Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is one of the most important parts of a successful strategy.
Off-page SEO is about everything that doesn’t happen directly on your website. Optimizing your website is called On-Page SEO and includes things like site structure, content, and speed optimizations.
Off-page SEO is, among other things, link building, social media, and local SEO. Or in other words, generating traffic to your site and making your business appear like the real deal it is.
If you want to rank your site on Google and increase your brand's visibility and organic search traffic, you need to be looking beyond your own site.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO, in short, covers all SEO tactics that take place outside of your website.
It is often thought to just be link building, but in reality, there are far more off-page SEO tactics that you should be using if you want to gain a competitive advantage.
Tactics such as brand building, citation building, content marketing, social media, and more all play an important part in a comprehensive SEO strategy.
But as a simple explanation of off-page SEO, this covers any tactics that you use that don't involve making changes to your website or publishing content on your website.
These signals help takes search engines and users gain a perception of your site's authority and are also used as key trust and relevance factors.
Think of it like this:
Your website = on-page SEO
Another site or platform = off-page SEO
But to complicate things further, you also often need to turn to technical SEO to rank on Google. To help to clarify the differences between these, let's explore these three core SEO approaches in more depth.
How off-page SEO techniques can improve your Domain Authority (DA)
Improving your off-page SEO performance will directly correlate with your Domain Authority score (DA). Your site’s DA is a ranking score that determines the ability of your site to rank within the SERPs.
This score is from 1-100 which is based upon numerous factors including linking root domains, and the number of total links. The DA of your site is not a metric used by Google in determining where you rank but is a good indicator for how well your site is performing from an off-site SEO perspective.
Here are five off-site SEO techniques that you can follow to ensure your website has the best opportunity to improve its domain authority, and ultimately rank higher within the SERPs.
1. Creating valuable backlinks
Creating backlinks is at the core of off-site SEO and is a technique that is crucial for any site with the aspiration of ranking on page one. Backlinks are the number one ranking factor when Google determines where your site ranks. Google will more likely rank a site higher than another if one domain has more backlinks.
Furthermore, Google also takes into account the quality of this link, a site with a higher domain that links to you is much more effective than a link from a site with a low DA. Nevertheless, Google’s algorithm does take into consideration the relevancy of the link to your domain.
There are two types of links that can be created to boost your off-page SEO performance:
- Natural links: a link that is generated without any action taken. This can be either a blogger for example, who has a positive view towards your content and links to it from their site. This type of link can be a great sign of trust, appreciation, and endorsement.
- Links created through self-promotion: These links can be created through promoting or marketing your business online. This type of link can be gained by asking clients to link to your site or an influencer sharing your content.
2. Social Media Marketing
One of the most effective off-page SEO techniques is using social media. Using social media platforms is a great way to extend the reach of your content. Not only can social media encourage more clicks to your latest piece of content, but it can be a crucial source of valuable backlinks from a site with a high DA:
Google hasn’t directly stated that a link from a social media platform will benefit your SEO, although they have said that social platforms are crawled for data in the same way as any other site on the web.
Whilst the SEO impact of a backlink from a social platform remains unsure, one certainty is your social profile’s ranking in the SERPs. Not only will your social profile rank, but they’re also likely to rank towards the top for any brand-related search term.
3. Guest Content
Provide third-party websites with guest content is another effective online marketing technique that can also yield off-site SEO benefits.
This could be a thought-leadership piece through to ‘how-to video content, something that will capture the attention of their readers. You should look to reach out to third-party websites whose target audience is similar to your own, such as niche online trade publications.
This way you will be increasing exposure and brand awareness amongst potential customers and heighten the chance of driving referral traffic from that website. Of course, you will also benefit from a valuable backlink. Nurturing online relationships through providing insightful content can be a fundamental source of qualified traffic and leads.
Remember, placing content on a website with a strong DA, requires you to provide them with content or data in which is unique, and is likely to be in high demand from their audience.
Always remember to be strategic with sites that you target to place guest content, and ensure that you are reaching out to sites that are trustworthy, and relevant to your target audience.
4. Forum Posting
A forum posting site is an online discussion board that allows users to have meaningful conversations in the form of a posted message. When carried out correctly, forum posting can bring multiple benefits for your business:
- Exposure to new customers
- A better understanding of your customers
- Opportunities to answer any questions customers or potential customers might have
Forum posting requires a long-term approach to build a trustworthy reputation amongst other members of the forum.
Identify forums threads on topics relevant to your business that you can add value to, such as expert knowledge on a specific topic to help answer a user’s question. Where appropriate, there may also be the opportunity to add a link back to your website as part of a forum discussion.
5. Local Listings
Also known as directory listings, local SEO has always been a consistent off-page SEO technique. When done correctly, submitting your business to local listings can be vital for increasing revenue, reputation, and rankings, particularly in localized search results.
Not only can your business benefit from an increased amount of exposure and traffic but being listed in local directories present the opportunity of building a valuable backlink from a high DA site. Many directories are well-known on the web, and you are probably already familiar with many of them:
- Google my business (DA:100)
- Foursquare (DA:92)
- Yelp (DA:70)
- Central Index (DA:58)
Submitting a local listing may seem easy, but ensuring that you provide identifying information across each listing is crucial for this off-page SEO technique. Business information such as the business name, address, how-to, and contact number must be identical across all listings.
This may seem simple, but discrepancies like abbreviations, or misspellings can have huge impacts on your listings as it can create confusion for Google.
However, when local listings are implemented correctly they can be extremely powerful and can bring additional business from both national, and international audiences.
Why You Need Off-Page SEO
Without off-page SEO, you will struggle to rank for competitive search terms.
Think about off-page SEO as building your site's authority, and without this, your site won't outrank those that already have higher authority. And it is usually the case that content from higher authority websites ranks higher than those with lower authority.
And when you stop to think about it, it makes sense. This example helps you to understand the importance of off-page SEO. It is all about increasing your site's authority, something that often goes alongside building a brand.
An off-page strategy that doesn't include link building is unlikely to drive the needed results, based on the fact that links are one of Google's top three ranking factors.
But to think you can only focus on link building is a mistake. There are many other off-page SEO techniques and tactics that you should be using — they will not only help you to drive success from SEO but also help to build your brand.
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