Are you looking for the ultimate resource for off-page SEO best practices?
We are here to help you to understand off-page SEO out and out. We offer off-page SEO for beginners and more.
Did you know that 95% of search traffic goes to the first page of search results? In raising the ranking of your page with these search engines and achieving more traffic, off-page SEO techniques can help you.
Off-page SEO is the activity performed outside of the website to increase the site’s search engine rankings. It can help search engines to see your website as professional and trustworthy.
Today, off-page SEO is more important than ever. It is one of the most relevant techniques you need to incorporate to have a successful SEO strategy to increase your site’s visibility.
Every website owner wants to see their website rank higher in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. With the challenging competition online, on-page activities cannot solely bring success to your website. You will need to look at more than your on-page SEO strategy.
To rank on Google and increase your brand’s organic traffic, invest in an off-page SEO strategy now.
Here are some of the things you need to know about what off-page SEO is, how it works, and how to use it to make the most out of its benefit.
Keep on reading for the best Off-Page SEO tips.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO, also known as off-site SEO, means covering search engine tactics outside a website. It doesn’t involve updating or publishing content to your website. You should implement these tactics if you want to impact your rankings within search engine results pages and enjoy a competitive advantage.
Before, it was often associated with link-building activities. But now, it also includes brand building, content marketing, citation building, social media, and any tactics that can be a part of your off-page SEO techniques. These tactics will help both search engines and users better understand your website. In turn, it can increase your site’s trust, awareness, and relevance.
But off-page SEO alone cannot help your site rank. It would help if you combine it with technical SEO and on-page SEO tactics. With this combination, you can outrank websites with higher authority and achieve overall success.
On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO vs. Technical SEO
To signal that many people trust, share, and reference your site to search engines, you need to have some superb SEO strategies. You can use On-Page, Technical SEO, or Off-Page SEO techniques. Let us define them so you can better understand these important strategies.
On-Page
On-page SEO covers all of the things or tactics you can do on your page/post to help search engines better comprehend your content and improve your ranking. This includes things like creating content, optimizing title tags, image optimization, targeting keywords, putting anchor tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, and internal linking.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to activities that help search engine spiders crawl and index your site more effectively. It directly impacts technical aspects of a website, such as the indexing and crawling of your site by search engines. Examples of these activities include site speed optimization, structured data, and more.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to activities from or “behind the scenes” of your website. These involve all the things you can do outside of your website to help you improve your SERP position.
In layman’s terms, off-page SEO guidelines help search engines understand what others think about your product, services, or website. Even having just a few links from other relevant sites with high levels of authority will increase your site’s chances of ranking higher. However, off-page SEO isn’t just about getting a link to your site from just anyone. It is all about getting a link to your site from the right one. These include link building, forums, influencer outreach, and content marketing, to name a few.
If you want to use backlinks, make sure that you are getting the “link juice” from the backlink too. It is like the source site acknowledging and voting for the linked article, post, or page. In turn, it can increase the link’s authority. The other type of backlink is a no-follow backlink, which doesn’t pass any authority from the source site to the linked site.
The Importance of Off-Page SEO
Why do you need off-page SEO? What are the benefits of off-page SEO? If you are constantly asking these questions, here are some of the answers you seek.
With search engines constantly updating their algorithms, you need to invest in every SEO technique you can use. This includes off-page SEO guidelines. Effective off-page best SEO practices can raise true brand awareness and drive massive organic traffic to your website.
The SEO community still thinks off-page SEO plays a significant role in a web page’s ability to rank. According to a study by Moz, they have found out that off-page SEO holds about 50% of the ranking factor weight.
With off-page SEO as your site’s domain authority, your site can outrank websites with higher authority. Without this, your website might struggle since higher authority websites rank better than those with low or no authority.
Off-page SEO simply tells search engines what others think about your site. If you have got a lot of valuable links pointing to your pages, search engines will think that you’ve got excellent content that delivers value for users.
Off-Page SEO Checklist
How do you ensure that you boost your branded searches online?
This guide will help you get a deeper understanding of off-page SEO. We hope to help you understand why it is essential to rank your page on Google and drive better results.
Let us take a look at these 14 different off-page tactics you can use. We have crafted a complete checklist of everything you should aim at in your digital marketing endeavors.
