Off-Page SEO – search engine optimization – refers to the part of SEO that attempts to manipulate “web-importance” to achieve rank for a given keyword. Often, billions of web pages compete for the same keywords, and search engines like Google try to gauge which, among several relevant pages, are most important. Since search engines cannot comprehend content the way a human can, they rely on behavioral inputs from users and webmasters to tell them which web pages should rank. Webmasters communicate web-importance by linking out to other web pages. In the simplified world of off-page SEO, a link to a web page is like a vote for that web page. So linking could be considered a “social” behavior. But how can well-behaved webmasters and bloggers hope to acquire links without gaming the system? After all, Google’s webmaster guidelines are clearly against any form of search engine manipulation. Here is where SMO – social media optimization – comes into play.

Regardless of what you are selling, pushing or promoting, your website should be designed for these three: search engines, users and webmasters. It is almost a given that any website should have good on-page SEO, but some webmasters have gone to extremes of over-stuffing their content with keywords, often making them almost unreadable for the users. Google has (almost) advanced to the point where you don’t have to write like that anymore. If you have quality content, people will receive it well and behave accordingly. Since Google has all kinds of behavioral sampling & modeling technology, your focus should now be on behavioral optimization. How are you going to get your visitors to do what you want them to do, such as link to you, talk about your website, share your content, etc?

First, Marketing 101. Target your demographic! Enable sharing of your content on webmaster-targeted social networks – those whose users are actually capable of linking out to you. StumbleUpon, Technorati, Blog Catalog, etc.