Off-page elements, in contrast to ‘on-page elements,’ refer to anything that is not available at the website itself but rather off-site somewhere else on the internet. Off-page elements are as important as on-page elements in comprehensive search engine optimization. For example, search engines not only “interpret” what you offer at your website but they also try to determine how “popular” your web content is based on the quality, relevance and diversity of sources of inbound links that point to it.
Inbound linking is an off-page element that is given great weight by Google, for example, which uses the PageRank™ algorithm to determine the popularity of a web page based on the elements outlined above. One of the goals of search engine optimization is to acquire many relevant, high quality inbound links from reputable, high quality sources like professional organizations, news sites, blogs, newsletters, social networking sites, online magazines, and others that effectively enhance your web page’s PageRank™ score so that it will rank higher in the listings on the search engine results pages for the keyword or phrase for which it was optimized.
Having the ability to include the keywords and phrases important to your campaign within the link text (called ‘anchor text’) that points to your web page from the external source is also a great benefit to your campaign.
