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I covered on-site website optimisation in my first article: “Introduction to Search Engine Optimization - Part 1″, however this is only part of the story. In that example, the search engines use it to work out who to rank where with respect to each other. But to get to that point, the search engine must have already decided that you are a website worthy of ranking. That happens by reputation, and reputation is gauged by how many other websites link to yours. This is called Off-Site Optimisation and is out third step. Not all links are created equally either, there are several factors when it comes to links:

Quantity - how many websites link to yours, although this is the least important factor. Source Website Reputation - How “important” is the website linking to you? Do you think that a link from www.microsoft.com is more important than a link from your personal blog (diary) site? Source Website Relevance - If the website that links to you is search engine optimised well for “Widget X5000″ then that s better than a link from Tracey s Knitting Circle website. Link Text - What does the link say on their web page? Does it say: www.your-site.com or Buy your Widget X5000 here ? Which do you think is better if you want to rank highly for “Widget X5000″?

Let s pretend you sell Apple Mac computers, what would be the perfect link? How about a link from www.apple.com s home page that says “Buy your Apple Macs here”? It s a site that has massive reputation, is very relevant and links to your site including the phrase “Apple Mac”, which we ll assume you want to rank for if you sell them!

Great, we ve found a magic bullet that will shoot you to that #1 slot, right? No! Sure, having that link would give you a massive boost and might even do it, but it s not the only story. Remember, a balanced portfolio. Here s an exercise for your, search google for “Click Here”. The number 1 site is the Adobe Acrobat Reader download page and yet the phrase “Click Here” doesn t appear on that page anywhere and the page has nothing to do with “Click Here”. So why is it #1? Because over a million web sites link to that download page, with the words “Click Here” as the text of the link!

As you can see, there are many factors to optimising your site to get high rankings in the search engines. I ve really only scratched the surface here and not even mentioned a critical early step of how to scientifically check whether your are even optimising for the correct search keywords and key phrases. You could spend months ranking for “Widget X5000″ and yet get no traffic, only to discover after wasting time and money that actually your prospective clients are searching in droves for “Widget 6000Y”. There are specific techniques to ensure you are using the best keywords and keyphrases, and you re on to a hiding to nothing if you don t do it up front.

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