One of my favorite sites for SEO is SEOMoz.org. I read it every day and there are some awesome tips to be shared and yesterday was no different. I have been learning about the concept of off-page SEO. What is that you ask? It is exactly what it sounds like doing things off of a web page to improve web site results.

We took a greater list from SEOMoz.org of 21 Ways for Leverage Off-Page SEO and we found that there are 15 Ways that really work best. Our value is trying things and failing miserably so you can Below is a list of some things most people may be familiar with, but I have also added a few advanced things that you may not know. Try these Advanced Off-Page SEO Strategies to market your website, get ranked in search engines, and to build online reputation (branding) for your company/website so that you can survive in this competitive SEO world.

1). Community Creation in Social Networking Sites

Also known as online reputation management, this is the first and foremost step with which you have to initiate your process. Try to become a member of the most popular social networking sites like Orkut, Myspace, Facebook, Linked In, Ecademy, etc., and create a profile of your own. By doing this you can extend your network online, get connect with your friends, share things with each other, and promote your company/website to build an online reputation. This is most likely the same as Web 2.0 (Participatory Web), which means you have to show your active participation on a regular basis.

2). Blogging

This is one of the most powerful ways to promote your company/website online. Write a blog of your own for your company/website and include lots of unique content. Be precise in what you’re trying to convey for the users in your blog entry and promote your blog in blog directories and blog search engines. You can also promote your blog/website by posting comments in other service-related blogs which allow links in the comments section that are crawlable by the search engines (these blogs are commonly identified as Do-Follow Blogs). If you’re not very good at writing content for blog posts, hire a guest blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine point of view.

3). Forum Postings

Create a forum/online discussion board of your own and start a discussion or share topics with your friends. You can also post/reply to a thread in other service-related pre-existing forums that allow links in your signature which can be crawled by the search engines (aka “Do-Follow Forums”).

4). Search Engine Submission

Submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Alexa, Alltheweb, Lycos, Excite, etc., to get listed for free.

5). Directory Submission

Many people may say that directory submission is dead. As far as I’m concerned it is still alive. It is purely based on how effectively we are selecting those directories and how efficiently we are choosing the category for submission. Of course, I agree that it gives quite delayed results, but it is worth doing it. Submit your websites to the topmost quality directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, ZoomInfo, One Mission, Pegasus, etc. Nowadays many web directories may offer paid listings but don’t go for it.

6). Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is yet another powerful way of promoting your website, but nowadays most people are spamming social bookmarking sites without knowing how to use them. Since content in these websites update frequently, search engines like these types of sites and often visit them (this is commonly termed as Tagsonomy & Folksonomy in Web 2.0). Do some social bookmarking in popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Propeller, etc. You should be very careful while doing this and you must properly handle the tags which are very essential to broadcast your news on a wide area network. This may increase your website traffic based on how effectively you have participated.

7). Link Baiting

Suppose you have copied/published another website’s news or content in your blog/website. Don’t forget to place their website link as a reference. Do it for others and, if your content is trustworthy, let others do it for you. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

8). Cross-Linking

Link to internal pages within your site wherever necessary (this is commonly termed Internal Linking). This increases your internal link popularity ,which is another major factor of Google Page Rank algorithm. The best known example of successful internal linking is Wikipedia. Also try to get a content link from websites/blogs that are related to your site theme. Try getting a link from within their site content using a targeted keyword as anchor text (much like Wikipedia does). We know that this strategy can often be hard to implement, but these types of links have more weight from a search engine point of view.

9). Video Promotions

Like with photo sharing, you can publish/share your product videos, expert opinions, and reviews of your product and make them public in YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, etc.

10). Business Reviews

Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Stylefeeder, etc.

11). Local Listings & Yellow Pages

Instead of going global and facing huge competition, make your website local so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Superpages, Hotfrog, etc.

12). Article Submission

Write articles of your own and submit them to popular article sites like Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, Buzzle, etc. This will help you to attain some deep links for your website (though it’s usually a slower process).

13). Press Release Promotion

If you are a business/service provider then go for PR submission in popular PR websites like 1888pressrelease, Open PR, PR Leap, etc. This will help you to publish your site in Google News.

14). Answers

Participate in Answers by asking and answering relevant questions and placing a link to your website in the source section if necessary. If you don’t spam, this is another great way to increase your link popularity (Yahoo Answers, Cha-Cha, Answer Bag, etc.)

15). PPC Ad Campaign

When none of the above strategies work for you, go for a PPC ad campaign with your targeted keywords. Remember that you have to pay to drive more traffic towards your website through PPC.

Closing Thoughts and an Important Note

While all these techniques are cool and build your SEO results, you should first focus on the web page itself before you do any of these things recommended above. Anything you think we missed? Leave a comment and tell us.

CLICK ABOVE TO DOWNLOAD: 15 Steps to Writing a Winning Marketing Plan

Much focus when starting a business is about putting together a great business plan. We have covered that and you can click here to download the e-book on that type of plan. However, most don’t talk about a critical component of every business – marketing.

The marketing plan is critical and I would almost do this first so you can flesh out your product value, understand the competition and price the product/service for profitability. The business plan takes components of this plan and really demonstrate the execution and operations to make the business work. But it is marketing that is the engine and analytic proof to demonstrate why your company should even exist in the first place.

