When it comes to handling SEO for your website, you might think that you’ve got it all under control. You’ve done the research on search engine optimization, you’ve taken care to use carefully selected keywords in your website text, and now you just need to wait for the visitors to come pouring in. Right? Not usually. Even the sites that have the most optimized SEO development possible still need more than just the site to depend on itself. You are also advertising your website in other areas, right? If you have ads, directory listings, articles published in directories or any other text that is out there in cyberspace and not directly on your site, you need to make it stand out.

If your website is about wealth and being rich, for example, you wouldn’t want to focus on keywords like “Big and Rich” because while it is a popular keyword according to many tracking programs, it’s a country music duo, not anything to do with making money. Instead, focus on other popular keywords like ‘getting rich’ or anything that is actually relevant to your site. By using keywords that are unrelated, you’re likely to cause traffic jams out there in the internet world. Plus, it looks really tacky to people who do frequent your site when you use irrelevant terms just to boost SEO.

It makes you look desperate. Like you weren’t able to utilize the keywords that were applicable well enough, so now you have to rely on other keywords that have no real reason to be used, just to get people to come to your site. Don’t waste your own time, and definitely don’t leave your visitors with this impression. When it comes to off site SEO, stick with relevant keywords that will actually be useful. It is far easier to sell a CD to ten music fans than it is to sell that same CD to 1 million people who could care less.

Remember the rule of too much of a good thing, though, when it comes to off site SEO. Just like on your website, anything over 2%-3% density (10-15 mentions in a 500 word article) is going to set off alarm bells with all the search engines because you appear to be keyword stuffing. The worst of it is that you might not do it intentionally, but it can still hurt your rankings. With these things in mind, you should be able to use off site SEO to create a smooth flow of traffic to your own website.