Internet Marketing Glossary

Definition: Off Page Factors

Off page factors are those factors which impact your website's search engine rankings, but over which you do not have direct control. They include, but are not limited to, the following (which are not in any particular order): 

• relevance of anchor text in the link to you
• relevance of text surrounding the anchor text
• placement of the link on the page
• rate of new inbound links to your website over time
• toolbar information (data about how visitors actually use your website, drawn from toolbars such as the Google Toolbar browser plugin)
• popularity of linking site (total incoming links)
• percentage of your incoming links that are from high-quality websites
• age of the link to your website
• listings of your website in important topical directories 
• PageRank of page linking to your website
• TrustRank of site linking to your website
• whether the site linking to your website is an authority or a hub site

Increasingly, off page factors are becoming more important than on page factors. Off page factors are supposed to represent a kind of community opinion about your website's value and reputation in that thematic community, and are believed to be more difficult to fake because of that.

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