Off Page SEO – Key Factors and Effective Techniques

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 promote the content outside the website to rank higher on the search engine result pages.

What is off-page SEO?

The practices you do outside the website to improve search engine ranking and drive traffic are called off-page SEO. If you are not adding off-page SEO techniques to your SEO strategy, you are losing most opportunities to improve your online presence and build authority and trust.

Importance of off-page SEO

Improve the rankings on search engine
Increase page rank
Greater exposure through promotion
Build trust and authoritativeness
Drive traffic
Convert visitors into potential customers

Essential Off-Page SEO Factors

1. Domain Authority

The authority of the overall domain developed by Moz that predicts how well the site is going to rank on search engine result pages. It ranges from 0-100. It is also called domain rating by Ahrefs and authority score by SEMrush. The score is calculated based on referring domains, organic traffic, and quality of backlinks.

Best Practices

Build quality backlinks on high domain authority websites.
Strengthen your social media presence
Promote your site on niche-related high-authority domains to improve its presence.

2. Page Authority

The authority of an individual webpage based on how well it can be ranked on search engines. It ranges from 0-100 and is available to check in Moz and SEMrush.

Best practices

Create high-quality content that gets good shares on social media platforms.
Create authority and trustworthy content so that other sites share them also called link bait.
Maintain the content relevancy.
Improve domain authority as it plays a vital role in increasing page authority.
Increase link count on target pages so that they will have good authority scores.
Create high-quality backlinks to have a stronger page authority.

3. Trust Flow (TF)

The score generated by the majestic tool represents the overall quality of backlinks. If the trust flow is good, the site will have a strong online reputation. It ranges from 0-100.

Best Practices

Get Backlinks from trustworthy, relevant, and authoritative websites.
Add diversification of domains to your link-building.
Regularly audit and remove low-quality links.
Participate in guest posting on reputable sites.
Build do-follow links as they help in rankings.

4. Citation Flow (CF)

The score generated by a majestic tool represents the overall quantity of backlinks. It ranges from 0-100. If a high citation flow website points to you, then your CF will improve automatically, and if a low citation flow website points, your site can have a negative impact.

Best Practices

Create and promote valuable content that earns shares and naturally attracts the backlinks.
Focus on high authority sites when building backlinks
Monitor and disavow bad or toxic links.
Implement broken links in your off-page strategy.

5. Social Shares

This is an important part of the off-page SEO strategy. It is the practice of improving a website’s online reputation externally by promoting regular sharing on social media platforms. It helps in building a strong brand awareness. You can also get quality backlinks indicating content relevancy and popularity.

Best Practices

Understand and know your target audience to fulfill their needs
Research and choose the best social media buttons.
Place the sharing buttons on the prominent place analyzing heatmaps.

6. Link Juice

The authority passes from one page to another through a link. The page can be external or internal. It is also called Link Equity. Search engines count links as a vote that a page is valuable and promote them with high authority.

Best Practices

Create a well-researched site hierarchy so that search engines know your important pages to consider.
Add a nofollow link to external links to avoid passing link juice.
Link your important and main pages into the posts.

7. Referring Domains

The domains that mention your link on their site pointing to you are called referring domains.

Best Practices

Create high-quality content so that top-quality domains link you to their site.
Share the linkable assets to high-quality referring domains to appear authoritative.
Guest blogging is a great way to build links on highly authoritative referring domains.
Become an industry leader by contributing shareable content on expert roundups.

8. Anchor text

The keyword-rich hyperlink created to build internal, external, and inbound links.

Best Practices

Be relevant when building anchor text that points to the targeted page.
Use descriptive anchor text that clearly defines the page you are linking to.
Keep your anchor text clear and concise.
Avoid using generic anchor text such as click here, read more, etc.
Add related keywords to build relevant anchor text.

9. Relevance of links

It defines how relevant a website is when linking to another website. It measures the relevancy of the backlinks you build.

Best Practices

Use relevant keywords in the clickable part when linking the website or page.
Always add internal links so that relevant pages are added.
You can add external links to the relevant content such as statistics, videos, infographics, etc.
Avoid link schemes, link farms, and link exchange.

10. Quality Backlinks –

Links built on high authority and trusted domains are called quality backlinks. The domains also have high citation and trust flow.

Best Practices

Build backlinks on highly authoritative sites
Perform Guest blogging on niche-based sites to build audience and brand awareness.
Add broken link building to your off-page SEO strategy.
Publish Infographics on relevant sites to get high-quality links naturally.
Develop highly shareable content.
Create powerful and convincing content that earns backlinks.
Collaborate with Influencers and build backlinks through relationship link building.
Publish ultimate guides covering topics in detail.

11. Link Building –

Building quality links on other high-authority websites by asking or adding naturally is called link building. It is also called non-editorial or outreaching links.