- Link Building
- Brand Building
- Content Marketing
- PR
- Local SEO (GMB and Citations)
- Social Media
- Forums
- Influencer Marketing
- Events
- Guest Posting
- Podcasts
- Reviews
- Content Syndication
- Video Marketing
Link Building
Today, link building is king. So, build and chase quality links. That is the first and most important thing you need to remember about links. It is so relevant that even though Google implies that content is the number one ranking factor, the masses still prefer backlinks. Also, given Google’s algorithm, you should invest in link building as part of your off-page SEO checklist.
Earn backlinks from high-authority websites to improve your site’s authority. These high authority links will serve as your “vote of trust” from one site to another.
So, to earn quality links from authority sites, you should always focus on quality over quantity. Include closing the link gap between your site and your competitor’s site.
Here are the factors you should be considering with link building:
- Authority Score is the compound domain score of Semrush that grades the overall quality of a website. It tells you how impactful a backlink from a site can be.
- Unique Domains – You should have various linking root domains that point to your site. Domain diversity should be a key focus as part of your off-page strategy.
- Topical Relevance – You should always seek to land links from sites that typically relate to your own site. It is also good to have some links from other topics if they make sense.
Backlinks are really important. So, make sure to check them out if you want to sustain your site’s ranking position.
Brand Building
Brand building should be a part of your broader SEO and marketing strategy and part of your approach to an off-page SEO checklist. Brand-building can boost your credibility, which is why it also serves the purpose of off-page SEO. It can also help you easily get to earn links and mentions naturally across the web.
So, how do you include brand building in an SEO strategy?
Brand Searches
An increase in brand searches is the strongest indicator that you are building your brand. These branded searches may include your brand name, products and services, or domain name. You can check Google Trends to help track searches in your brand or to see how your branded searches change over time.
Brand SERPs
Another reason why you should focus on brand-building activities are Brand SERPs. These are search results that come up when users search your brand name.
Content Marketing
Content marketing does involve not only on-page but also off-page tactics. Writing content and publishing it anywhere on the web is content marketing. Content marketing falls as an off-page tactic since publishing valuable content can lead others to link to or share.
Here are some content marketing tactics that help boost off-page signals include:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Surveys, studies & research papers
- Whitepapers & eBooks
PR
PR is now the link-building tactic of choice for many SEOs since they can use this strategy to promote a great story and corresponding linkable assets.
PR can help off-page SEO signals in more ways, such as:
- Helping to build links
- Positioning your business at the forefront of your target audience
- Increasing brand awareness and resultant brand searches
- Driving referral traffic
- Helping build trust signals
Local SEO (GMB and Citations)
Local SEO also helps off-page SEO through:
-
Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) plays an important role in the online presence of any local business.
According to HubSpot, 46% of all online searches are local. Make sure your website will show up in local GMB results to get ahead of your competitors. So, do not ignore the importance of Google My Business in ranking for the local map pack. Check out Google My Business to learn the tips and tricks to help you optimize your listing.
-
Citations
A citation is a mention of your business online along with its NAP (name, address, and phone number). Think of them as business listings. If you want to rank for geographically targeted search terms on the SERPs or map pack, audit your citations and manage reviews.
Social Media
According to Hootsuite, 97% of digital consumers use social media every month. Furthermore, social media is now becoming the preferred tool for people to search for answers to their questions. Customers prefer to speak to you or raise a query through social media.
Here are Pew Research Center reports on social media use in 2021:
- 81 percent of American adults use YouTube
- 69 percent of American adults use Facebook
- 49 percent of American adults use Instagram
- 28 percent of American adults use LinkedIn
- 23 percent of American adults use Twitter
- 21 percent of American adults use TikTok
Small businesses also use social media platforms as search engines to connect with their audience and vice versa. So, hop on this trend, and use social media as a platform for building brand advocacy and brand promotion. Use social networks to engage with your audience.
Real engagement and shares on social media also attract more attention. More attention to your content leads to more links and mentions, positively affecting your rankings. Maintain a strong presence on social media platforms, so customers can find you during their buyer journey.
Invest a decent amount of money on social media. Choose from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to draw a prospective market to your business. You can create at least a profile on Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram.
Forums
Before, SEOs spammed forums, comments, and other UGC platforms since they were used to build (high or low quality) links. For this reason, many businesses stayed away from forums completely.
But when used as part of a more comprehensive strategy, they can add real value to your marketing mix. Use forums with a different mindset, such as having conversations that relate to your expertise, so you can be seen as a specialist or expert.
