Task 7 SEO Offpage

The concept here is to increase visibility and worth of a site through its interactions with other sites.

This differs from onpage optimisation as the changes are not made with the site itself, but with the other websites, which interact with it.

A website's worth can be measured using Pagerank, the Alexa Rank or the Google Index. Google assumes that the more links there are that refer to a website, the more important this site is. Links would have to connect to more than just the homepage. Pages with higher rankings that link to other websites, have more worth. So, if a 'serious' website can take the time to link and mention your site, then you must be important!

Two possible tools for Offpage Optimisation are:

1. Linkbird. This is a paid platform. It offers several interesting features, including:

• Notifications when a backlink has been created.
• Can crawl for existing links
• They use their own system to report on Pagerank, Age of a link and Text of a backlink
• Their sitehunter finds thematically related websites for possible connections
• It also provides Project Management tools as well as Budget control tools

The entire package is designed to offer you everything in one place for a complex. but powerful tool to manage where backlinks are coming from and to strategize where one would actually like them to come from.

       2. Sistrix. A well established and SEO focused tool. This was created to optimise information coming on from Google so that the information would be clearly presentable. Interesting features are:

• Notifications of changes within the Google search engine, so that the user can have a clear overview when the search parameters have been changed.
• A special tools is their webcrawler, which is designed to emulate Google's own crawler, but this moves at a much faster rate. This means that users can have access to relevant information before Google itself knows if it is out there. 
• They also look at Twitter, Gmail and Facebook, to provide results on the performance of your site on these platforms, but also allows you to compare yourself with other sites.
• They also have a simple interface where you can overview backlink data, even with percentages from different countries.

Local Marketing

 This looks at how a business, not necessarily an online business, can increase customers by integrating with the web. Here are some examples:

• Google+ This is great for creating a centralised profile. Store locations can be marked on a map so potentianl customers can even plan a route to you. Information like opening times, contact numbers and emails can all be clearly displayed, but the what are more important would be the 'plus' feature and 'follow' feature, where users can promote your own account and then subscribe to your updates. This increases the B2C bond and also works as free promotion for potential new customers.
• Youtube: Using this as a platform for viral marketing, customer engagement or showing off new products works well as Youtube is obviously much cheaper than taking out on ad for TV or Radio. It gives a face to a business in some cases, or, where there is no central figure e.g. Steve Jobs, ads serve to create a business identity.
• Keyword Research:  This is also extremely important. Gone are the days of the yellow pages. People expect to pick up their phones and find whatever they are looking for within a couple of minutes. The more relevant information concerning products, price and location is available, the likelier someone will stumble upon your site.