Off-page SEO means using powerful techniques to improve the position of keywords in search engine result pages. Many people associate it with link building but it is more than that as it helps in promoting the content outside the website to rank higher on the search engine result pages.
Importance of off-page SEO
- Improve the rankings on search engine
- Increase page rank
- Greater exposure through promotion
- Build trust and authoritativeness
Effective off-page SEO techniques
As discussed, off-page SEO techniques are performed outside the boundaries of the website and there are four more important techniques.
- Link Building
- Social Media Optimization
- Brand Mentions
- Customer Reviews
Let us discuss all these off-page SEO techniques in detail.
Link Building
This is the most important technique as if you link the website to another authoritative website, you are providing a signal to the website that your page has good information. Search engines account for it as a number of votes and consider the number of backlinks with your competitor when ranking.
Difference between Good Link and Bad Link
What is a Bad Link?
Mostly the links come from blog directories, forums, comment links if used keywords, article directories, content sharing websites, Link farms and link exchange, etc.
What is a good link?
Good links come from trusted sources having good domain authority. So, build links on the related niche with relevant anchor text. Good links do not have nofollow tag as it won’t count with this tag.
<a href=https://example.com rel= “nofollow”> This is a nofollow link </a>
There are 3 ways to get links
Editorial
- These links are given by webmasters of high-authority sites because of the quality of your content. These are also called natural links.
- These are unpaid links
- You do not ask for these links
- Google loves editorial links
- Ex – link from Wikipedia, CNN, Forbes, etc
Outreaching
- These are links you acquire by emailing webster or outreaching them in some way
- These can be paid
- These types of links are built so that it looks editorial.
- Hard for search engines to consider it as genuine links
- These can also be valuable for your SEO efforts
- Ex – outreaching to Influencer
Non -Editorial
- These links are created by you on another website
- They can be paid or free
- You place these links on another website
- Google provides little value to these links
- Ex- Blog commenting, directory submission, links from press release, etc
Some of the effective Link Building Techniques are
- Publish awesome content
Publishing link-worthy content is essential for two main reasons. The first is great content that will help you to obtain natural links also called link bait. The second reason is to have great content that helps the page to rank higher on search engine result pages. An example of great content is a case study, how guides are based on original research, trendy topic, and unique and unbiased.
- Guest Posting
This is an effective method to get the link in the content. You need to find out a website that accepts guest posts in the same niche. Outreach them with an effective pitch and well-researched ideas. Most importantly you should get a dofollow link from the content. Some of the techniques used to create spam and Google added rules to devalue guest post links. They can value them if the link comes from an authoritative and trusted source.
- Outreaching
This is one of the popular techniques for building links. The main idea for building links is to find websites having a similar niche, email them, and ask to link the popular content on your website to them. There are few chances of getting replies but this method still works. You can also mention the content of an authoritative website and email them to let them know and link yours. This can work as well because it is different from paid and link exchange.
- Publishing great visuals
You can also create effective videos, presentations, and infographics. These help in generating more engagement than normal textual content. The webmaster can link to the content add your infographic and point a link to your website.
Social Media Optimization and off-page SEO
Google does not give weightage to link shares and comments as it can be paid and does not depict the accurate picture of how popular a social media posting is. All the links from social media are no-follow and do not consider by search engines. If your post gets viral or gets real attention from visitors and not from the paid medium can have an indirect impact on rankings.
If you promote popular posts then they will get noticed by thousands of visitors and they might link your post as well. This generates organic social traffic and helps in rankings indirectly on search engines.
Brand Mentions
Google prefers to rank the brand website having EAT (expertise, authority trustworthiness) on the top search results. This is because brands are more reliable and trusted by users and generate better user experience. It can be on forums, reviews, articles, and social media networks. Google crawls and evaluates them to showcase the right picture of how the brand is perceived by the audience. Make sure that you reply to both positive and negative comments. If the brand is linked pointing to a website, then it is good but even if not linked it can add some value.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews play a vital role in rankings as they are more effective for off-page, especially for local businesses. Most reviews are nofollow but if they are coming from a trusted source such as Google My Business, yelp, a trust pilot can have a positive impact on the rankings. If you are the owner of a local business then build your profile on Google My Business and other review websites and ask customers to review your business. Generating online reviews will help your site to gain better exposure on search engines and positions.
The Bottom Line
Off-page SEO strategy is as important as on-page SEO if you want your business to grow online and get customers from organic searches.
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