What Is Off-Page SEO
Now that your on-page SEO tactic has been fine-tuned, it should be easy to rank high on Google, right? Think again!
You did very well to optimize your on-page SEO tactic but there is still the off-page SEO strategy to sort out.
As the competition to feature first on search engine results pages intensifies, you need to make sure you absolutely nail all the ranking factors if you are to stand a chance of achieving domain authority.
It is crucial to get your off-page SEO strategies in order. This means working on important factors, such as having a good link-building strategy.
If you are not familiar with the term off-page SEO, or you just need some tips on how to optimize it better for your target audience, you are in the right place.
This article will look at what off-page SEO is all about, as well as the various off-page SEO techniques you can employ. Read on to find out more.
What Is Off-Page SEO
Sometimes called off-site SEO, off-page SEO refers to any search engine optimization that does not involve publishing or updating content already on your active website.
In other words, off-page SEO tactics are all the things you do off-site to get Google and other search engines to recognize your website as a trustworthy domain authority.
Common off-page SEO tactics include increasing brand mentions, broken link building, adding a guest post, and adding authority links to other sites.
To put it simply, anything you do on your website is part of on-page SEO, but all other work done on other platforms or other websites is considered an off-page SEO tactic.
SEO Types On Search Engines
We can generally place all SEO strategies into three categories, which are:
– Off-page SEO
– Technical SEO
We have already covered both On-page SEO and Off-page SEO techniques, so what is this third strategy all about?
A technical SEO strategy concerns all the work that is done to improve the overall performance of your webpage on various search engines.
These activities include mobile search engine compatibility, site security, load speed optimization, and data structuring.
Is Off-Page SEO Important?
If you want to outrank your competitors, it is no longer enough to simply focus on SEO optimization because you can be sure that they are also doing the same.
When doing the bare minimum is not enough, the only option you have is to work on a specialized off-page SEO tactic that is tailor-made to not only reach your target audience but also bring a lot more organic traffic to your website.
This means you have to know everything there is to know about branded searches, guest posts, link building, etc.
If that sounds like too much for you to manage, then you can approach a third-party SEO agency, such as Perth Digital Edge, and let us work on creating the perfect off-page SEO tactic for your business.
Off-Page SEO Vs. On-Page SEO
Which is more important, an off-page strategy or an on-page one? The answer is that the two go hand in hand. Both on-page and off-page techniques are vital parts of your overall SEO strategy.
If you want to rank high on search results pages, you cannot afford to fall short on both of these strategies.
However, many people make the mistake of focusing on only one aspect, which is usually their on-page SEO tactic, and forget about the other.
As a result, they end up confused as to why their website is not doing well on search engines when they have addressed the SEO recommendations.
The answer lies in the off-page SEO signals that have been neglected.
A good SEO company will immediately identify this and take measures to improve the ranking, such as implementing a link-building tactic.
Some Off-Page SEO Strategy Options
Are you ready to formulate the perfect off-page SEO tactic? One of the first things you will notice is that there are many ways to go about this.
The following are some of the things you need to work on if you want to rank just as high as or higher than other authority sites in your field:
- Link Building
- Content Syndication
- Brand Building
- Reviews
- Content Marketing
- Podcasts
- PR
- Guest Posting
- Local SEO (GMB and Citations)
- Events
- Social Media
- Influencer Marketing
- Forums
We will now look at each particular off-page SEO tactic to help you understand why it’s important and what you need to do to get it optimized:
Link Building
The algorithm that Google uses to rank websites has always been brutal, but of late it has become even worse for those that make any mistakes that the search engine can pick up.
What this means is that factors such as link-building can no longer be ignored.
Not only is it vital that you dedicate some time to proper link building for your webpage, but you also need to ensure that there are no broken links to be found.
When you begin to build links pointing to the content on your page, try as much as you can to earn backlinks from high-authority sites.
These authority links are the key to helping you establish trust and position your website closer to the top of the results pages on Google and other search engines.
When link building, remember that it is much better to have a few authority links than to have a lot of links that point to poorly ranked web pages.
Link building focuses on the following important factors:
- TOPICAL RELEVANCE
Build links with sites that are addressing the same topic as you are. If you must build links to other websites that are not the same as yours, you need to make sure that the link seems natural rather than forced.
- UNIQUE DOMAINS
Using specialized SEO tools, you can see which unique domains link to your site. The aim here should be to have as much domain diversity as possible because studies have shown that there is a relationship between higher rankings and linking unique domains.
