When building a business website, you want to make sure every page connects with a member of your target audience and drives conversions. So, you optimize every page of your website, ensuring that loading times are fast and content is high-quality and relevant. If you are SEO-savvy, you might implement a strategic internal linking strategy that allows users (and Google spiders) to crawl easily from one page to another.
This is called on-page SEO, and while it is important, it shouldn’t be the only way you are increasing the effectiveness of your site.
In fact, you can radically improve the visibility of your website to your target audience by creating content that lives on other websites besides your own. If you are new to the concept of off-page SEO, this guide should help you understand the basic strategies you need to implement to make your own website even better.
Defining Off-page SEO
As explained above, on-page SEO includes all the tactics you might use to modify your own website. Thus, it follows that off-page SEO involves actions that are outside the realm of your own site. Some examples of off-page SEO include:
Link building. Backlinks are links on other websites that point to pages on your site. A large number of backlinks on high-ranking, authoritative websites is a good recipe for increasing your position on the search results page.
Content marketing. Businesses can create content for publication on other websites’ blogs. The content alone can help increase a company’s online visibility, but often, the content will contain a backlink to your webpage, affecting your SEO.
Social media marketing. Though links shared on social media do not contribute to your backlink profile, social media marketing is an effective way to increase online visibility, especially with specific target markets.
Reviews. There are many ratings and reviews websites that web users check to understand more about products and companies. You should try to monitor your business’s reputation on these sites, asking clients and customers to submit their own ratings and reviews.
In truth, any time your business’s name and links to your webpages appear off of your website, you are engaging with off-page SEO. In conjunction with on-page SEO, off-page SEO is responsible for building your company’s online reputation, especially for the four core ranking factors used by Google’s algorithm: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Thus, it should go without saying that off-page SEO should be a significant component of your overall SEO strategy. Without off-page SEO, you will find it difficult if not downright impossible to improve your website’s rank.
Off-page SEO Techniques
Now that you recognize the need for off-page SEO, it is time to start integrating off-page SEO practices into your strategy. Undoubtedly, the best tactic is working with a reputable SEO partner who has years of experience in both on- and off-page SEO, like this high-quality SEO agency in Phoenix. However, to get a sense of what kind of techniques are often employed in off-page SEO, here’s a helpful guide:
Link building. As mentioned above, links are incredibly valuable tools for increasing ranking, so link building is the most popular off-site SEO practice. There are three types of backlinks you can pursue: natural links, manually built links and self-created links. Natural links arise organically, but you can plant your links in guest post content, press releases, forums and web directories and more. Still, the more natural your links look, the better.
Influencer marketing. Influencers are individuals who have garnered a large online following, which they will leverage for company sponsorships. Developing relationships with influencers is wise, as they can share links on social media and post links on their websites to drive traffic to your business. You can find influencers on social media, through podcasts, over popular blogs and more.
Local SEO. Local SEO is focused on increasing visibility amongst local web audiences and is usually employed by small businesses that benefit from local customers. However, many key elements of local SEO take place off-site, such as Google My Business profiles and contact information citations.
Events. About as off-page as off-page can get, events help to build your company’s reputation in more ways than one. Events bring people together, and that always creates buzz that is likely to result in new backlinks to your website. Your event can occur in the real world or in a virtual space; it can be for leisure or for professional connection; as long as you market your event properly, you should see an increase in visibility for your business.
Your website isn’t your only tool for building an online reputation. By paying attention to off-page SEO, you can improve your ranking and benefit from greater visibility that leads to incredible success.
