The work you do on your website is only a fraction of what’s required to make it successful. It’s only half the effort. The other half is about your off-page SEO strategy or the things you take off-site to optimize your website’s ranking, get more traffic, and boost revenue.
According to Moz, an off-page SEO strategy could make up at least 50% of the ranking factors for your website. But that’s not to say you should ignore on-page optimization altogether. Your website’s content, design, and user experience are still important ranking factors.
But if you’re not doing any off-page SEO, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to improve your website’s ranking. This post will explain what off-page SEO really means and how you can start using it to your advantage.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO refers to the tactics used to improve a website’s search engine result pages (SERPs) rankings that don’t involve directly modifying the website itself. Many people associate it with link building, but in all honesty, off-page SEO goes beyond that.
In fact, many off-page SEO activities that don’t necessarily result in a link could still be beneficial to your website. For example, if you’re mentioned in a high-authority news article, that could improve your search engine rankings, even if there’s no link to your website.
Which sites and how they refer to your business says a lot about your content. Hence, we can say that off-page SEO is very similar to word-of-mouth marketing or PR for your website. It’s a digital record of someone vouching for your product or service.
See also : SEO services in Los Angeles
Off-Page SEO Checklist
Off-page search engine optimization is a powerful and impactful tool that helps boost your website ranking. While it can be more difficult to control than on-page SEO, there are still a number of things you can do to ensure your website is getting the love it deserves from Google and other search engines.
Here’s a quick checklist of things you can do to optimize your website for better ranking:
Examine Your Backlink Profile
Backlinks are perhaps the most critical factor in off-page SEO. Why? Because they help build trust and page-rank authority for your website. And these things are essential to Google.
Essentially, a backlink tells search engines that other websites like your content and vouch for its quality. High-quality and authoritative backlinks benefit off-page SEO the most.
In general, there are two ways you can create backlinks:
- built links or unnatural links
- natural links or earned links
Built links occur when you, the website owner, create a link to your own site. It might be in the form of a blog post or article that links back to your website. On the other hand, natural links occur organically.
That is, other website owners link to your content because they think it’s valuable and relevant. These are the best kind of organic traffic because they show Google that people vouch for your quality content.
Your link-building efforts must start with analyzing your backlink profile. This will give you an idea of the quality and quantity of links your website currently has. You can use a tool like Moz, Semrush, or Ahrefs.
These tools will show you:
- The number of backlinks your website has
- The number of linking domains
- The quality of your backlinks
- The anchor text used
- your domain authority
- Dofollow and Nofollow links
- Internal links
Knowing these metrics will give you a better idea of your starting point and what needs to be done to improve things.
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Another way you can take advantage of off-page SEO is to optimize for Local business SEO. It’s a form of off-page SEO that makes your website more visible in local search results, which is very important for businesses that rely on local customers.
Here are a few things you can do to optimize for local search engine optimization:
- Optimize your website for local keywords
- Create local citations
- Get listed in online directories like Google My Business
- Encourage customer reviews
Work with a local SEO company for more straightforward implementation and management to focus on what you do best: running your business. Local SEO companies offer local SEO services that can help you target customers in your area through organic search engine results.
Do Link-building Outreach
Once you get an idea of what your backlink profile looks like and where it stands, continue building your links by doing link-building outreach. There are a few ways to do this:
Write Guest Blogs
Reach out to other bloggers and website owners in your niche and offer to write a guest blog for them. It’s an excellent way to get exposure for your website while also building links.
Just make sure that you’re guest blogging on high-quality websites relevant to your niche. These days, Google is getting better at detecting low-quality guest blog posts, so avoid them at all costs.
Find Broken Links
Use a tool like Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker or Dead Link Checker to find broken links on other websites. You can then contact the website owner and offer to replace the broken link with a link to your website.
It’s a great way to get high-quality backlinks while also providing value to another website.
Participate in Forums
Forums are a great way to build relationships with other people in your niche. They’re also an excellent source of link-building opportunities.
Look for forums that are relevant to your niche and participate in the discussions. Make sure you’re adding value to the conversation and not just spamming the forum with links to your website.
Over time, you’ll be able to build relationships with other forum members, and they’ll be more likely to link to your website when they find relevant content.
Just remember that link-building takes time and effort. It’s not something that you can do overnight. But if you’re patient and consistent, you’ll see results.
Leverage Social Media
As mentioned, off-page SEO isn’t always about link-building or backlinks. Traffic from many different sources is an excellent indicator for search engines.
Hence, it’s a good idea to consider social media marketing as part of your SEO strategy. While Google firmly said that social signals like follows and likes don’t directly impact rankings, they’re still a good way to increase traffic to your website.
And more traffic means more opportunities for link-building and backlinking.
Buildup Branded Mentions
Branded mentions can also impact your search rankings in a positive way. Why? Because it shows Google that your brand is being talked about online.
Basically, branded mentions are implied links. They don’t have an anchor text or a link to your website, but they’re still valuable.
They are indicators for online relationships and can help increase your brand awareness. Use a tool like Google Alerts or Mention to track when your brand is mentioned online.
Conclusion
So, what is off-page optimization? Simply put, it’s all of the things you do outside of your website to help improve your rankings on search engine results pages. And this includes link building, social media engagement, and branding. These factors play a role in how Google and other search engines rank your website. So, by taking advantage of off-page SEO techniques, you can give your website a boost and help it stand out from the competition.