You are either someone that has been doing marketing as a part of your professional career or you look at as that “thing you do to promote your business and attract customers to buy”. Regardless of where you are along that spectrum, you have arrived here because you have been charged by the CEO of the startup you work for to write a marketing plan for your business or you need to create one for your own business.

You need to not just write just any marketing plan. You need to write a Killer Marketing Plan.

One that your boss will say “awesome, let’s get started” and which will tell all those people who have been looking for a product or service like yours for a long time. This book is written for you.

Marketing plans are sexy mistresses that tempt you to include all of the coolest of campaign ideas without the sanity of budgetary constraints. While marketing is one of the more important functions of a small business, it is one that is limited by the budgets of that business and campaigns must demonstrate a return in order to justify their existence. Since I have written more marketing plans than I care to tell you, I can share with you my knowledge and experience of what has worked almost all the time, some of the time and none of the time.

While this is not the single tome on marketing plans, I hope that this helps you balance the unlimited creative ideas with the budget you have to work with and find a mix that is both innovative and results in sales.

I invite you to explore as many resources out there, some of which are mentioned at the end of this book. I don’t need to wish you luck. Just get started, get out there and crush it.

As with all typical marketing programs, companies feel that they must advertise in every medium in order to get the word out about their product. With the Internet, this is all done through online advertising. What exactly is online advertising? Well you have your typical Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and banner advertising, and there are some other forms as well, including email marketing at times. However, for the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on SEO and SEM.

On Online Advertising. In an eMarketer.com study conducted during 2008, $13.5 billion was spent on online advertising with a bulk of it spent on search engine marketing. Just how much? Well based on the research, 88% of money spent went to paid search and 11% went towards organic search (SEO). Should these things change in the future, especially during a recession? With budgets being tightened and everyone trying to save some money, I would imagine that while search marketing efforts are going to increase, the focus shouldn’t be on throwing out paid search ads, but on your content and truly understanding how your site is being noticed by search engines.

As part of an integrated campaign, search marketing should play a crucial role, especially now during the recession. With more people getting online and using search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live Search, having your site appear near the top of the page when certain keyword phrases are typed can generate tremendous traffic to your website and can often lead to conversions/purchases. So what steps can you take in order to make the most out of this?

One of the first things that you should probably do to help avoid firing blindly into the Internet world is to have someone come in and conduct a search engine audit on your website. Based on my past experiences in working with a consultant, they review your site and let you know what’s good and what’s bad about it – from a search engine perspective. Then they go about and take a look at what keywords will work for your site and the competitiveness of each of them. They will generate statistics, trends, reports, etc. that will help you moving forward. There are a few companies that would conduct this audit for you so look them up. The beauty is that these keywords can be used both for SEO and SEM placements.

But let’s look at search engine optimization for a second. This is probably the first place you should look when trying to promote your site versus jumping over to search engine marketing and essentially “spraying and praying” that your text ads will strike a chord with someone and have them click on your site. It is a debateable topic whether paid search garners more traffic/conversion than organic search, but it would make sense to make sure that your “house is in order” before promoting it. By this I mean make sure that your content is exactly the way you want it? Is it specific enough that if someone types in a certain keyword, that the page will have enough information for them or will it result in them clicking further which is a bad thing? Does your site adhere to search engine optimization best practices? The more care you put into your content and your website design/development overall, the better your search results will be.

However, search engine advertising/marketing should not be overlooked. In fact, the technology behind it has grown over the past few years and there are ways to make sure that you are getting your money’s worth. Perhaps the greatest asset to SEM is the geo-targeting approach. If you are only wishing to reach folks in the west coast of the United States, then you can have your text ads show up for those people with IP addresses located in one of the several states in that region. This will help avoid your text ads showing up for people who might convert but you weren’t targeting – thus avoiding wasting money. Something else to think about when you’re managing your campaign is the time and effort (and possibly cost) associated with managing this SEM campaign. Unfortunately you can’t simply choose a keyword, insert your ad and let it run for the duration. Why? Because the keywords are done through an auction-like process. The higher you are willing to bid on a moment’s notice, the greater your frequency of being seen (impressions). It’s always a state of constant monitoring, but you don’t want to break the bank to be seen all the time. That would cost thousands of dollars (depending on the keyword). One option is to check out a web marketing management solution that may wind up saving you some money overall – like Yield Software. These companies will help you monitor your campaigns and allow you to manage it on your own. So they give you the tools, you shape its path.

It should be important to note that when you’re looking at the keywords and the bidding price, if you have enough content on your site relating to that keyword, you should focus on doing organic search or SEO. The less competitive the word or phrase you’re targeting, the more you should go with SEM. I once heard an analogy “SEM is like renting your home while SEO is owning your home”. This definitely holds true. With a strong SEO strategy, your website/landing page can be the leading “authority” on certain keywords but if you’re only focusing on a temporary campaign or not sure about the effectiveness on a specific page, then you might want to also consider SEM. However, do NOT think that these are mutually exclusive. These should be woven together to help form a cohesive strategy in driving traffic to your site and when done correctly, can help bring you success during these times.