Off-Page SEO: The Comprehensive Guide
Do you want your website to rank on Google search pages? Do you want to increase your brand’s visibility and search traffic? If you answered yes, then you need to develop a well-rounded SEO strategy. For this, off-page SEO is what you need to focus on beyond your website. In this guide, we first cover the basics of off-page SEO and then jump right into the best tactics that you should implement at the earliest if you want to rank on Google and drive growth for your site. Before we dive deep into the strategies of off-page SEO, let’s first take a closer look at what it exactly is. So, let’s get started!
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO emphasizes techniques that help a website feature in the ranks on Google search pages. Off-page SEO works around building rich links, profiles and attracting links from the high-authority website. The main aspect of off-page SEO is to prove to search engines that your website is reliable and has expertise in your niche. Recent studies show that off-page SEO makes up to 75% of a great Digital Strategy. Off-page SEO has strategic control over the ways to increase your visibility on the internet.
SEO, essentially, is a different language used by marketers and webmasters to communicate with search engines. It is all about friendliness, credibility, authenticity, transparency, quality, fairness, and more. By developing off-page SEO tactics, you aim at proving to your audiences and search engines that your site is trustworthy, relevant, and authentic, and even popular in the industry. Off-page SEO is all about building your website more authoritative.
So now that we have covered the basics let’s take a look at off-page SEO factors that affect search rankings.
Key off-page SEO parameters that impact your search rankings
#1. Link building
Link building is the most popular technique that professionals across the globe follow. Even though Google has stated that content is the highest-ranking factor, link building is given more importance than providing fresh content. However, it is important to note that content still contributes a lot to your linking strategy.
In simple words, links translate to votes to your website, as an appreciation of your brand or the content it offers. This link building effort has also led to the rise of black hat SEO. At times websites are quite desperate to build links, and so they look towards the forum, content directories, link exchange schemes, blog directories, etc.
There are three main types of links that you should keep in mind:
Natural links
A natural link is when a user, customer, or readers has a positive view of your brand, product, or services and links to your website as a token of trust and appreciation.
Manually building links
When you willfully ask customers to link to your product or influencers to share your content, you are manually building a link through direct efforts.
Self-created links
Self-created links are when you post a link to your website in web directories, forums, comment sections, press releases, etc.
The best method to follow is the natural link building. To do this, you need to make your content worthy of links.
#2. Social media
Like we mentioned above, every mention of your brand counts as links. You need to win over your audiences to make a search engine rank you high. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google +, Twitter, etc. have never been so powerful. They engage with audiences, provide the content, inspiration, serve them with a network of their friends, and allow them to share content that they love.
As a brand, you must pick up this opportunity to earn shares, likes, and comments. They can make your business grow immensely and connect you with your community. Here are a few ways you can gain attention on social media:
Be highly responsive
Customers and audiences are bound to talk about you if they love your services, when they are asked for feedback from friends or when they are unhappy with your services or product. So, if you want to show that you have the best services, create a support page on social media and engage with your customers, share their feedback, share their posts that mention your brand, etc.
Befriend influencers and professionals
There are many thought leaders, professionals, skillful resources, and influencers across social media who would happily lend you a helping hand in spreading brand awareness. They can do this by following you, mentioning you in comments, or by sharing your influence in the market. Building relations with such experts help you learn what’s good and what should be avoided.
Monitor your online reputation
Brand mentions are highly crucial to your business. In fact, Google’s search algorithms consider brand mentions as links. So, it is imperative that you monitor who has mentioned you or your brand across social media channels, what context it is in, and then use that opportunity to get in touch with them as potential clients or collaborators.
#3. Add RSS feed subscription box
It is ideal to have a few subscribers that visit your site regularly or frequently, as compared to having a multitude of one-time visitors. This is why many blogs and brands add an RSS or Rich Site Summary subscription box on their walls. People are easily attracted to the ‘subscribe’ trigger and are tempted to leave their email address to receive updates without having to run a search.
When you use the RSS subscription box, you now have an audience base that wants to hear from you, whether in the form of company updates, news, blog posts, etc. They are happy to receive such information in the comfort of their emails, without having to manually search for it.
#4. Focus on Blog commenting
Commenting on blogs is another great off-page SEO trick that helps drive organic traffic to your website and impacts your Google search ranking. However, some experts might not recommend this technique because if done over the top, it could easily turn into a black hat practice.
