Best Off-page SEO Practices for a Successful Ranking on Google
Looking to rank your website higher on Google and improve the organic traffic of your brand? Let us break it to you! You have to look beyond your on-page SEO strategy. It might not be as popular as the on-page strategy, but an off-page SEO strategy is equally effective and important if you want to gain momentum and traction on your page. So, before we dive into understanding how to implement a successful off-page strategy, let us first understand what it is and how it works:
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO can be defined as all SEO tactics that don’t include updating or publishing content to your website. Simply put, it is all the activities you can accomplish off your site to rank better in Google and other search engines so that they recognize you as an authoritative and reliable entity.
Initially, people often interchanged ‘link building’ and off-page SEO. However, in reality, you can use multiple off-page SEO techniques for ranking. Some of them include:
- brand building
- citation building
- content marketing
- social media, and more.
These all off-page SEO techniques help users and search engines to understand your website better and enhance your website’s authority, trust, and relevance.
If you are still confused between on-page and off-page SEO, you can think of it something like this:
Your website = on-page SEO
Another site or platform = off-page SEO
A good off page SEO strategy can benefit your business in a few ways and that is quite important, so let us see why these strategies play a crucial role in SEO ranking.
Why are Off-Page SEO Strategies Important?
The best seo agency will always vouch for preparing a good off-page strategy in order to improve the SEO ranking. Let us see how it will help your website:
- Higher Search Engine Rankings: When you use carefully targeted and relevant keywords, the search engines will automatically rank your website higher. Getting placed at a higher rank means more potential customers can see it, and more of them will express their interest in your brand. It will eventually drive more traffic to your business, translating into an improved conversion rate.
- A gain in Domain Referrals: While ranking ads and businesses, search engines also consider the number of referring domains the website receives. The higher this number is, the more likely your website will be regarded as reliable, thus generating more traffic in the long term. Moreover, the traffic won’t only come from the people who see your website online but also from the users who came upon it from different websites and platforms.
- Improved Website Exposure: When you reach more people outside, the chances of luring them to visit your website page increase. When this happens, the ranking of your website also starts increasing gradually. So, when you get more visitors, you can convince them to become paying customers, thus positively impacting your business, both in terms of target audience expansion and digital exposure level.
This is why off-page SEO efforts matter so much. So, while you do it, you must always put the best foot forward to yield great results. To ease it for you, we have listed some essential factors you should take into consideration while making your strategy.
What are the important factors to consider while doing off-page SEO?
Below are some of the off-page SEO factors to consider:
- Domain Authority
Domain authority is a measurement metric or score that gives an overview of a website’s performance. While engaging in off-page activities, considering domain authority is always a good idea. It represents the quality of your website. So when a backlink leads from a website with higher DA to a website with lower DA through a do-follow link, it paves the way for the lower DA website to have a better page rank and rank well in SERPs too.
- Relevance
While getting links from higher DA sites is crucial, it is equally crucial that these sites are relevant to the one you want to link to. Suppose you get a link from a lifestyle brand with a high DA to your website, which is all about hardware tools; it does not make any sense. Moreover, excessive irrelevant backlinks result in the triggering of algorithms for a penalty.
- Website Traffic
It is important to understand how much traffic websites or people will drive towards you when you do off-page activities such as blogger outreach, forum posting, guest posts, etc.
For e.g., if you do a blogger outreach activity or forum submission, you would want to check those websites’ traffic with a chrome extension. So when you find the traffic the site receives satisfactory enough, you can proceed with the activities.
- Link Type
While engaging in off-page activities or link building, you will come across two types of links. They are do-follow and no-follow Links. Before doing any off-page activity, always keep the type of link in mind.
Now that we know what are the factors to consider while doing off-page SEO activities, let us address the elephant in the room and dive into the best off-page SEO practices.
Off-Page SEO Techniques that Work
Link Building
For any off-page SEO strategy, link building is crucial, but it is equally important to understand how to best build links for your niche and business. When you earn backlinks from high-authority websites, it helps you establish a position for your website as a reliable authority. The high authority links serve as a ‘vote of trust’ from one website to another.
The primary motive of link building should always be to earn quality links from authority websites. Focusing on quality over quantity should always be there.
Closing the link gap between your website and your competitor’s website must be a part of your building link-building technique. In case they are earning backlinks from high authority sites that are not linking to yours, mind that you might be missing out on some good-quality traffic. So while link building, you must always consider these three factors:
- Authority
As already mentioned above, it’s a measurement metric or score that gives an overview of a website’s performance. The score is based on the following data:
The domain’s quantity and quality (authority) of backlinks.
