Introduction
It's not enough to create fantastic content and hope that visitors will arrive. What is happening away from your company website also has a huge effect on how many leads you generate and how well your sites perform in search engine rankings.
Off-page SEO involves a range of techniques including, but far from restricted to, link building. And it's something that every successful digital marketer will be thinking about when shaping their campaigns.
At greatcontent, we've encountered plenty of clients who can't understand why their sites are not registering with search engine users. Often, these failings can be traced back to a weak or incomplete SEO [i]off-page[/i] strategy. So, we've put together a brief introduction to off-site tactics explaining how you can position your content to attract maximum attention.
In this quick guide, we will describe the several off-page actions that can boost your brand authority and position your business as an authority of the field.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO relates to actions occurring outside your website to influence rankings for search engine results. Off-page SEO strives to improve thought leadership and reliability by other reputable places.
Why Is Off-Page SEO Important?
Google uses more than two hundred factors to sort the website rankings and match them to specific queries. That said, content alone could be a challenging factor for making the proper judgment, and that is where the off-page SEO tactics come in.
Google algorithm checks what other websites think about you and if they consider your content relevant enough to interlink it on their pages. Therefore, off-page SEO factors help the algorithm to make thorough ranking decisions.
What Are On-Page and Off-Page Optimization?
On-page optimization deals with SEO strategies that are found in a web document. It is primarily about the technical and content optimization of a page. In off-page optimization, on the other hand, SEO content takes place outside of your website. It's all about the domain authority of your website. The more high-quality external links (backlinks) there are to your website, the higher its authority.
What Is the Role of Backlinks in SEO?
Links have always held a massive role in SEO. The search engine needs a little push to figure out the authoritative websites. That's why it dwells on the number of links pointing to sites.
A backlink is a link from a website that points back to yours. It is the cornerstone of SEO, indicating trustworthiness. Imagine your friends recommend visiting restaurants, you will believe them. The same approach goes for SEO.
The point here is that search engines only trust reliable sources, just like people trust friends. So, if unreliable sources are referring to your website, it is a bad sign.
The number of links to your content (from external sites) matters a lot. In fact, according to the marketing agency Backlinko, it's the number one factor that contributes to rising up the search rankings. So how do you generate a steady stream of inbound links?
Aside from anything else, this requires creating quality content that people want to include in their blogs or social media posts. Content that delivers a useful information and which solves real-world problems is likely to attract plenty of links as people share it with contacts -- so backlinks are very much something you have to earn.
What are Link Types of Off-Page SEO?
Natural Links
The name suggests the meaning itself - natural links are created organically, without any extra effort of earning it with paid or partnership methods. Natural link building happens when other web pages point to your website because your resource is valuable for their visitors.
Built Links
Built links aim to increase the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage to improve the page authority and rankings. Your team works hard to gain links by reaching influencers, bloggers, and other businesses to develop win-win relationships.
What Are Off-Page SEO Techniques: How to Gain Backlinks?
Guest Blogging
Kill two birds with one stone. Build links and reputation with guest blogging.
Guest blogging is about writing for other websites and informing their audience. It allows you to insert a link that will transform their readers to your website or biography.
As it is a convenient way to enhance the off-page SEO, you should:
- Create a record of online communities within your niche
- Research their content, writing tone, and audience
- Brainstorm guest blogging ideas
Use Google Search Consoles
You can use Google Search Consoles to check the External link reports. Here you will view the websites that linked back to you previously. You can observe the backlinks and understand the type they enjoyed.
Then you should create a similar type of content and contact them. Websites are already familiar to you, and you may get another backlink.
Use Infographics
They present information in a clear visual way. Appealing and bite-sized, they cut through the sea of information we encounter daily. Infographics make it easier for us to digest.
By creating helpful infographics, you are assisting content creators. They might use your work for their blogs and give you a backlink.
Build a Network
Community extension can result in various opportunities.
You can involve in different activities:
- Participate in industry-related events
- Join relevant associations
- Be the guest on blogs, forums, and podcasts if possible
- Engage in seminars, training, or lectures
Contact niche-related persons or your loyal customers/partners. Offer them a helping hand. Produce testimonials for them or link their page on your website.
