Acquiring traffic is the basic goal of all online businesses. Whether you are selling products online, rendering services or have a blog site, you require traffic. Namely, there are two ways to do that through SEO, i.e., On-Page and Off-Page SEO. Search engine optimization can be a bit tricky for a beginner.
In layman terms, on-page optimization is what you're aiming to rank for, whereas, off-page optimization is the practice of ranking higher on the search engine. When employed these SEO practices together, you can crack through the competition and increase your visibility and reach to your audience, but they're just as effective when put to practice individually. The bigger question, of course, is where to start? Now, there's a lot of information out there than can be confusing if you're just testing waters for optimization of your website, so in this blog, we'll be starting with the basics of Off-Page SEO and how you can optimize your website through it.
What is off-page SEO?
Off-Page SEO comprises any action taken outside the boundaries of your website to improve its ranking on the search engine results page (SERP).
Off-page optimization includes improving the website's perception for search engines, in terms of relevance, popularity, and authority. This is done by promoting the website to other reputable pages, sites or people so that they link to and effectively vouch for the quality that you're offering.
On-Page SEO includes the activities performed on the website to optimize it for search engines. It is different from off-page SEO as the website is being optimized to rank on search engines by providing relevant and useful content through practices such as creating proper URL structures, optimizing internal links, mobile-friendly pages, having optimized titles and descriptions, high-quality content, text formatting and much more.
Generally, Off-page SEO boils down to one major factor, and that is creating high-quality backlinks. The more relevant and high-quality backlinks a website gets from high domain authority sites, the better. And though link building is at the heart of off-page SEO, it goes way beyond it.
Benefits of off-page SEO
There are benefits to having a good off-page SEO strategy. The few of those are mentioned below –
Increase SERPs ranking: Search engine results pages (SERPs) ranking determines where your website will be displayed by search engines in response to a search query. The primary objective of doing off-page SEO is to gain rankings on the SERPs. Higher rank improves visibility, so when a user does specific searches, they are more likely to click on the link of your website. Apart from that, an increase in rankings also helps in increasing your CTR.
Increase page rank: Page rank is a numeric measure that evaluates the quality and quantity of links to individual pages of a website. Google assigns the rank between 0 to 10 based on the importance and authority of each page. It is different than SERPs as that is the ranking of your website as a whole, while page rank is ranking of individual web pages.
Increase exposure: Higher ranking comes with great exposure because when websites rank higher it means more clicks, more visits, and more links. By implementing off-page SEO techniques, you can increase your page rankings, which will help in increasing SERPs, which in turn will increase the exposure of your website, thus increasing traffic.
Establish trust: Google has introduced the concept of Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness (E-A-T), which allows Google to rank websites that exhibit authority and expertise on a subject matter. One of the ways by which Google does this is by checking the types of incoming links on the website and whether they can be trusted.
Off-page optimization helps your site get ranked high. Implementing off-site techniques helps search engines get an authority signal that the content is valuable to users.
How to do off-page SEO
Have a solid backlink strategy: Link building is the fundamental practice of any off-page SEO strategy. Effective link building practices ensure a strong domain foundation for the page. There are three types of links, i.e., natural, manually build and self-created. Natural links are organic links that are put on the website without any action on the part of a page owner. Manual links are acquired through link building tactics which involve reaching out to customers and influencers to link to your website or share your content. Self-created links are generated by adding a backlink in an online directory, forum, blog comment, etc.
No matter how the links are obtained, they are a great contribution to the SEO efforts as they pass link juice to valuable and authoritative pages on the website. Below mentioned are a few ways to increase link count –
i. Blog directories
ii. Forum signature
iii. Comment link
iv. Article directories
v. Shared content directories
vi. Link exchange schemes
Build brand mentions: Brands are reliable and trusted by users, thus Google prefers to rank branded websites on top of the results to provide better user experience to its users. Brand mentions can either be linked or unlinked; linked brand mentions have obvious SEO value. Google understands that people often mention brands without linking to them and that such mentions deserve to factor into its ranking algorithm along with linked mentions. The only real difference between linked and unlinked brand mentions is that linked mentions are clickable, thus resulting in more referral traffic.
Below mentioned are a few ways in which you can get more brand mentions -
i. Write guest posts
ii. Be a guest on podcasts
iii. Do blogger outreach
iv. Go viral
Harness the power of influencer marketing: An influencer is a person with a cult-like following, usually on social media. Their posts generate hundreds and thousands of likes and comments and are shared fiercely among their audience. You can reach that audience harnessing the power of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a strategy where a business/brand engages an influencer to promote their product or service to the influencer’s audience. Influencer marketing includes both paid and unpaid promotions depending on the business's and the influencer's arrangements. It is very amicable with off-page SEO activities as the influencers have the potential to generate 11 times the ROI (return on investment) of traditional marketing.
