Off-Page search engine optimization (SEO), also referred to as off site SEO, refers to actions that are taken or built outside of your website which impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs).
It plays into the field of user perception of a site's popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority, accomplished by other places on the Internet such as pages, sites and people linking or promoting your website.
In short, off-page factors are the number of referring domains, anchor text, social shares, brand mentions and link authority.
Relevance, trustworthiness, and authority have a major role in the ability of a site to rank for off-page SEO. In a way, it's the web equivalent of word-of-mouth.
When a lot of people or websites link to your website, search engines like Google would assume that you provide good quality and valuable content for users.
In ranking a website, Google has stated that it uses off-site SEO signals. Thus, without off-page SEO your website will struggle to outrank other websites that have higher authority.
We've compiled 15 off-page SEO techniques to help your site's visibility:
- Link building
Backlinking is the core of off-page SEO strategies. It's one of the most important Google ranking factors, which helps your website be included in search engine rankings. Google ranks a website higher than another if such a website has more backlinks.
Link building involves getting inbound links to your web page.
Take note, however, that in link building it's more on the quality than quantity. Search engines put a premium on high quality links. Links from high domain authority websites make websites easily visible in the search results.
Businesses must use authoritative, relevant and quality links, whether it be website links, internal links, external links or anchor text, to increase the chances of the search engine giant ranking their website higher. Aside from this, make sure that the linking site is not just popular but also trustworthy as search engines also look for the linking page authority, which indicates the ranking power in the search results.
However, make sure that there are no broken links in your website as this may affect your site's accessibility for users, thus affecting how search engines rank your website. Broken links also determine the quality of your website.
Others have used broken link building to find a broken link and replace it with a working link to a target website. Webmasters use this off-site SEO technique to build a lot of quality backlinks to their websites.
Self-created links are links generated by blog comments, guest book signings or form signatures. As its name implies, it's created by the website owner to fool Google and other search engines that their links are important. Thus, search engines devalue these links and aggressively penalise self-created links.
Another off-page SEO strategy is to avoid unnatural links. As Google relies more on the algorithm than manual actions, unnatural links are often tagged as link spam, which is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Always check the links to your site to make sure you're not penalised.
As for nofollow links, while Google has previously treated them as nuance but in 2020, Google's Danny Sullivan stated that they would consider the nofollow links if they were useful. However, they're still not given any credence or weight.
In digital marketing, webmasters have used link juice to pass the value, equity or power from another site is transferred through internal links or external links.
- Content marketing
Content marketing covers both on-page SEO and off-page SEO and is one of the chances to also utilise link building. There's the part of publishing detailed, quality, and useful information on your website, and the other part is creating and publishing this same information on the internet.
If you create engaging and useful information, other websites would want to link your content. These natural links help in getting your website ranked in search results. Then, you can use this outside link to promote them as part of your off-page SEO.
If you're a business owner, there are some digital marketing tactics to build your off-page SEO techniques and increase traffic to your website. Some of these would be blog posts, GIFs, infographics, surveys, research or case studies, whitepapers, or E-books.
- Social media marketing
The ad spending for social media globally is expected to rise over the next couple of years. As a lot of users become digital consumers, local businesses have used various social media platforms to promote their brands and service to potential and new clients.
When Google ranks a page, social signals now may matter. Social media makes users engaged throughout the day, and brands have used this engagement to use social media platforms to put their brand advocacy and promotion up front thus making it a good off-page SEO technique.
You can use social media as well to increase your engagement with your target audience, answering their inquiries or interacting with them. Shares and likes make your business more seen by users, thus making social media marketing a viable SEO technique.
Make sure, however, that you are responsive, polite, and trustworthy in interacting with users via social media.
Local businesses have been using social media as a customer service platform, speaking to their customers directly to answer any query.
- Guest posting
Guest posting is one of the most effective digital marketing techniques that yield traffic.
A guest blog post is one of the ways to build backlinks to your website as authors are allowed to link back to their content or resources, as long as it makes sense.
As we've discussed, Google puts prime on authoritative and quality content when ranking off-page SEO links, so creating guest posts on a credible website will help more in building authority in your business.
In this off-page SEO technique, you get to have valuable and quality backlinks from your guest posts or author bio in addition to getting to promote your business in a targeted audience while sending traffic to your web page.
There are a variety of higher domain authority websites that allows guest posting or guest blogging subject to a few rules and guidelines. You can start by submitting your guest post through these sites to help as well in link building to your web page.
- Podcasts
Data shows that online users spend more time now listening to podcasts. As more people tune in for podcasts every year, it has become a viable platform for advertising for businesses.
Google has also recently started to index podcasts and rank them, thus making them a viable option for generating online organic traffic.
- Video Marketing
Off-page SEO includes getting attention to your website through outbound activities that are unrelated to your page contents. This makes highly engaging platforms viable for off-site SEO content, such as videos, podcasts, and infographics.
Videos make high ROI. In 2022 alone, Youtube has become the second most popular website with its users spending a significant amount of time watching Youtube videos daily. Aside from this, sixty per cent of Facebook users also watch videos.
A lot of clients or users prefer watching videos in learning more about a product than spending their time searching or reading the product description. This makes videos the primary choice in making a purchase decision.
Several online businesses have used videos as part of their digital marketing to boost their off-page SEO techniques or to bring more organic traffic to their websites.