- Quantity of referring domains and quantity of referring IPs.
- Follow vs. no follow links.
- Organic search traffic
- The number of users
- Unique Domains
Another essential metric of link-building success is the number of linking root domains that point to your website, even above the number of backlinks. According to studies, there is a correlation between linking domains and higher rankings. Therefore, domain diversity should be an important part of your strategy.
- Topical Relevance
It is always recommended to aim for land links from websites that topically align with your own. For example, if you have an apparel website, you should always aim for most of the links you earn from other apparel sites, bloggers, online publishers, and the like.
That being said, it is fine to have some links from other similar topics if they make sense. However, always make sure the majority of them should topically align.
Brand Building
Today, it is a well-known fact that Google rewards brands. Therefore, brand-building activities should form a vital part of your broader SEO and marketing strategy and one part of your approach to off-page SEO. Yet again, it seems like everything goes back to building your authority online for search engines and users.
So how does brand building resonate with your SEO strategy, and what are the success metrics? Well, the answer is brand searches. It is one of the most important indicators to know whether your brand is growing or not. It can be anything- domain name searches, brand name, products, etc. You can look at Google Trends to track interest in your brand.
Another important reason is to focus on brand-building efforts in SERPs. SERPs are the search results that come up when someone searches your brand name. Apart from having a reputational impact, it also helps improve SEO ranking. When you put effort into brand building, it helps Google understand that your website is credible; thus, this off-page SEO technique is essential.
Content Marketing
The moment we hear content marketing, we immediately think of it as an on-page SEO tactic which means producing and publishing content that visitors see on your website.
But, take a holistic view! Content marketing can span both on-page and off-page tactics. Publishing good-quality content on your website is not just one definition of content marketing. Any content you produce and publish anywhere on the web falls under the definition of content marketing.
If you come up with a guest post or publish an infographic associated with a top-tier newspaper, even that is content marketing.
Promoting your content is important to produce good-quality and engaging assets, and it might encourage others to share too. A typical content marketing tactic that helps in boosting off-page signals involves:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Surveys, studies & research papers
- Whitepapers & eBooks
Content marketing also works well with other off-page methods such as link building, social media, and PR.
In short, if you have a good content piece, convey it to the people. You can use various Content Marketing Toolkits. It helps you find popular topics that are gaining traction and find the most relevant industry media for content promotion.
Social Media
We live in a world hugely dominated by social media,a growth marketing platform, so much that 93% of Internet users log into social media every day. Thus, the platform plays a crucial role in using the Internet and looking for answers to all the questions. You can think of it like this: a social media platform is a search engine. Having said that, social shares are not a direct ranking factor.
Your brand’s presence on social media will put you out there in front of potential clients and clients searching for their answers. Today, it has become a platform for customer service as most of your customers will reach out to you on social media as the first call. Therefore, it is important to maintain a strong presence and communicate professionally.
Public Relations(PR)
For the longest time, PR and SEO were seen as two different marketing disciplines. However, recently the lines are blurred between the two and have come together.
For many SEOs, digital PR is a link-building tactic of choice as it is an ideal technique for earning authority links at scale. You can also employ PR tactics for promoting a great story and its corresponding linkable assets.
You can use PR tactics to promote a great story and corresponding linkable assets, and it is possible to earn significant volumes of links as a result.
A recent study shows that the average campaign earns links between 10 and 24 unique linking domains.
Apart from building links, PR also helps in other off-page SEO signals. A good PR campaign is capable of:
- Improve brand awareness and resultant brand searches.
- Put your business in front of your target audience and allow conversations about you.
- Drives referral traffic.
- Positions you as a leader in your industry and helps build trust signals
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing comes in several forms today. A few years ago, it meant bloggers doing sponsored posts, but today it is all about YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Many use it to build the brand, amplify the content, and reach new audiences.
As we have already talked about how social networks are quite like search engines. Though they are used differently from Google, they are like search engines where users actively look for content. Influencers can go a long way to ensure you are present, as a business, on various social media platforms.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is the process of submitting content to someone else’s website to offer information and value to the audience. If done correctly, this method helps significantly contribute to marketing strategy than just being used for building links. Therefore, it is one of the most efficient ways of building links.
