Other Offsite SEO Factors
There several other ways that you can promote your website using offsite factors. We have listed some of the most important of these below.
SEO through Forums and Social Networking Sites
There has been a massive increase in the popularity of social networking during the last couple of years. It has been around for as long as the Internet but the fairly recent and massive increase in its popularity has made it a phenomenon.
You can create links to your website on relevant forums and on social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, etc. These are all worthwhile and valid SEO tolls for use on your website.
Blogging for SEO
Many businesses now use blogs for SEO and to increase the traffic to their websites. Google likes changing content so a regularly updated Blog can feature well on its own. It also gives you a chance to talk about your business, your services and/or your products and it allows you to create relevant hypertext links back to your main website.
Warning - Link Farms!
Link farms are websites, normally with decent PageRank, where you can pay to have a link back to your website. Beware of these. They have no purpose other than to generate link popularity and increase PageRank so Google rightly sees them as being irrelevant and it is gradually weeding them out. In some cases it is also penalising websites that have been included in them. They are best avoided.
Offsite SEO with Google Places
Google offers a service for local businesses that may be of interest to you. You must sign up for an account and this allows you to enter details of your business (more information here).
Writing Articles and Tutorials
If you are knowledgeable on the subject of your website you may want to consider writing technical articles and offering them to other websites for publication in exchange for a link back to your website.
How long does it take for these SEO Changes to Work?
On a new site it can take three months or more for SEO to start working and perhaps six to nine months for a website to find an established position in the rankings. There is however no hard and fast rule. It really is a case of "wait and see".
Next Section - Getting into the Search Engines >