- Forum Posting
Forum posting is another off-page SEO strategy where users are allowed to engage in meaningful discussions on various topics in an online board discussion.
The key point in forum posting is to direct more traffic to your website by including a link in your forum signature, which new customers and potential clients can see as you participate in several discussions.
Moreover, it can also be an opportunity for you to answer any questions from your online customers, thereby creating a trustworthy reputation among other users in the forum.
You can also join in on identity forums to answer threads relevant to your business or industry. However, use this activity sparingly and always genuinely help in answering other people's inquiries.
- Local Listings
Local listings, also known as directory listings, are one of the most opted off-page SEO techniques. Local businesses can expect an increase in revenue, reputation and rankings just by submitting it in the local business listings.
Localised search results include those where users reference a location in their search by using phrases such as "near me" or "nearby". Aside from this, these localised search results also result based on the user's IP address or location. This in turn helps users find local businesses around them.
Local directories are largely free and provide an opportunity for small local businesses to build valuable and quality backlinks from a credible website. There are a large number of free business directories where you can submit your local business.
Submitting your business to local directories may look like it's easy, but you have to also provide identical information to all business listings. Your business information such as name, address and contact number must be identical and must be free from discrepancies like abbreviations or misspellings. If not, Google might display the wrong information or would not show your listing at all.
- Using Google My Business
Google My Business is a free tool made by the online search engine to help business owners list their contact information, manage their reviews and publish relevant and useful information about their services in a listing that appears in organic searches over Google Maps.
When a user searches for a local business nearby like restaurants, retail stores or other establishments through keyword usage, Google retrieves the companies in their physical area that are ranked higher and gives them a preview of these local businesses in Google Maps.
You can also access and manage reviews about your business in your GMB account. Plus, it also comes with a free website from Google.
- Influencer Marketing
The world of advertising has been partnering with influencers to bring millions to their plate, thus the rise of influencer marketing. Link building from both big and micro-influencers can significantly contribute to your off-page SEO strategy.
If you're aiming for popularity, big influencers can help you promote to a larger target audience. However, micro-influencers connect with their audience through trust, so links from these influencers would also boost your standing in search engines and increase organic traffic on your site.
One way to use this marketing is to connect with these influencers is to reach out to those whose audience is your target customers. You can also connect with those who've been using your service or product and ask them to link their posts to your website.
When an influencer links to your website, it serves as a signal to Google that your site is credible. These links help your site rank higher in SERPs, generating traffic.
- Customer Reviews
Reviews make a huge part of reputation management and have a significant impact on consumer behaviour and a business's bottom line.
Google uses reviews to get brand signals that can influence how you rank in search engines.
Most consumers state that they trust reviews as much as personal recommendations do. Since reviews are valuable for a company, a few tips to optimise your online reviews are to monitor your online reputation, to respond to reviews, and to claim your business listings on review sites among others.
- Local SEO
Local off-page SEO optimises websites for local searches. While it's largely used as one of the best on-page SEO techniques, using this technique in off-page SEO makes search engine spiders index your website and make it appear in search results.
The SEO community has put a premium on local SEO as it improves local businesses' online presence in local searches. We helped a restaurant increase its website traffic for 2 months in the local setting. This local SEO case study will give you better insights on its success story.
Local SEO involves different elements, such as adding location information to metadata tags and making listings in Google Maps. Local businesses can use this tactic to boost their local rankings, especially with a lot of users searching for localised services.
You can start by optimising your website for local searches so users will be able to find you easily when they search using localised keywords. Adding location information in metadata tags can also help rank you in local searches.
- Press Release
Press Releases have been used as a link-building strategy as it's a great way to get high-quality and authoritative links quickly. You can use public relations strategies to promote related linkable assets and get backlinks as a result.
Good press releases can raise brand awareness and searches. When done right, it brings attention to your business's target consumers and increases referral traffic.
- Building Trust
Off-page SEO factors and builds authority and trust. This trust is usually earned through social media and customer voting and is established through transparency.
Some feature you can start with is the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which protects your site's user interaction and ensures that the information sent between the web server and the users remains safe and private.
Users trust a website more when they believe that their data and other sensitive information are safeguarded by encrypted links.
Responding to feedback promptly, regardless if the feedback is positive or negative, can help users know that you're a real person and would trust you more.
- Email Outreach
Email Outreach helps other sites by link-building to them. You can start by researching potential outreach targets and identifying high-domain authority websites. Create a personalized message, and explain to these websites how your content would be good for their audience.
Valuable content makes it more probable for people to link back to it. Follow up with potential link partners if you haven't received a response. You can also use tools to track the number of backlinks you have to help you gauge your progress to make adjustments if necessary.
Off-Page SEO vs. On-Page SEO, Which Is Better?
Off-page SEO refers to different SEO strategies and techniques. It may come off as hard and challenging at first, but if done right, will boost your page's rank in the search engine results page.
Between off-page SEO, on-page SEO or technical SEO, none is better than the other. All are important in keeping your website indexed and ranked by search engines, and it's highly valuable that you utilise both as part of your SEO technique. All SEO efforts will boost traffic to your website. If you're unsure of what SEO strategy to make, you can check the services of a top SEO company Singapore has to offer.
Khepri Digital sets up successful SEO campaigns and services tailored to your brand.
For the best on-page SEO techniques, you can visit here.
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