Offpage Optimization

To make sure that your website rocks, there are a number of factors outside the actual site that have to be bundled - not least with respect to inbound marketing. Now!

Off-page optimization

Backlink structures that ROCK with ROCKITdigital

Off-page optimization is part of search engine optimization and comprises all of the factors that are external to the actual website. This includes backlinks as well as optimizing link building and inbound marketing. Backlinks are one of the most potent factors that affect a website’s ranking and are therefore extremely important to organic search results. Our broad range of link building strategies is aimed at increasing a website’s popularity and improving a website’s rankings

Why is off-page optimization so important for a website?

The internet contains a network of millions of websites that are linked to each other by external links. This gives rise to important and valuable backlinks, each one of which is weighted differently by Google. This is why it is vital to ensure that your website has a healthy backlink profile by fine-tuning your off-page optimization. Doing so will improve your site’s ranking in Google, which in turn is a sure way to make it easier to find

Our website off-page optimization process for your website:

1. Analyzing your website’s backlink profile

Starting with a detailed backlink analysis, during which we assess the quantitative and qualitative aspects of each individual link, we gradually build up a clear picture and detailed analysis of your website’s current backlink structure. On completion of this analysis, we will need to access your website’s Google webmaster tools to see all of Google’s backlink samples and hence get a deeper insight into them. With a number of off-page optimization tools, we can then identify any suspicious elements in the backlink profile and examine them in more detail during the analysis.

Link profile

Backlink data is relative, in other words no hasty conclusions / decisions should be made about individual pieces of data because all websites relate to different industries (niches), which in turn have different features. This is why it is also advisable to compare your website’s backlink data with your competitors’.

During this analysis, we will check the following backlink data of your domain:

Links per domain ratio:

This ratio is the number of all backlinks divided by the number of all linking domains. (Example 1745/81=21.54; competitor: 1475/55=26.81. This figure is only marginally lower than the competitor’s and indicates that there are no irregularities.) These data can be used to identify behavior of existing site-wide links. Site-wide links include links that can be found on every page of a website. They are often contained within a website’s footer or sidebar and frequently violate Google’s guidelines.

Deep link ratio:

The percentage share of backlinks that point to the homepage and those that link to deeper pages also has to be analyzed on the basis of a sector comparison. If the deep link ratio differs too strongly from the direct competitors, this might be taken as a sign by Google that something isn’t right and have a negative impact that could ultimately lead to a penalty or a falling ranking. A large amount of deeplinks can be seen as a signal that the domain also has high quality content deep within the domain structure and not just a shiny homepage.

Follow / nofollow ratio:

The percentage share of backlinks with the rel=”nofollow” attribute and those without. This ratio of backlinks also needs to be examined with reference to competitors. Google doesn’t follow these backlinks, so they don’t pass pagerank. However, they are still part of a natural link profile. For this reason, we always make sure that a site’s nofollow link ratio is a healthy one (e.g. a very low ratio, could be taken as a suspicious one) to ensure that it is not taken to indicate manipulative link building activities.

Screenshot follow / nofollow ratio

Anchor texts:

We ascertain the anchor texts, such as

  • Brand
  • Money or long-tail keywords
  • Compound link texts

For a healthy profile, we recommend the use of different kinds of anchor texts for your website, and the use of money keywords in anchor texts is avoided. A suboptimal anchor text profile (figure 1) can lead to a logarithmic or manual Google penalty (figure 2).

Anchor text money kewords
Google Penguin Penalty

TLDs:

TLDs show the top level referring domains (e.g. .co.uk, .com, .org) linking to your website. When analyzing TLDs, we check whether your website (language and target market) matches the referring domains. If, for example, a German website (.de) targets the German and Austrian market but has backlinks mostly from Polish (.pl) and English (.com) websites, that can be suspicious.

Google Penguin Penalty

Linkquellen:

Link sources:
We manually check all of the pages that contain links to your website to get a clear overview of the different link sources and link types, such as

  • Forums (with organic or unnatural links)
  • Online catalogues
  • Article directories
  • Media portals
  • Blogs (guest posts, comments)
  • Business directories
  • SEO pages (imprint is an image)
  • Site networks
  • Real offer sites

We assess how they are weighted (percentage) in your backlink profile. This enables us to create a more effective off-page strategy for you.

Topical relevance and link integration:

When manually analyzing your backlinks, we make sure in particular that the links to your site are on topically relevant sites and have been ideally integrated. In other words it is extremely important for backlinks to be located on topically relevant pages and to have anchor texts that match the link target page. Further still, it is also extremely important for backlinks to be integrated on those pages in a meaningful way to make sure that users will actually click on them (likelihood of click). We recommend in particular avoiding placing links in footers and sidebars (site-wide) and to tag advertising links with rel=nofollow.

2. We report the results of the analysis and our recommendations for the off-page optimization

Performing a comprehensive analysis is invaluable for developing an optimal off-site strategy and for defining subsequent measures. We generally recommend either the removal, change or disavowing of existing and suspicious backlinks. We will also show you the weak points of your backlink profile and tell you how to build highly effective links. Last but not least, we will offer you a customized link building service package that will not be tied to any long term contract.

3. Implementing the individual off-page optimization measures

Next, we remove and change links and prepare the list of links to disavow in consultation with you. We generally only recommend disavowing a backlink as a last resort. Once this work has been completed, we start building organic and topically relevant links in order to permanently secure top Google rankings for your website and its relevant sub-pages.

4. Regularly reporting to you

We will regularly provide you with detailed reports on newly built/removed/disavowed backlinks. We will also monitor the results of our off-page optimization measures and changes in your rankings.

A brief overview of our services:

  • We create a careful analysis of your website’s backlink structure
  • You receive our recommendations and strategy for the off-site optimization of your website
  • We provide you with regular reports that are compiled on the basis of detailed data

If you would like to optimize your off-page presence, or build effective links, or just want your website’s backlinks checked, ROCKITdigital will be happy to draw up a bespoke offer that will meet your specific needs and guarantees the use of sound and ROCKING methods to propel your website to success.

Do you have further questions about our services or would you like some personal advice? Get in touch, and we will be happy to provide you with a non-binding quote.