I've always been a little unclear as to how to approach off site optimization. What's a good way to get started and where should I hit?
offsite optimization is more like marketing and link building. since you are doing seo, your next job is to build backlinks to your site
Either find authority websites that are willing to exchange links with you or you can try a few link selling websites like www.linkadage.com. You can also find relevant information here : http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1256478. Br seo_genius
You can start it by adding your website into potential directories, syndicating articles and doing bookmarking...
Start with: 1) free directory submission, 2) link exchange with relevant sites, 3) Article and Blog posting 4) Forum Postings 5) Social Bookmarking.
Thanks for the help guys. With link exchanges, I just email relevant (authority) sites to my niche and ask if I can get a link to my site from theirs if I put one on my site linking to them? Where would I put these links? I heard having a designated link section isn't ideal, is this true?
When you contact other webmasters you don't need to tell them that you'll exchange reciprocals. Just tell them why your site will be of use to their visitors. I've found that I'll get about 2/3rds of the people who respond give me a link without a reciprocal. Then the rest ask for a recip. I set up a php link directory under my site to handle the reciprocals. Just keep your categories and sites you trade with related to your own site and you'll be o.k.
This should be on your very first thing to do : 1. Social bookmarking 2. Article Marketing. Those task will make you spend your whole week if you do it manually by your own