maltos on December 5, 2011 - 4:59 am
Yes, thats my opinion