Best Practices

Analyze competitor’s backlinks and build links on them.
Reclaim the links by checking on tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs.
Create linkable assets and high-quality engaging content to earn links.
Identify Influencers that might find your post valuable and reach out to them by pitching to link your content.
Optimize anchor text strategically.
Perform content repurposing and syndication.

12. Online reviews

Getting online reviews on Google My Business Profile or other review aggregator sites is crucial to improving online presence. Whether they are negative or positive, respond to all the online reviews directly or indirectly.

Best Practices

To get favorable reviews, provide great service.
Simplify the review-making process for customers to post reviews.
Ask for reviews and reward a small token of a prize to post them.
You can use third-party review partners such as Trustpilot or Reviews.io.
Take and improve from customer feedback.
Train your sales team to collect the reviews from the customers.
Respond to both positive and negative reviews.

13. Online Reputation Management

Creating a positive reputation for a brand or business. It is a technique of analyzing how your business is perceived by the audience on the internet.

Best Practices

Create a strong online presence by participating story and values.
Regularly monitor online reviews and respond to each of them.
Highlight positive reviews on your website.
Improve the customer experience by monitoring reports on Google Analytics.
Analyze your competitors’ reputations.
Participate actively on social media.
Create valuables that help customers to engage.
Have a public relations team to manage reputation.

14. Google My Business Profile (GMB)

Optimize and manage Google My Business profile to get local clients in physical stores or shops. It is the best way to turn searchers into customers. GMB profile helps you manage how you appear in local map search results.

Best Practices

Add all the details to your Google My Business profile.
Choose the right category of business.
Encourage customer reviews and respond to them.
Upload high-quality images.
Keep your profile active by regularly posting.
Respond promptly by enabling the messaging feature.
Regularly answer the questions in the Q&A section.

15. Brand Mentions

The mention of the brand online or in any digital form of communication. These can be tagged or untagged and not necessarily link to your brand website. You should outreach them through pitch and ask them to link your website. Brand mention can be of 3 types – positive neutral or negative. These are the key indicators of your brand reputation online.

Best Practices

Add Google Alert so that Google will inform you about the mention of your brand anywhere online.
Regularly monitor your mentions to stay at the top or new mentions.
Analyze the latest trends and focus on improving your product or service and customer experience.
Take the aid of social listening tools to discover your brand mentions effectively.
Analyze the competitors as this will help in assessing their strengths and weaknesses.
Engage with customers and respond to them on their inputs to build strong relationships.

Effective off-page SEO techniques

As discussed, off-page SEO techniques are performed outside the boundaries of the website, and here are the four most important off-page SEO 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 these links as several votes and compare 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 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 a 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.

1. 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
Website add them as they have quality and convincing content.
You do not ask for these links
Google loves editorial links
Ex – link from Wikipedia, CNN, Forbes, or other high authority domains, etc.

2. Outreaching

These are links you acquire by emailing the Website or reaching them in some way.
These can be paid or free.
These types of links are built so that they look editorial.
Search engines can consider them as good links if built naturally or relationship-building and not paid.
These can also be valuable for your SEO efforts
Ex – Outreaching to Influencers.

3. 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 releases, etc

Essential Link Building Techniques

Publish awesome content

Publishing link-worthy content is essential for two main reasons. First great content will help you to obtain natural links also called link bait. The second reason is to have great content that helps the page rank higher on search engine result pages. Examples of great content are case studies, how-to guides based on original research, and trendy topics. It should be unique and unbiased.

Guest Posting

This is an effective method to get the link in the content. You need to find 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 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 and is built naturally.

Outreaching

This is one of the popular techniques for building links. The main idea for building links is finding websites having similar niches, emailing them, and asking 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 as well. This can work as well because it is different from paid and link exchange.

You can also reach industrial Influencers for better results. Another best practice for outreaching is broken link building. It is the practice of identifying the broken link on authority sites and outreaching the owner with a convincing email. To add yours to fix their broken link. Generally, the website accepts the suggestion as they get a valuable resource in place of broken links to provide a better user experience.

Publishing great visuals

You can also create an effective video, presentations, and infographics. These help in generating more engagement than normal textual content. Webmasters can link to the content adding your infographic and pointing a link to your website.

Social Media Optimization and off-page SEO

Google does not give weightage to links 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 are not considered by search engines. If your post goes viral or gets real attention from visitors and not from paid mediums can have an indirect impact on rankings.

If you promote the popular posts then they will be 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 EEAT (expertise, experience, 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 then you can ask to link to create brand citations.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews play a vital role in rankings as they are a more effective technique for off-page especially for local businesses. If reviews are coming from trusted sources such as Google My Business and Yelp, trust pilots can have a positive impact on the rankings. If you are the owner of a local business then create your Google My Business profile 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 search.

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