With a bit of effort and commitment, you can have open discussions with potential customers who are interested in what you have to offer. Build a strong community and level of trust from audiences on forums. You can try Reddit and Quora or other forums within your niche.
Influencer Marketing
Before, influencer marketing was about bloggers doing sponsored posts. But today, it’s all about social media, like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Influencers can go a long way than being a form of a search engine. They can help ensure you are present, as a business, on social media platforms.
You should invest in influencer marketing if you want to build your brand, strengthen your content, and reach new audiences who are actively looking to find content.
Don’t use influencer marketing as a way to build links unless they are followed.
Events
Events are making a comeback this year! Now more than ever, you should invest in online events that are significant. They help improve awareness or get a real buzz around your business. So take advantage of this to engage your audience and drive social engagement or links.
Events can also be a great way to pick up some fantastic PR coverage.
Guest Posting
Submitting content to another website to provide information and value to their audience is guest posting.
When done right, guest posting can fetch you more than just quality backlinks and contribute far more to your marketing strategy.
Guest posting help to:
- Put your brand in front of a targeted audience
- Get in front of a related site’s traffic
- Helps to position you as an expert in your field
- Effectively builds quality links
- attract new customers
- Build your brand
- Growing brand awareness
Get a reliable guest posting service provider that can take your business to the next level.
Podcasts
Podcasts are insanely popular these days! They continue to gain more listeners every month. According to Edison Research, 57% of Americans have listened to podcasts at least once.
If you aren’t utilizing them yet as part of your marketing strategy, you’re losing out on tremendous opportunities.
Let’s look at the benefits:
- A great way to gain a competitive advantage
- A great way to reach new audiences
- A platform to share your expertise
- Lets you find relevant podcasts with keywords
- Gain visibility on search engines that aren’t Google
The businesses that recognize that SEO should cover podcasts. Podcasts can help build a brand and find ways to target their potential audience.
Reviews
According to Trustpilot, 89% of people consult online reviews before making a purchase. Furthermore, according to Igniyte, 93% of people admit to online reviews impacting their buying decisions. Your online reviews has never been so important.
Today, reviews are still underrated when it comes to off-page SEO techniques. Positive reviews can build trust in your audience and boost conversions, whether on your page or on third-party platforms.
But you should take a look at this strategy since reviews are great for online reputation management. Google derives brand signals via reviews that can influence your ranking and, eventually, your position in search results.
A business that has collected great reviews on third-party platforms can create signals that put at the top of the SERPs.
Make sure to put your reviews in different places, especially where all your customers can see how much other people love your business. Put them on your website, social media platforms, local review sites, Google, and other search engines. You can even create video testimonials for those who want video content.
Encourage your previous clients to share testimonials. You should also interact with those who leave bad reviews.
Boost your marketing power on local review sites by:
- Listing your business on Google Local Search
- Posting in Yelp, a review site with more than 75 million monthly mobile web unique visitors
- Sharing links in email marketing
- Encouraging happy customers personally
Content Syndication
Content syndication allows new content to be published across sites that form a part of a network owned by publishers to supplement their original articles.
Yahoo! is an example of a platform with syndicated content to boost their content. Google does not index syndicated content since it is a duplicate of the original, but that doesn’t mean it should be avoided altogether.
Consider syndicating your content to other sites to improve your audience reach. Ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is now becoming the most preferred content format online. The year 2020 is the year of video and will continue to affect the next few years.
Video Marketing Statistics You Should Consider
According to Biteable:
- 74% of marketers say video has a better return on investment than static imagery, outperforming social banners and company photos.
- 53% of marketers say that video helps raise the brand’s visibility in the marketplace.
- 52% of marketers say video content helps them build trust with new customers.
According to wyzowl.com:
- 86% of businesses utilize video as a marketing tool
- 87% of marketers say video has enabled them to increase traffic
- 86% of marketers say video has allowed them to yield leads.
- 81% of marketers say video has allowed them to directly increase sales.
- 49% of marketers say video has reduced support calls.
- 87% of marketers say videos generate good ROI.
Do Not Ignore Off-Page SEO
You cannot ignore off-page SEO anymore, especially in this technology-advanced era.
Recognize that off-page SEO is so much more than link building. It has shifted from a core focus on driving signals to optimize, creating content, and ranking on other search engines aside from Google.
Make a real difference in your brand’s online presence. If you need help, Proweaver is here to help you. Feel free to contact us at +1 (877) 216-0852 or +1 (877) 300-6564.