Offsite SEO. So Important. Such a pain in the ass. Especially with the way Google keeps changing everything.
I take that back, It’s just become tougher to do because of Google Panda and the Machine learning.
But it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. In fact, it’s help give even more direction to the way corporate / business folks should conduct their SEO.
Here’s a great infograph of the way the world looked before panda:
Enjoy some VerticalMeasures.com. Great infograph.
Before you were able to be a little sloppy with your offsite SEO – shotgun approach. So long as you looked for quality and made it look natural. And did it slowly.
SEO Book does a great job explaining backlink techniques.
SEOMoz also didn’t do too bad a job discussing the value of links. Better to read Rand’s as opposed to me re-writing it.
Here are some infographics that show the story.
As SEOBook pointed out, make sure you read Google’s terms of services. And make sure you check out the Google Quality Guidelines.
For example, here’s what Google’s Quality Guidelines say on this section:
Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
So when you venture into the following, do so cautiously.
Paid Links: For example, in theory, make sure you have to put NOFOLLOWs on any links that could be deemed “paid” or Google shuts you down. And don’t think they don’t pay attention to those sites who could be link brokers.
Directories: If you’ve even lost several hours of your live using “the latest” directory submitter in hopes their webmasters will allow the links, you’ll already know how much it’s a pain in the ass. Once more, unless you’re paying for them you’ve got like a 1 in 3 chance of them being published in 3 months. Also, Google’s not always the biggest fans of directories that aren’t them. They usually refer to them as, “one way directories,” and not kindly. If you have the time and wanna try, be my guest. But there’s better ways to do it.
The greatest thing they pout out is what Google SEO Eric Schmidt leaked regarding algorithms:
“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”
And like I’m not going to listen to that.