There are many articles, guides, and discussions on the internet that help you understand the best way to correctly perform blog commenting. Everything that you need to know is just one click away. Learning the right way is important so that you do not step into the black hat practice and keep away from other miscellaneous tactics.
The general idea is that you share your insights on topics of your expertise that will help gain attention. You can very subtly mention your brand within the body of relevant and helpful tips, thereby making its appearances relevant.
#5. Guest posting
Quite similar to blog commenting, guest blogs help advertise your business or product. But when not done correctly, it can also turn into spam and annoyed reading. So, you must be fair, add value through your content, provide fresh and relevant content, and do not add links to your website.
When you write guest blogs frequently, you not only help quality backlinks but also drive organic traffic to your website. In addition to this, you also display your knowledge and expertise in certain industries by not only writing on your personal blog but also by contributing to others.
#6. Post in forums
Forums are another great place for you to promote your website. There are many platforms like Quora, Reddit, Yahoo Answers, etc. that can help you gain a lot of actionable information and authentic answers to questions. You should consider forums as your playground and make the most of it to meet like-minded marketers and businesses from the same niche, thereby increasing your network.
It would be beneficial for you to mention your brand and a link to your website, but do not do so bluntly. You should first aim at providing great content on a specific topic, and if it is relevant to your brand, add some information between the body. So, use the right words, tone, and style while contributing to forums. Remember that these platforms can bring you a lot of organic traffic and so make your content relevant and transparent.
#7. Build trust
You must have realized by now how important trust is when it comes to off-page SEO. After all, that is how you gain followers, subscribers, and email addresses on social media and customer feedback, isn’t it? However, there are a few more crucial aspects that help you gain trust.
You might notice that some websites have their links start with https. The ‘s’ stands for SSL or secure socket layer. This essentially states that the link to your website is safe to use, and the data collected between the server and browser will stay private. Users trust a site when they know that their data is secure like credit card numbers, usernames, passwords, etc.
Another great way to build trust is to ensure that you get business reviews. You can ask your customers to check out your rating section and leave a contribution. It is important that you let them know why you would like them to leave a comment publicly visible. The more customers you have, the higher the reviews you get. You must be responsive and committed to your review section. Your users need to see that you actively engage with them and that their opinion matters.
#8. Consider document sharing
When you share content about your brand on other platforms, you rank keywords for your site. These keywords might otherwise be way too hard for you to rank due to the cut-throat competition. So, if you have crafted content that can serve other’s interests, you should consider uploading such content on file-sharing websites that are easily available to your audiences.
While creating and sharing such documents, you should do complete keyword research, optimize the titles, file name, transcripts, place an impactful call to actions or CTAs, and add links to your website. In addition to documentation, you should also consider creating podcasts and videos that can be uploaded on various platforms. You can then easily help search engines to find your content!
#9. Get into the PR promo game.
The more you expose yourself out in the world, the more you will get known. You must practice the habit of getting attracted by the public eye, host interviews, webinars, and gain an influential audience. The more your visibility, the more you get noticed.
A great way to get noticed is through press releases. Whenever you wish to communicate with your audiences, whether company updates, information, new launches, discounts, etc. consider sending out this information through press releases. By contacting and creating a good relationship with other outlets, you indirectly help your brand reach out to multiple customer segments.
Whether press releases, interviews, or webinars, they all contribute together and give you greater opportunities to exercise off-page SEO tactics.
Wrapping it up
Studies have shown that search engines are second in line after emails in terms of online activities. So, when you use SEO to the best of its capabilities, you appear higher in the Google search pages. One great way is to write great content, make your website friendly, and then promote it. The other way is to create an online presence focused on your audience and the intent of the searcher.
Additionally, you must invest a good time into checking the backlink profile of any website that you want to partner with. You should aim at finding high domain authority websites with rich backlink profiles.
The bottom-line?
You must use off-page SEO as a part of your digital strategy to grow your brand in an ever-competitive marketplace. Ensure that you set foot into off-page SEO with the right mindset, and you will achieve results that make a difference in your brand’s online presence.
How have you implemented off-page SEO? Are you ready to ace your off-page SEO? Leave a comment below!
