Off-Page SEO

Key Takeaways

• Off-page SEO involves actions from other websites to improve your site's ranking, including link building, aka backlinks.

• Link building, although difficult, can be extremely fruitful for your site's SEO.

• Some of the key strategies for off-page SEO and link building include creating high-quality content, guest blogging on related sites, leveraging influencer marketing, and creating shareable content like infographics or videos.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO involves actions outside of your website that can boost your search engine ranking. One of the most well-known and important parts of off-page is SEO is backlinks. Backlinks are links from other sites to your site. The value of a backlink depends on the authority of the other site as well as the relevance to your site. The higher the quality and relevance of the backlink, the more it will help your SEO. Improving your off-page SEO will drive your ranking up in the search engines and ultimately boost your sales by generating more traffic to your site. We’ll walk through some of the most important ways to boost your off-page SEO.

Content is King

As most SEO guides and articles will tell you - content is king in SEO. First and foremost, you need to be creating high-quality, relevant content for your audience. High-quality content is a prerequisite for a lot of the strategies discussed below and in other SEO articles, so make sure to start there. Look at search data and other related websites for ideas for content and then invest the resources in creating high-quality content. Start with the user in mind and think about what would be most helpful and informative to them.

Link Building

The most challenging, yet rewarding, part of off-page SEO is backlinks. There are lots of ways to earn backlinks to your site, but the most effective way is to produce high-quality content on your site that is worth others linking to. You need to write content that others find interesting, authoritative, and useful enough to write about it or link to.

Improve Domain Authority

One of the most commonly used buzzwords in SEO is domain authority. This is a measure of the overall strength of your site to the search engines. It combines factors of technical SEO, backlinks, history of the domain, and many more factors. 

Comment on Blogs

People have been doing this for a while and misuse of this strategy can actually hurt your site, but when used properly, this can help off-page SEO. To do this right, look for opportunities where a link to your content can actually be helpful to the blog. For example, if someone on a blog asks for book recommendations and you have an article with various book recommendations by topic, drop in the link. Similarly, you can use sites like Quora or Yahoo Answers to share useful and relevant content based on the topic. The more useful the shares, the more valuable they will be. 

Influencer Marketing

Influencers or bloggers are your allies for off-page SEO because they draw crowds and have large followings on their blogs and social networks. You can leverage their following to gain popularity, improve domain authority, and drive additional traffic. There are lots of ways to find influencers. A simple approach to start is to look for popular bloggers or social media accounts that focus on topics relevant to your business and reach out to make connections.

Guest Blogging

This strategy has been around for a while and can still be used with lots of success. Creating useful content on a blog that is authoritative and attracts a lot of traffic can help you get valuable links to your website, as well as invite third parties to write on your blog. The strategy is a Win-Win weapon, since it works in both directions, bringing results to both.

Local SEO

Having a presence in local search with Google My Business can also help your off-page SEO if you do have a physical location. 

Broken Links

Start a witch hunt for broken links, such as from your competitor's web pages, on third-party web pages. Obviously, it goes without saying that these 'third parties' have to be relevant people for your niche. Doing the work for them can help you gain their trust with your website and get links to it, so don't doubt the effectiveness of this strategy. When you have gotten a good amount of broken links, contact the owners of these Web pages, to tell them that they are linking to a Web that no longer exists, and you can suggest that they can link to your content instead of those broken links. You have to be very obtuse not to accept an offer like this because Google detects dead links and excessive use of missing pages.

Social Media

Social media has the power! Each social platform is unique and has groups of users that are also unique, so you must be insightful to take advantage of their benefits and make them improve your brand. The more your content is shared on social networks, the better your position in the SERP will be and the more links you will get.

Upload Videos

There are many platforms for uploading videos and letting content run, so all you have to do is focus on creating interesting, quality how-to videos that grab the attention of your audience so they can share it and link back to your website as an author. Some sites where you can upload your videos are obviously YouTube, the most famous video network on the planet, but there are also Vimeo, Ustream.tv, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Vine, and Hulu.

Infographics

I love infographics! These allow us to be very creative, they let you incorporate the information you want strategically, they like the public, they are punctual, and they carry images, in short, perfect! They are like a fabulous sketch waiting for you to give it the address and the color you want. Why not take advantage of them? Social media is loaded with them! To create all the infographics you want and send them to sites like Infographicsarchive, Infographiclove, Visual.ly, Reddit, Nerdgraph or Submitinfographics, because there you can earn many links to your website.

Learn More

If you are looking to drive your SEO up and reach the top of the search rankings, see our Digital Marketing courses & certificate programs or see our SEO bootcamp.