When working on SEO, you must consider both on page SEO and off page SEO. While on page SEO is definitely important, off page optimization contributes more heavily to search results than on page SEO. Making sure to get your title page and meta tags correct is important, but optimizing off page still weighs in at about 80% of importance compared to only 20% for on page SEO.
Google search results are by no means magical. Google’s servers use algorithms to analyze web pages and give us the results to our searches. The algorithms used by Google are based on how research reports work. In any industry, a report really begins to gain weight when it begins to be referenced by others. Some ways that a report may be referenced include:
- Radio
- Television
- Speeches
- Websites
- Newer research reports
Occurrences of these references show recognition for the quality of the work. They are essentially like votes for that particular research report. This is how reports gain credibility within a community. Similarly, Google’s algorithm looks at how many outside links there are to a particular page when determining its rank. The more links to it, the more weight and credibility Google will assign to it and the higher it will rank in search.
The term “World Wide Web” is derived from:
- An imaginary search engine “spider” “crawling” around the Internet gathering a list of web pages via links for Google.
- The links from websites to each other would resemble a spider web.
Now that we know why it’s called the World Wide Web, consider the actual process of web crawling: The server’s index software follows all of the links on known web pages to new web pages. The new pages lead to additional pages and the process continues for each new link discovered. The servers keep a list of each new page and its content, as well as how many times other pages link to it. The major limitation to this type of indexing is that a website must be linked by another to be found. If you do not want a page to be found, then not linking to it will keep it from being indexed. However, when you do want a page to be found, it is important to implement a proper on page linking structure. Google also allows for the submission of site maps, but this should not be a substitution for a well-designed on page linking structure.
Since the index software only makes a giant list of web pages, it is the job of the query software to take this data and find results that are relevant to the search performed. The query software takes the pages gathered by the index software and applies the algorithm to it. This gives us what is usually a very accurate list of pages that contains the desired information.
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Great Explanation.. i think there’s new factor in 2011 right ? not only backlink but quality of content become important now. So, is there any change in off page strategy ?
Referencing is the idea behind the links. The thing is people are gaming the search engines through the wrong way of link building. Thanks for this post. It gives me a better idea on how indexing works.
I started one local job site years ago before I knew about SEO. It had absolutely no on page SEO done on it but it still manages to rank high for some search terms today. I would say that’s because it has good content and people are linking to it naturally because of that good content.
Moving forward, I’d put a lot of effort on off page SEO but I would also now make sure that all my pages are properly optimized.
Honestly, my concept of SEO before is more of doing off page optimization. That is why I was glued on reading a lot of blogs that share tips on how to do it right until I have found myself stuck, wasting hours doing nothing but read. But since I have learned that there’s on page and off page SEO, I applied these tips on my blogs and that worked wonders for me.
I still read blogs, that is why I am here *wink* but this time I am also giving some time to apply what I have learned so I can see for myself if those techniques work or not. 🙂
Hey @Peluang … the question is how will google know what “quality content” is? I wrote an article a while back, although it doesn’t answer your questions directly it might provide some insight:
http://davidjenyns.posterous.com/quality-link-building-tip-are-relevant-sites
Let me know if that helps. Your SEO Coach,
Dave
Thanks for the detailed explanation on the video! I learned a lot. Before I only use on page SEO since the off page seems a little complicated to me at that time. I think it’s really important to use both. And the first step is to understand how google really works and how these links can help your website.
Yes, indeed it is important to make use of both on page and off page SEO. I also had an understanding before that SEO is only about doing social network hops here and there to get traffic, backlinks and have your way up the SERPs. I realized that there’s more to that. It helps big time to do on page SEO as well as carefully research the right keywords to target for best results.