- AUTHORITY
Your online reputation hinges very strongly on the number of authority websites you are linked to.
You can check the authority of your website by looking at specific parameters, such as the quantity and quality of backlinks, the number of nofollow links vs. follow links, and organic traffic.
SEO tools, such as the backlinks analytics tool, can help you identify the websites you need to target, and also the authority of those websites so that you can focus on only the high-ranking ones
Used properly, such tools can earn you a few editorial links that are essential when trying to build links with a strong profile.
Content Syndication
The pressure of having to create new and unique content all the time can prove to be too much at times. In such cases, a good off-page SEO tactic involves content syndication.
Back then, the only times you would find content marketing involving syndication was when TV channels or radio stations did it with some of their content across various networks.
However, these days even publishers are doing it across their pages to ensure that they have new content to put up on their websites daily. Does this mean you can do it also for your website as an off-page SEO tactic?
Yes, it is possible, but it should be done very carefully. When you syndicate content to other websites, it will be up to Google to decide which version is the best and will rank highest.
This means syndicating poorly could hurt your ranking rather than improve it. If you are going to allow other websites to syndicate your content, you need to combine it with a proper link-building strategy that will point back to your website.
The good thing about content syndication is that, even though it isn’t indexed by Google, because it is not original, it does serve to amplify your content. That means a lot more viewers will see it and hopefully use the link to visit your webpage.
Brand Building
Google search engines love brands, which is why they always rank so highly. If you make brand mentions and brand searches a key part of your off-page SEO tactics you will reap the rewards.
Brand searches, in particular, are the most important indicators that your brand is growing. This includes domain name, products, and brand name searches.
SEO tools, such as Google trends, are very helpful when it comes to tracking the level of interest your brand is generating.
The more brand mentions and branded searches you have, the more credibility Google assigns to your website.
What makes brand searches such an important off-page SEO tactic is that building brands also inevitably leads to your website earning links and brand mentions.
Reviews
These days, online customers have so much faith in search engines such as Google that a staggering 89% of them rely on positive reviews to help them make up their minds about a particular product, service, or company.
This makes your online reputation one of the most important aspects of any off-page SEO techniques you wish to employ.
Reviews are also one of the key metrics used by Google to understand your webpage which means the search engine will be able to funnel more brand searches to your site.
When we consider that off-page SEO is all about creating a good reputation, building a brand, and becoming an authority website, the importance of generating good reviews becomes clear.
If you can generate good reviews on third-party platforms, such as Business Consumer Alliance, you will boost your potential of becoming an authority page.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is no longer just about creating, optimizing, and publishing content on your website. It is now a major component of off-page SEO.
Once you publish content on your website, you have completed the first part of what is required for effective content marketing. The next part is to boost off-page SEO signals using tactics, such as whitepapers and eBooks, surveys, studies and research papers, infographics, and Blog posts.
You can also combine content marketing with another off-page SEO tactic, such as the use of social media or link building.
Podcasts
Podcasts took a while to become popular but now it is claimed that at least 57% of all Americans have made use of a podcast before.
Adding a few podcasts as part of your off-page SEO will open up a whole new world of potential markets.
Right now, very few of your competitors are likely to be exploring the full potential of podcasts, which means you can gain a competitive advantage just by uploading one or two of those.
With many people preferring to watch videos or listen to podcasts rather than read an article, it’s a great way to reach a certain audience that was previously inaccessible to you based on your former content marketing strategy.
Using podcasts also gives you access to the niche audience that uses Apple Podcasts to search for content online.
Off-page SEO tactics need to help you to cover a wider range of search engines so that you maximize the chances of reaching your target audience, and using podcasts is a great way to do that.
Press Releases
It is not often that you hear of public relations and SEO is considered the same thing.
However, when you consider that a huge part of off-page SEO has to do with customer reviews, the comparison begins to make sense.
Over the years, SEO companies have becomes almost the same as PR agencies concerning what they aim to achieve for their clients.
Digital PR tactics are now being widely used as effective link-building strategies. An example is when you have a story that you wish to create links for. PR can be used to promote that story on other sites which could lead you to earn a lot of links.
An effective PR campaign can easily earn you up to 24 links to unique domains. With such fantastic results, you should be thinking of spending more time working on your public relations strategy.
Guest Posting
You may be surprised at how important something as simple as a guest post can be.
However, according to a study conducted with 850 of the world’s leading SEO experts, guest posting is one of the most effective ways to build links.
Guest posting involves going to someone else’s website and contributing your content there. It is a great tool when used as a content marketing strategy because it allows you to speak directly to a targeted audience.
