Off The Page Factors

Search engines are aware that some webmasters and SEO's constantly rewrite their web pages in attempt to "reverse engineer" search engine algorithms and gain better rankings. To combat this, search engines now factor in "off-the-page" ranking criteria.

Webmasters and SEO's will find off-the-page factors far more difficult to control. The main area in off-the-page factors is link analysis. Through careful analysis of how pages link, and the text used in the Anchor Text of the links, search engines can establish what a page is about and if that page is important. Important pages will receive a ranking boost.

Search engines also employ techniques to screen out attempts by webmasters and SEO's to build "artificial" links in an attempt to boost rankings.

Clickthrough measurement is another important off-the-page factor. This is a measurement of what pages are selected from the results of a particular search. High ranking pages that don't attract clicks will be demoted, lower-ranking pages that are will be promoted.

When the results are displayed from any given search all there is to go on is the page title, page description or page snippet and the ODP description. While it can be difficult to control the snippet, the page title, page description and ODP description can be controlled and should be written to entice visitors to click on the page.