Off-page ranking factors In SEO

What is it?

At the end of XX-th century search engines ranked websites basing solely on their content. The situation has changed after the Google triumph. Google's algos were based on the link popularity, not only the content of websites. So, the more inbound links a website had, the higher it was ranked by Google. The whole concept didn't change very much from those days - popular websites often get linked to, so this factor is applied for calculating web rankings alongside with the content of such websites. In present days it is possible to rank for some keyword even if a website does not contain that keyword in its text!

Needles to say that you should pay an attention to off-page ranking factors as much as you do for on-page optimization. This SEO tutorial describes all the things you should keep in mind while maintaining your inbound links. Read along.

PageRank

In the first hand, we must separate two things: the real PageRank and the PageRank green bar shown in Google Toolbar and other online and offline PageRank tools. The Google bar PageRank (I'll be calling it the green PageRank, or gPR) is merely an indicator. The real PageRank of a website (I'll be calling it the PageRank, or PR from now) is a mathematical value reflecting the probability of a visitor randomly following the links on websites to open this particular website. The value of 1 means 100% probability, that is a visitor randomly surfing the web will always open the website. Sooner or later. On the opposite, the value of 0 means that a random visitor never comes to that particular website through a link on some other site.

I won't get deep into mathematics of the PageRank since this info can be easily found on the web. I'll only underscore the key moments of the PageRank statistical nature.

1. First of all, you must understand the following: the number of websites grows each day, while the overall PageRank value always stays the same: 1 (one). In other words, there is a 100% probability of the fact that a visitor opens SOME site on the web. But the odds of each particular website are going lower and lower every minute. If you have 3 apples and two of them are maggoty, what are your odds to take a good apple? They are 1/3 or 33%. If you have to choose one apple of 100 you only have 1% probability. That's the case with the PageRank - it lowers naturally every day.
2. Due to the pt.1 and the overall enormous number of indexed websites it is not possible to show the exact PageRank value every minute. That is why we need the green PageRank which is updated every 3 or 4 months and shows the PageRank value in a more comprehensible form: as a number from 0 to 10. This number correlates to the actual PageRank very little, it only shows the basic trends.
   
   Also, the gPR scale is non-linear. One may think that a website with PR2 is two times more popular (or at least has two times more chances to get that random visitor we were talking about earlier) than its unlucky brother with PR1, but that is not true. In fact it is more likely to be that a PR2 website is 10 times more popular than PR1, but 10 times less popular than PR3. Something like this, but the number 10 is only an example here, since we don't know the exact formula.
3. The PageRank models a random user who is surfing the web and following random links on websites. From the practical point of view this means: the more links all over the web points to your website, the higher its PageRank is.

So, now you know that the key off-page ranking factor is the number of inbound links to a website and the green PageRank is the indirect indicator of that number. However, the PageRank mathematical mechanism considers only a quantity of links, while in fact there is also a quality factor. This is implemented via different filters and value dumping factors that Google applies to each link before including it into the PageRank calculation.

Important stuff

This part describes the crucial off-page ranking factors you should always pay attention to.

1. The theme of the linking website
   This one is very important since the links from a relevant website are worth much more. On your link building efforts, try searching the websites that are close or at least similar to your own site theme. Though having a link from the unrelated site is not bad by itself and even Google admits that a webmaster doesn't have a full control on who and how links to its website. Nevertheless, avoid links from unrelated websites or sites with illegal or unethical content (porn, malware etc).
2. The theme of websites you link to
   On the other hand, you have a full control of the links placed on YOUR own website so if you link to some unrelated website - it is you who is responsible for that and it is your site that will be penalized. So be careful what sites you link to. Linking to some unrelated content not necessarily leads to a penalty, but anyways you should be cautious and link only to quality websites.
3. Anchor text
   The anchor text of the inbound link is very important and if you can adjust it - try to squeeze all out of it. First of all, avoid using the same anchor text all over the links. Use synonyms, paraphrases, different keywords, whatever else. Second, put the important keywords in the beginning of the anchor text. Finally, do not put all of your keywords into the link. There is really no reason to use anchor text longer than 50-55 characters or 10-12 words. Keep it short.
4. Landing pages
   This factor is often ignored even by some professional SEOs and webmasters. It is not enough to simply have a link to your site! The link must be a) relevant; and b) quality. And you must be sure that both websites - the linking and the linked - qualify to these requirements. As for the theme of the linking website - see the pt.1. But the theme of your website should also be quality and relevant both to the donor website and to the anchor text of the link.
   
   Well, it is not necessary in fact, but it helps a lot to have a properly optimized landing pages for every link you have. What this "proper optimization" includes?

§ The landing page must include keywords mentioned in anchor text in its content;

§ The keywords should appear in all important places like the title tag, the headings etc;

§ The overall topic of the page must match to those keywords.

If a landing page qualifies to all of these - it gets significant boost to its rank, because the corresponding inbound links get much more value now.

5. PageRank
   The PageRank doesn't do anything by itself and the green PageRank does even less - it is simply an EGO-meter. However, the PR of the linking website (or a candidate) gives you an approximation of what the link from this website is worth, what value it has. Also, high-PR website are considered as trusted and gets some more value from Google. See below for more trust-factors.
   
   A single link from a PR10 website (if you somehow manage to have one, of course) will quickly boost your own website PR to 7 or even 8 giving you the comparable boost in your search positions. But this factor is the last in the list of important off-page factors, because at first hand you should find a relevant and quality websitethat is willing to put a link to you and then (only then!) check its PageRank. Exactly in that order. Because quality content is worth more than high PageRank.