By guest posting, you can build your brand when you submit your content in front of an audience on a similar website.
Link building is not the primary objective of writing guest posts. You should do it for the benefit of the entire off-page SEO strategy because that is where the true value of guest posting lies.
Local SEO (Citations And GMB)
Local SEO is a well know SEO strategy that has been used for a long time to great effect.
However, it is a whole branch of SEO on its own, so why is it being included as part of your off-page SEO?
The reason is that two of the most important elements of a local SEO strategy, citations and Google My Business, are also vital to an off-page SEO tactic.
Whenever the name, address, or phone number of your business is mentioned online it is called a citation.
Local businesses trying to reach their local audience cannot do without citations. They are the key to opening doors to an audience that is close enough to become customers.
However, as important as citations are, inconsistency, spelling mistakes, and inaccurate information will be punished brutally by Google search engines.
This is where off-page SEO comes into play because you will have to dedicate some time to ensure that all the information on your website is correct.
With regards to Google My Business, it is all about creating a strong online presence for your website on various search engines.
The reason why GMB is considered an off-site SEO tactic is that it takes place on a website other than your own. This is one of the features of off-page SEO.
Considering that at least 46% of Google searches are looking for local information, working on your GMB ranking is worth it.
If you do not manage to rank high on GMB, you can be sure that some of your local competitors will.
Events
After seeming to fade away over the last few years, events are making a huge comeback on social media.
A lot of businesses are harnessing the power of live streaming to get the opportunity to engage with a captive audience.
When done right, events can boost many different parts of your off-page strategy, such as link building, PR, and social media engagement.
Events require a lot more preparation than, say, podcasting or guest posting. However, the impact of a good event on your off-page SEO tactic is worth all the work that is needed to bring the event to life.
Social Media
With 93% of all internet users being active on social media, it is not something you can afford to overlook.
Just like we used to turn to Google to find the answers we need, today’s generation is relying more and more on social media to conduct searches, which is why you have to make sure that your business features heavily on social media platforms.
However, unlike other factors discussed in this article, such as branded searches, reviews, and links, social media shares do not directly impact the ranking factors used by Google, so they should be used more for PR and improving online visibility.
Not only will your presence on social media platforms attract a lot of attention from organic traffic, but you can also use it as a platform to interact with your customers, which is great for generating reviews.
As long as you maintain a good social media reputation as part of your off-page SEO, you will be able to attract new customers who will want to go and look at what you have on your webpage.
Influencer Marketing
A few years back, when you heard the term influencer marketing, the first things to come to mind were probably bloggers conducting sponsored blogs on their pages.
While blogging is still very much alive, these days influencer marketing is more about promoting a brand on sites such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
These sites rely heavily on video content and podcasts, and if you can utilize these media outlets, you can get direct access to some of the biggest online communities today.
With the right influencers backing your business and inviting people to check out your website, you can generate a lot of organic traffic from social media users who have a genuine interest in your product or service.
However when building links, make sure that they are nofollow links, because any links with sponsored content are not allowed by the Google search engine.
Forums
Finally, let us look at the use of forums as an off-page SEO tactic. SEO has regularly used forums to build links, to the point that it became spamming.
This is why forums are no longer the best option if you want to build high-quality links.
Rather, you should be thinking of forums as a way to interact with people who are discussing issues that directly relate to your business, which is a great way to gain credibility.
Using forums, you can have conversations directly with your customers that will allow you to provide support and answer any important questions they may have.
If you stay committed to such forums, over time you will be able to build a strong community that has a lot of trust in you and sees you s an authority in your field.
Examples of forums you can target include Quora and Reddit, two of the most popular discussion forums online.
While the downside of forums is that they have gone down in popularity over the last few years, you can still use them as a way to reach out to your audience on platforms not frequented by your competitors.
The Best Off-Page Tactic
Choosing one outright winner out of all these tactics would be very difficult and not necessary. They all have important contributions to off-page SEO.
You need to find a way to incorporate all the advice you have read in this article if you plan on getting ahead of your competition, and staying there for the foreseeable future.
Perth Digital Edge Can Help
If you are ready to implement some effective off-page tactics but you are not sure where to begin, it’s high time you approached a team of SEO specialists that can help you.
Perth Digital Edge has a track record of helping businesses, such as yours, to implement a winning SEO strategy that turns their webpage into a domain authority.
Get in touch with our experts right now and discuss which off-page SEO will be best suited for your particular website.
