Improving your off site / external search engine optimisation (SEO) can be done in a number of ways.

Increase your number of incoming links / back links:

Incoming links / backlinks are simply links from another website that link back to your website.

A backlink will consist of 2 things: The anchor text and inbound link.

Simply put the anchor text is that bit of text you click on that takes you to another webpage/link a few examples are “click here” “web design Walsall” or “click here to find a web designer in Birmingham” They are called anchor text and should contain your keyword.

Search engines know what backlinks point to what websites and for what keyword/anchor text. You should always vary your anchor text and make them as descriptive and natural as possible. Just using “web design London” is a bit vague and search engines much prefer anchor text to be descriptive and useful like “click here to find a web designer in Walsall”.

Warning: Having backlinks from websites that violate search engine rules, such as illegal pirate sites, websites that are offensive in anyway or from websites loaded with spam WILL result in your website being delisted from search engine results.

Submit your website to directory’s:

Get your website listed in as many directories’ as you can such as dmoz.org

Search engines use feeds form directory’s and they help improve rankings.

Old incoming links:

Just like with domain names, the older an incoming link to your website is the better.

Incoming link from an expert/authority website:

This is reported to give a real big boost! Having your website linked to from somewhere like Wikipedia or about.com or any other website that a search engines considers to be highly popular and influential in a field will help your rankings boost.

These are some of the things you can do off site to improve your off site search engine rankings and seo.

SEO can be a tricky little devil when it want’s too. There are tens and tens if not hundreds of changes each year to the Google algorithm – Which is the calculation that decides how and where your website is ranked in the search engine results.

When working with your SEO agency run through the above with them and ensure that they are following best practices – This can help you massively in the search engine results.

This should all be well thought out as part of a fuller online digital marketing strategy to enable you to get the best return on your investment.