With the majority of searches happening on mobile devices instead of desktops, optimizing your site has never been more important. Search engine optimization is something people are talking about more and more, and it can definitely feel overwhelming. There is lots of work to do to get the most of it. But in this article, we will dive into one of the important SEO definitions, which is off-page SEO.
What is off-page SEO?
There’s on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to optimizing your website by using keywords, creating high-quality content, updating HTML, and so much more, whereas off-page SEO refers to the actions that you can take outside of your website to help increase traffic to your site.
Any external activities that you perform are considered off-page optimization. These include social media, directory listings, and our favorite link building. It basically revolves around gaining the confidence of search engines and users. A lot of off-page SEO is about earning backlinks and citations, telling platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, and others who you are and what you’re about, and making sure you’re sending positive signals to Google from places other than your website. such as through reviews on other platforms, social media mentions, etc. All of this ends up helping you gain more visibility on Google search results and get more traffic.
Link Building
Link building refers to getting links from other websites directed towards yours, but not all links are created equal. You should always ask yourself two questions when it comes to backlinks. Is the link relevant? And is the link coming from an authoritative website? Relevance means that the backlink is placed on a webpage that talks about the same subject as yours. or is from a website that caters to the same niche as your site.
Why Link Authority Matters?
The idea is that the better a website is in the eyes of search engines, the more likely it is that the links are going to help you rank higher. How do you know which websites are more authoritative? There are industry metrics that correlate to the authority of a website. MOZ has a score called domain authority and page authority Ahrefs has a score called domain rating and URL rating, and Majestic SEO uses trust flow and citation flow. You can use any of these tools, like Moz, Ahrefs, or Majestic, to get an idea of how authoritative a website or web page is. from a score of one to a hundred with a hundred being the highest.
Link Building Strategy
First, you need to decide what keywords you want to rank for. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is a great tool to help you find your target keywords. But you can also use free tools like Google Keyword Planner and open features like autocomplete. You also need to be smart when it comes to your competition. Be a detective! Find out who you’re competing against in the market. Once you’ve drawn a list of your competitors, you can simply put their URLs in the Ahrefs site explorer tool. That’ll tell you everything about their backlink profile;. you’ll know where they’re getting their backlinks from the types of backlinks, the anchor text, the context, and more. This can give you a big picture idea of what kind of backlinks you can potentially earn. You don’t necessarily have to earn backlinks from the same publications, but at least it gives us a good jumping off point.
What is outreaching?
Maybe you could reach out to similar publications in the same space. That’s where outreach comes into play. Outreach is basically you reaching out to websites and people in your niche and introducing them to the content you have on your website. Outreaching is considered one of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive parts of off-page optimization. Many SEOs spend the better part of their day reaching out to different publishers. More often than not, they don’t hear back from those publishers.
and even if they do, they find out they aren’t the best fit for each other. It’s hard to find high-quality publishers that are a great fit and want to work with you. you can either ask them about writing a guest blog on their website or show them they have a broken link and offer to replace it for them or simply share a relevant and important blog from your website that you think they’ll love.
- Outreaching for Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a tried and tested way of creating authority for your website. You’re simply writing content for another website in your niche and adding links to your website. When you reach out to them and offer to write a guest blog, these websites will usually respond by telling you what kind of content they’re looking for. You may even receive detailed editorial guidelines. Just add content that they and their audience will love and send it over. You can place a link to your website if you think it’s relevant for the readers and will add value to their user journey if they click on that link.
- Outreaching for Broken Link Building
Broken links, as the name implies, refer to links that lead to pages that don’t exist anymore. Believe it or not, a lot of high-authority websites have broken links, and that’s a problem because they have backlinks on their pages that aren’t leading anywhere. here’s how you step in to solve this problem. this is how broken link building works;
- Look for a website pointing to a page that doesn’t exist anymore. The Ahrefs content explorer tool is very useful here. Just type in your keyword or content category and use this filter to view only results with broken links. Next, see what kind of content was being linked there. You can use the wayback machine for this. See which content you already have that would work there, or you can create a piece of content from scratch. finally reach out to the website with the broken link. Tell them about their broken link and offer to link up to your page. which, thanks to all your homework and efforts, you’ve made sure is already a perfect fit for them. More often than not, they’ll be glad to link back to you. since your page is going to be super relevant for them.
- Another way to earn backlinks is to discover brand mentions. Here you find out websites that have mentioned you without linking to you. All you need to do is approach such people and request a backlink, and they’re usually happy to oblige; they already like you; that’s why they mentioned you and basically recommended you right. You can use a tool called the BrandMentions to unveil a list of unlinked mentions, so that’s a good place to start.
- You can also create more link-building opportunities by leveraging your previous work and repurposing content. What it essentially means is expanding the reach of your content for all types of audiences. You can take a particular blog on your website, for example, make a few tweaks here and there and create a video out of it, a podcast, an infographic, and so on. So now instead of one piece of content, you now have several, which means more avenues for you to share your work and more opportunities for link building. Content repurposing opens up a ton of opportunities.
Importance of Platforms
Making sure platforms understand who you are, for example, Google My Business is a free tool from Google allowing your business to appear for local search results by listing relevant information about your business, like name, contact details, etc. If you’re a business with a physical address, Google My Business is an important tool to use to make sure you’re visible in search rankings. Getting local citations on places like Yelp is important too. And if you ever see this when searching for your business, that means you have a knowledge panel but you haven’t claimed it yet. so you should do that too.
Content Marketing
Getting content that markets your business can help raise the rate of people coming to your site. Guest blogging, offers, surveys, white papers, and videos are all great content marketing techniques to increase traffic to your site. Getting influencers to mention or interact with your business is also a great way to bring new people to your site. Influencer marketing is huge, and if you’re not already doing it, you might want to start investing in it.
Bottom-Line
Enhancing your website’s exposure and reputation through external efforts like link building, social media interaction, local citations, and content marketing is the main goal of off-page SEO. Search engine rankings can be raised by employing tactics including influencer partnerships, guest blogging, broken link construction, and obtaining high-quality backlinks. You can increase search engine credibility and drive more traffic by enhancing your online presence.