With this method, your brand is put in front of a targeted audience earning requisite traffic and helping position your company as an expert in your field. The primary goal of this method is to reach a new audience, build your brand, and get in front of a related website’s traffic. Approaching the technique with this mindset will help build the brand’s credibility.
Links should not be the only reason you start a guest post. They should be an added benefit if they happen.
Forums
You might be surprised to see forums as an off-page SEO technique. However, if used as a part of a more holistic strategy, forums add real value to your marketing mix. Instead of using forums to build links, you can go in with a different mindset.
Use the forum to directly get involved in conversations that relate to your area of expertise, position yourself as an expert, and rise as a specialist or expert.
Not many platforms allow you to engage in an open discussion with your potential who ask what you as a brand have to offer. Being on a public forum is an amazing way of building relationships and establishing trust among customers.
Local SEO
Though local SEO is a complete discipline of SEO on its own, certain elements are key off-page SEO tactics. Two of them are- Google My Business and citations.
- Google My Business(GMB)
Google My Business is the key to the online presence of almost any local business. However, it is common to forget that optimising your page and getting it to rank on the map pack is also an off-page SEO.tactic.
GMB is obviously not your website, and any efforts that focus on anything that is not on your site will be counted as off-page.
According to a recent report, 46% of all Google searches look for local information, and 4 out of 5 consumers use search engines for local information. So it is a no-brainer if your business does not show up amongst local GMB results; it is one of your competitors.
- Citations
A citation mentions your business online and usually refers to your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP). You can think of them as business listings. If you are a local business that wants to rank for geographically targeted search terms on the SERPs, you just cannot escape the value of citations.
However, consistency is one of the keys to success when it comes to citations. If you are inconsistent in citations, it will speak volumes about your lack of coherency. Apart from this, you must also take time out to make sure all the NAP references match.
Reviews
Do you know that 89% of people look up to online reviews before making a purchase? Yes, it is true. Reviews are quite underrated off-page SEO tools and online management techniques.
If we talk of basics, off-page SEO comes down to building your brand-building indicators that show that you deserve to be ranked at the top of the SERPs. A business that gets good reviews on third-party platforms has positioned itself as a brand. Thus, good reviews have proven to be instrumental in increasing conversions and trust.
Podcasts
Currently, podcasts have become insanely popular, and with each passing day, it continues to gain more listeners. If reports are to be believed, 57% of Americans have listened to podcasts at least once. So if you are not using it as a part of your SEO strategy, you are missing out on a lot. Some of the benefits it offers are:
- Most businesses are still not using podcasts as their strategy, which will help you gain a competitive edge;
- It is an ideal way of reaching new audiences, sharing your expertise, and gaining visibility that is not on Google.
- Apple’s Podcasts is still a search engine that helps you find relevant podcasts with keywords.
- Google Podcasts and Listen Notes are other search engines.
These are the top ten off-page SEO techniques that you can employ to improve your SEO ranking. Some might even look like on-page SEO techniques, which is why we will explain the on page vs off page SEO debate.
On page vs Off page SEO
On-page SEO techniques can be defined as all the measures taken within the website to improve its position in search rankings. The measures help in easing search engine bots for interpreting pages and give end-users a preview of what they are clicking through from the SERP. The on-page SEO considers the overall page performance, content quality, and content structure.
As said earlier, off-page SEO techniques are everything that is done outside the website’s periphery. For establishing a sense of reliability, relevance, and authority, optimising for off-site SEO ranking factors is vital. A strong off-page SEO strategy can make all the difference between where you and your competitors stand within the SERPs.
Endnotes
As you already saw, off-page SEO happens to be a significant factor in ranking for competitive keywords for your website. By reaching more customers, it has not only become a crucial element of an online marketing strategy but also helps you improve your website’s authority and associate it with other businesses.
Every business owner wants to appear at the top of the search engine results. For it to happen, you must begin using the targeted keywords on your website and outside of it. Apart from a good on-page strategy, it will pave the way for success. When compared to on-page SEO, the off-page strategy might seem easy. However, multiple factors are not under your control. Therefore, a right-made off-page SEO strategy is important for boosting your search rankings. [1] [2]
Lean Summit Solutions can help you curate the best off-page SEO strategies as we collaborate with business leaders helping them address their most pressing business requirements. Whether you are just starting out or expanding the horizon and limits of your current one, you can rely on us for your business’s success.
Schedule a free consultation today!
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