There is only so much you can do on site to get up to the top of the SERPs. If you really want your website to succeed, you will need to focus on off-site optimization. Off-site optimization involves getting back links to your site. Each time a site links to your site, it improves your presence in the online community and shows the search engines that your site is to be trusted. Webmasters now realize that off-site optimization is just as, if not more, important than everything on site. But off-site optimization isn’t just making a slew of back links to your site.
When working on off-site optimization, it is important that your back links are coming in from reputable sites. Quality is much more important than quantity so, for example, one link coming in from a site like CNN.com will be worth much more than a bunch of no-name sites that don’t get any traffic. Each search engine has its own method of calculating the value of off-site optimization. However, you can be sure that the type of site also factors into your page ranking. You should try to get back links from sites with similarly-themed content. For example, if you have a biking blog, work on off-site optimization with bike maintenance sites.
There are many places where you can get fast, easy and free off-site optimization. These include article submission sites like Ezine, making press releases, forums, directory submissions, social networks, and blog commenting. Keep in mind that the text you use for your back link is also important for off-site optimization. Instead of writing your link text as, “Click here”, instead write “Check out Bikes in New Jersey”, or whatever the subject of your website is. Once you have a strong presence off-site, your site will start moving up in the SERPs.