Below are a few points to guide you in understanding how influencer marketing can be used to get backlinks -
i. Mention the influencer with whom you are collaborating in your blog posts. Reach out to them on social media and let them know that you're featuring them.
ii. Work closely with the influencers to create valuable content. Doing this will help you earn backlinks when you co-promote the content on different channels.
iii. Get the fans of your brand to act as micro-influencers by asking pictures of themselves with your product and posting it to their social feeds and feature them on your official account.
Build a strong social media presence: Think of social media as indirect off-page SEO. If you write great content and share it on, say Facebook or Twitter, and if the readers are sharing and engaging with it, it creates a link for that specific piece of content. We have already discussed that links are a ranking factor, so the higher number of shares it gains, Google registers the links resulting in the content to move up in the SERPs. Social media can be a powerful platform to get free exposure, given the content is worth sharing.
To reap the benefits of social media for your brand, there a few key elements that you should keep in mind -
i. Be consistent - Post high-quality content on your platform and engage with the followers by replying to their comments.
ii. Be proactive - Generate brand trust and work towards being recognized as a reliable source of information or products/services in your niche.
iii. Be human - Write in a natural speaking way when replying to comments on your social media platform to convey a friendly tone.
Guest blogging or posting: Guest blogging or posting is one of the most effective off-page optimizations techniques. It is also one of the oldest techniques to build links as well as domain page authority and has stood the test of time. Blogging is the second most important content for marketers as 60% of them use it, first being images. Websites with blogs get 434% more indexed pages. Publishing guest blogs on influential websites can land backlinks to your site. But it's not just about writing anything for the sake of links. Craft a high-quality and solid piece for guest blogging and the links will follow.
Below are a few points to help you get started -
i. Identify your niche
ii. Write high-quality and industry-related posts
iii. Identify the publications that the top bloggers have guest blogged for in your field
iv. Identify websites in your field that allow submissions
Focus on high-quality content: High-quality content creation is at the core of off-site SEO. Ill-written content trumps all the off-page optimization efforts as they are not sharable, to begin with. Having great content makes it easier to land guest posts on influential websites, for influencers to collaborate with you on your content and for people to share. It is vital to maintain the quality of your content to consistently rank higher in the SERPs.
Below mentioned are a few pointers to help you get started -
i. Write long-form content (1500-2000 words) as they perform better and rank higher on SERPs.
ii. Use images with your content as posts featuring images are more engaging.
iii. Write keyword content and avoid keyword stuffing.
iv. Take the leap to write bold and richly informative pieces and back your arguments with data.
Design creative infographic: Incorporating visual content marketing to your SEO strategy is a great way to increase your reach to the target audience. Humans are visual creatures and find facts, figures, stats, and other graphical elements compelling. According to the Social Science Research Network, 65% of people are visual learners, so infographics can be a great source to create impact and capture their attention. By posting the mind-stimulating infographic to authoritative sites, you can earn relevant backlinks, improve traffic, and boost SEO. You can refer the above infographic that we’ve created for this blog, as an example.
Below mentioned are few tips to create infographics that will guarantee shares -
i. Research your topic - The infographic should be relevant and useful to the audience. This increases its chance of getting picked by popular websites and bloggers.
ii. Pinpoint your audience - Target the highly-specified segment of your audience who are most likely to share your infographics.
iii. Create a compelling narrative - Develop a narrative that engages your audience from beginning till the end. Arrange your information in a riveting fashion to take the readers on an entertaining journey.
iv. Create a wireframe - Determine a wireframe for your infographic that will ascertain where to place each piece of information while also helping in designing.
v. Design your infographic - And the final step is to take all the above knowledge in the account and design your infographic.
Wrap up
Off-Page SEO should be an integral part of any SEO strategy to escalate the business atop. With the pace at which new businesses dawn and grow in the world every day, it is important to recognize off-site SEO practices to increase traffic, authority, and ranking of your website among the search engines. As your rankings will increase, it will result in increased traffic and leads, thus having a positive impact on your conversions. Incorporating White Hat SEO strategies to build on the ever-updating Google algorithm will also help in escaping penalties. Off-page optimization is a journey embarked halfway since on-page SEO matters as well. Using both the SEO approaches can boost your organic SERPs ranking even further. To conclude, always remember, when it comes to SEO, patience is key. Find out what's effective in your niche and build your off-page optimization strategy around it.
References
• Off-page SEO
• Off-page SEO: What it is and why it’s important