Off Page Optimization is a combination of all the factors that reside away from your page.
If you are new to Search Engine optimization then the most important thing you can learn regarding current Search Engine algorithms is:
The most important factor that affects your Search Engine Ranking in the major Search Engines is inbound LINKS pointing to your website.
In general, the more quality links that point to your website the higher your website’s Search Engine ranking will be for the keywords that people use to link to your website. While some Search Engines don’t place as much weight on links, the three major Search Engines (Google®, MSN®, and Yahoo®) do place a significant amount of weight on inbound links.
The reason for this is that Google® and other Search Engines rank websites based on the number of websites that link to them. One of the Google® algorithms that does this is the Page Rank® algorithm. Basically, the Page Rank® algorithm calculates the number and quality of all incoming links to a website.
Each link to your website is viewed as a ‘vote’ for it. For example, I just went and checked Yahoo® for the number of links from other websites to this website using the following command:
The Yahoo® command above lists all the web pages that the Yahoo® Search Engine thinks links to my website, not including links on my own site. The result today was 1730 pages. According to the Google® Page Rank® algorithm this is equivalent to 1730 votes for my website. However, all these votes are not created equal. Each link to my site is given different weight. A link from a web page with a higher Page Rank®, is more important than links from websites with lower Page Rank®. Based on the Page Rank® of the website pages that link to your website and the number of links to your website, your website receives it’s own Page Rank® from Google®. To read more about Page Rank®, check out: http://www.google.com/technology/
To visually see your Page Rank®, the easiest way is to download the Google® Toolbar and turn on the Page Rank feature. Every time you visit a website the Google® Toolbar displays it’s Page Rank®. Page Rank® is one of many factors that Google® uses to determine a website’s search rankings for a given keyword. There is much debate regarding how much weight Page Rank® is given towards rankings. However, you can be fairly sure that Page Rank® will always be an important factor in Google® search rankings as long as links continue to be a major factor in the Google® algorithm.
Please note: The Page Rank® listed on the toolbar is the Page Rank® that page has based on the last update Google has done. In other words, the Page Rank® shown in the toolbar is very rarely up to date. Also, Page Rank® is really only useful for purposes of getting a general idea of how many links the site has to it. It does not tell you whether or not the site is an Authority site, which is more important than Page Rank® for link building purposes.