Off-page SEO is one of the most important aspects of a successful SEO strategy. If you want your site to rank and gain organic search traffic, it’s about more than your site and your content. Learn more about off-page SEO, what it is, why it matters, and how to use it to improve your ranking and drive organic growth for your site.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO is all the actions you take to impact your search engine ranking that don’t take place on your website. Some examples of off-page SEO include social media activity, guest blogging, thought leadership pieces, and backlinks.1
While no one knows exactly how search engine algorithms work, we do know that several factors go into a page’s ranking. Website content and performance matter, but so does the understanding the search engine gets from sources outside of your website – which is why off-page SEO matters.
Because of this, link building is one of the most effective off-page SEO strategies. Search engines consider the page’s backlinks to determine its quality and value, so it’s essential to have plenty of high-value backlinks.
On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO vs. Technical SEO
All SEO can be grouped into these three categories:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
These three categories come together to create an effective SEO strategy. Here’s more about what each one is:
On-page SEO includes the tactics you use directly on your site to help the search engine index and range your content. These may consist of valuable content, optimized meta tags, and H tags, internal linking, image optimization, and more.
Off-page SEO includes the tactics you use outside of your website, such as link building. It may also include podcast spots, guest blogs, social media, content marketing, and more.
Technical SEO includes the technical aspects of search engine crawling and indexing. This may include site elements like hreflang, structured data, canonicalization, site speed optimization, and more.2
Off-Page SEO Tactics
Link Building
Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites that direct users to your own. The more links you get from authoritative sites, the more the search engine will view your content as valuable and rank you higher in search engine results pages.
Conversely, if you don’t have a lot of authoritative links pointing back to your site, the less likely that a search engine will view your site as trustworthy and credible.
Essentially, link building is like getting other sites with credibility to vouch for you. Building external links is a big part of off-page SEO strategy, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and patience to build valuable links.
There are two kinds of links for SEO:
- Earned links: These links happen organically – publishers link to your brand organically.
- Built links: These links are more labor-intensive and require reaching out to publishers to get links or mentions.
It’s essential always to use these strategies to build links. Spamming forums or comment sections with links is not only off-putting, but it can get you penalized by search engines.
Local SEO
Local SEO is an off-page SEO strategy that involves optimizing a site for local search results. This may be used for brick-and-mortar businesses with a local customer base and operating in specific geographic regions, such as restaurants and service-based businesses like beauty salons and tattoo shops.
The focus of local SEO is showing a search engine that you serve customers in your local area. This can be done by:
- Creating an accurate Google My Business page
- Adding your business to local and national business directories
- Claiming your listing on review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp
- Encouraging customers to leave reviews
Ensuring that all information about the business address, phone number, website, and hours are accurate and consistent across platforms
Content Marketing
Content marketing provides value to the customer by answering their questions and addressing their pain points. This form of marketing can improve on-page efforts, be used for guest blogs, and generate surveys and reports.
Guest blogging is particularly beneficial since it drives awareness with a new audience in your ideal market and gives you value from the backlink of the publisher.
Off-Page SEO Factors for Link Building
Search engines like Google are getting more and more particular about how sites are ranked and how content is rewarded and penalized. Specific attention is paid to brands that impact a user’s life, whether through health, financial, legal, or social topics. If presented inaccurately, deceptively, or untruthfully, this content can directly impact health, safety, happiness, or financial stability.3
The competition is fierce, and now businesses are using everything possible to get links – including paying for them and spamming comments on unrelated pages. Search engines are now penalizing this behavior to deter it and favoring natural link placements.
Here’s what to consider when developing a robust link building strategy:
- The referring domains: The more domains you have pointing to your website, the more authoritative sites vouching for you in the eyes of the search engine.
- Link authority: An abundance of links has virtually no value if they come from questionable sources. It’s important to gain links from domains with high authority and credibility.
- Relevance: Links need to be relevant to your business and audience. Links from a separate niche or industry won’t hold as much value.
- Anchor text: The text that’s hyperlinked to your site needs to be relevant to your site. Based on the anchor text, the reader should have a good idea of what they’ll find if they click.
Get Off-Page SEO Help with an SEO Agency
Building a robust off-page SEO strategy can be challenging, but it’s vital for a comprehensive and effective SEO strategy. If you’re ready to boost your SEO strategy with off-page tactics with help from an experienced SEO agency, simply contact our team at Full Circle SEM!
Sources:
[1] https://moz.com/learn/seo/off-site-seo
[2] https://moz.com/blog/category/technical-seo
[3] https://www.semrush.com/blog/eat-and-ymyl-new-google-search-guidelines-acronyms-of-quality-content/
