You might have done all the on-page SEO tasks and technical SEO tasks correctly. But what if you don’t focus on off-page SEO at all? Obviously, you would face difficulty ranking higher on search engines. To get the best out of your search engine optimization strategy, it’s crucial to focus on all three SEO types.
Ranking without doing any off-page SEO task is not impossible, but it is time-consuming. You can certainly rank higher just by publishing high-quality content on your website, but it would take longer to rank.
This is when the importance of off-page search engine optimization comes in. Without off-page SEO implementation, it would take time to rank higher. What off-page optimization does is helps to build trust and authority. When your website gets backlinks and social signals, it sends signals to search engines that people are talking about the website.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO refers to any optimization task done outside of the website. Off-page SEO plays a significant role in getting a website to rank higher on Google. Off-page SEO is not limited to gaining links. Many people confuse off-page SEO with creating more and more backlinks. To ensure the best user experience, giant search engines like Google have introduced so many algorithmic updates.
There are many updates by Google focused on links spam. With various algorithmic updates, Google ensured that websites with spam and low-quality backlinks don’t rank high on SERP.
The effectiveness of your off-page SEO strategy is not based on the number of backlinks you create, but it is based on the quality backlinks you create. In a nutshell, the purpose of off-page SEO is to improve the domain’s rating in the eyes of Google.
Google uses more than 200 factors to determine the rankings of websites. Among those ranking factors, off-page activities like link building, social signals, etc., play a great role in higher rankings.
Off-Page SEO Techniques
In this post, we are going to walk you through a list of different off-page SEO techniques:
1. Natural links
The best and effective way to rank higher on giant search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., is by building natural links. This is the strategy many webmasters use to gain backlinks. With this off-page SEO technique, you have to worry less about building backlinks manually. Now, your question would be how exactly you can attract natural links to your website? The answer to your question is – high-quality content.
When you create an in-depth and high-quality content piece, your visitors are going to love that. And when people love your content, they are more likely to share it with others. They are more likely to link your web page to their website. This is how you get backlinks naturally.
2. Manually built links
Under this off-page activity, backlinks are built manually. For example, the manually built link is when you ask your customers to link to your website or ask influencers to share your content. Gaining backlinks naturally can be a bit time-consuming. You have to spend time research and coming up with an informative content piece. Then, you have to keep sharing and wait for it to start getting links. Thus, apart from working on natural links, it is a good idea to work on manual link creation as well.
3. Self-created links
Self-created links are when you share on your website on directories, forums, blog comments, etc. Don’t expect immersive working on self-created links. This type of link is less result-effective. Note that some self-created links tactics come under black hat SEO. Thus you need to be careful when performing any activities around this off-page tactic.
4. Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is another off-site SEO technique to work on. What social bookmarking does is it sends social signals to search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.). This ultimately helps your website with increased domain authority. Some popular platforms you can consider for social bookmarking are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Yahoo. This off-page SEO tactic would help you three ways: get more traffic, build backlinks, and social signals.
5. Local SEO
Local search engine optimization is also part of off-page SEO. It includes GMB (Google My Business) listing, citations, and a lot more. If you have a physical store or even if you provide services, you need to submit your business on Google and other listing sites. By listing your business on Google, it would be easy for people to find your business. For local startups and businesses, GMB is something they must consider.
Talking about citations, they are references to your company or brand online. When creating citations, you need to focus on three things – name, address, and phone number of your business, which is also known as NAP. Citations listing on authority and relevant directories like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, Yellow Pages, etc., would boost your web presence.
6. Customer reviews
No matter how much you work on SEO and create backlinks, what if your business has got tons of negative reviews? This is when the importance of online reputation management (ORM) comes in. Before using your product or service, people are more likely to first check out your reviews online. Reviews don’t just guide customers to perceive your brand, they also send information to search engines about your brand.
Businesses with positive reviews are more likely to get higher rankings on search engines. Now, this doesn’t mean you go ahead and start working on fake reviews. Doing so can do more harm than good. Firstly, provide the best product/service to your customers. If any of your customers leave negative reviews, respond to them politely, understand their concerns, and resolve the issue. To get more reviews, you can simply ask your customers for that or you can even provide them some discount for the review they publish.
When creating an SEO strategy, off-page SEO is something you can’t neglect. To help you improve your web presence, here we have shared some of the effective off-page SEO techniques.