Publish a Blog
Blogs have a superpower to automatically magnet conversions and backlinks. The key is committing to consistency and giving away helpful information. Well-promoted, valuable pieces are likely to become viral on SERP.
Establishing a social media presence is a crucial aspect of off-site SEO. Without a large following, you'll find it hard to propagate viral content, no matter how well-written and professional it may be.
Ways to enhance your presence could include running regular contests for Facebook and Twitter users (which can never hurt). But more generally, it means using social media to engage with users on a one-to-one basis. Play the role of expert, offer solutions, and grow your brand as a result.
Google does not rank pages based on social sentiment. But you can use it to increase the exposure across various channels.
- Use multiple social media channels
Different social media channels with a blog provide ways for casual browsers to engage with your content.
But Managing multiple social media accounts is preferable yet resource-intensive. Stagnant and frozen pages look poor. The company should commit to maintaining your presence wherever they post.
- Make Branding the Heart of Your Social Media Content Strategy
Social media is the most effective way of establishing a persona. It helps you to put a 'human face' on a company that is appealing to customers.
When people feel positive about a brand, they are more likely to share related content. They will take notice of its pages in search results. So, SMM needs to use this positivity to maximize the sharing potential of its content.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a trend that keeps on growing. Social media stars have loyal followers who are interested in a specific niche.
Some of the best off-page work can be done with social media influencers: power users within your niche field who have networks and are willing to mention and review your products. So, get in touch and harness their appeal.
This doesn't mean paying for good reviews. Sometimes, a little honest criticism among praise can make brands seem more authentic. Anyway, if your product is strong, influencers will respond positively. So have a strategy to search for relevant Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook users and approach them with an offer.
Do you want to reach out to thousands of people through an authoritative human source? Influencer marketing is a great choice for you.
E-mail Marketing
If you have a substantial list of email subscribers, it's essential to extract as much value as possible from those contacts. Broadly speaking, this means a few things. It means offering valuable content (not spam) in every email, including information about new products and promotions. It means getting creative about subject lines that will entice users to open the mail in the first place, and it also entails finding ways to personalize your emails to avoid seeming like just another generic business.
Check this guide for more email marketing tips and tricks from the greatcontent team. There's sure to be something that applies to your next campaign.
Customer Reviews
The website with positive reviews looks credible in the eyes of search engines. They are likely to end up in the top spot of search results. Also, more positive reviews will result in more conversions.
Establishing a Solid Brand
This is always a consideration, no matter what you do. It's worth spending some time working on your brand. Establishing a solid brand means investing in ways to track how people are engaging with and discussing your brand; this is where techniques like sentiment analysis can come in handy. That way, you can assess which areas of your marketing need refinement.
It also means assessing your content to ensure that you maintain brand consistency. It's essential to project a consistent image, across all channels, and to link everything back to your main content. Auditing this monthly can pay off.
The local section of a search engine algorithm adds different factors in addition to the standard algorithm.
Google My Business is a tool for managing online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. It helps you to tell your story and add valuable information.
When people find your company on Google Maps and Search, they can check data like working hours, website, and street address.
Companies can get insights about customers:
- How they search for your business
- Where do they come from?
- How many people call you from the number displayed on local search results
Invest in Digital Advertising
You probably do this already, but there's always scope to fine-tune the way you approach digital advertising. By this, we mean going beyond AdWords or targeted Facebook ads and even beyond using influencers effectively.
Off-site SEO strategies look at advertising in broader terms. They include guest blogs on influential sites and assess their ROI just like ads. They might try to use Q&A sites like Quora, where expert answers can generate heaps of traffic. And they will usually pay a lot of attention to Amazon reviews or tools like Google maps.
And Finally? Find the Right Content Partner for your SEO off-page Strategy
As you might have guessed, greatcontent regularly helps clients to come up with effective off-page SEO campaigns. We know how quality content interacts with link building and brand promotion, resulting in the kind of attention that companies need.
If you're unsure about using a content partner, don't worry. Many companies outsource content marketing seamlessly, and the best agencies can work with any marketing team and strategies.
We know how to create successful content marketing strategies and create your content with the support of over 30,000 linguists worldwide.
Our experts will be happy to advise you.
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