WHAT IS OFF-PAGE SEO?
How to level up off-site elements.
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Introduction to Off-Page SEO
If you’re wondering how to jump your way to the top of those Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), then off-page SEO is the power-up you’re looking for. With off-page SEO, you can level up your site’s authority and visibility while driving more traffic to your top-notch content.
It takes some skill and practice to get an off-site SEO high score, though. Be Found Online is here with a comprehensive walkthrough on what off-page SEO is and how to improve it.
Definition of Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO, aka off-site SEO, covers all optimization that happens away from your website itself.
Things like building backlinks, social media campaigns, and PR are all off-page SEO techniques. They share a lot of the same goals: cementing your page’s trustworthiness, getting it in front of more eyes, and building professional relationships.
Importance of Off-Page SEO
Knowing how long your SEO process is expected to take is important for planning your brand’s other marketing and advertising strategies. Be Found Online wants to keep you on the frustration-free path to successful SEO, so we’ve put together this in-depth guide to help you understand what goes into SEO and when you can expect to start seeing positive returns on your pages and site.
Remember:
- Bullets are great
- For spelling out benefits and
- Turning visitors into leads.
Search engines don’t just look at your website. There’s a whole digital world online to take into account! If sites that Google already trust link to your website, Google sees that as a vote of confidence.
More than that, though, off-page SEO can expand your reach past your web domain. You can boost your site’s visibility to your audience and beyond through social media platforms, press releases, and paid advertising.
Relationship Between Off-Page and On-Page SEO
On-page or On-site SEO is everything on your website that you have direct control over. Keyword research, mobile-friendliness, site structure, and more all play a role in how well search engine bots can crawl and index your website.
While off-page SEO is a longer process to see SEO Results that you have less control over, it’s just as crucial to your website’s overall strategy.
On-page SEO sets the foundation for off-page SEO techniques to solidify your site’s reputation. Without good content, backlinking will suffer. Without authority and reach, your content isn’t getting seen!
Key Components of Off-Page SEO
What does off-page SEO include? Here are some of the key components:
Backlinks
You may have heard the term backlink or backlinking before. It’s one of the most significant elements of a successful off-page SEO strategy.
Definition and Types of Backlinks (Natural, Outreach, Guest Posts, etc.)
Backlinks, or "inbound links" and "incoming links,” occur when one website links to another. Here are some of the most common types of backlinks:
- Natural: Inbound links that happen without active or passive pursuit. They’re gained organically as folks find your content and link back to it.
- Outreach: Links earned from approaching other websites and asking for backlinking.
- Editorial: Links from high-authority editorial websites earned by your high-quality content.
- Guest Posts: Posting content on high-ranking sites and referring back to yours through an editorial backlink.
- Business Profiles: Links from profiles you create on business listing websites.
Importance of High-Quality Backlinks
Google and other search engines consider backlinks a strong signal of your website’s overall authority and credibility. If high-quality websites are linking back to your content, Google sees that as a nod of approval.
In fact, Google’s assessment of the quality of a site’s backlinks is one of their strongest ranking factors.
How Search Engines Use Backlinks for Ranking
You might think that the more backlinks you have the better your ranking, but it’s more complex than that.
Google considers high-quality links to be worth a good deal more than a lot of smaller, less authoritative links.
It’s also important that you get links from as many unique websites as you can, as too many links from one website can seem spammy.
Social Signals
Social media has continued to play a major role in day-to-day digital life, so it’s important to consider social signals when planning your off-page SEO strategy.
Definition of Social Signals
Social signals are social media engagement actions like shares, votes, views, or likes. They’re great indicators that your content is doing what it’s supposed to!
Impact of Social Signals on SEO
Social signals don’t directly affect your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), but they’re still a major part of off-page SEO.
Actions like shares and votes can increase your brand’s visibility and drive more traffic to your website.
Other creators might even see your high-quality content and decide to reference it in their work, earning you another coveted backlink.
Even more essential, users often see positive social signals as a sign of quality and may be more likely to watch or read your content in full, reducing bounce rates.
Social Media Platforms and Their Role in Off-Page SEO
Your brand is missing out if you’re not taking advantage of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Not only are they great for visibility, but they bump your relatability! A strong social media presence can foster a sense of community in your audience, strengthening your brand reputation.
Plus, you can’t get social signals without being present on social platforms. They’re great for increasing reach and influencing user behavior, but they also provide key analytics (we’ll talk more about this later.)
Brand Mentions and Citations
If you’re looking to strengthen your brand’s reputation and improve your SERP rankings at the same time, then brand mentions and citations are the off-page optimization techniques you need.
Explaining Brand Mentions and Citations
Brand mentions are any place your brand, product, or service is mentioned on the internet. Linked or unlinked, these references are great authority signals. Google also treats these as “implied links,” which can help with rankings.
Citations are part of local SEO. These are specific mentions of your business that include information like your business’s name, address, and phone number (aka NAP).
Relationship between Brand Mentions and Backlinks
Implied links aren’t worth as much to Google’s Algorithm as the coveted incoming backlink.
When possible, you’ll want to turn brand mentions into backlinks by reaching out to the blogger or publisher mentioning you.
Brand mentions can increase your visibility and authority as well, meaning more people are likely to link back to it. Likewise, more backlinks can mean more brand mentions.
Local SEO and Citations
Citations help Google’s local search algorithm confirm that your business exists and that it is where it says it is. You will need to verify to Google (and Bing) that your business is legitimate through one of a few verification options.
Your website needs to have citations before it will appear in local results at all. More citations can lead to better local rankings.
Online Reputation Management
Your website’s reputation is extremely important to your off-page SEO strategy, but it’s not yours alone to determine.
That’s why it's essential to keep an eye on your site’s standing online and do what you can to control the narrative.
Managing Online reputation for SEO
Online reputation management (ORM) is how a brand or business maintains its public perspective. ORM can help with site authority, trustworthiness, and even visibility.
By monitoring social media, forums, review websites, and the like, you can get ahead of negative or mixed reviews and boost positive ones.
Addressing Negative Reviews and Feedback
When you come across unflattering or difficult reviews of your business or brand online, it’s best practice to respond ASAP. Do your best to address the reviewer’s concerns in a kind and understanding way while offering a meaningful solution or explanation.
Building Trust and Authority Online
Trust and authority are major aspects of your online reputation. You can build both by posting high-quality content, engaging with your users, and earning valuable backlinks. If search engines see your site as a reliable source of information, it will boost your visibility and rankings.
Building an authentic positive reputation online is a long-term strategic effort that requires constant monitoring of your digital presence.
Strategies for Effective Off-Page SEO
If you’re wondering how to improve off page SEO, you’re in luck. We’ve got some vital strategies to share with you:
Link Building Techniques
Link building, the process of earning high-quality backlinks, is the cornerstone of any off-page SEO strategy. There are a few techniques worth considering when link building:
Guest Posting and Blogger Outreach
With guest posting, you give a relevant website a piece of quality content and receive an authoritative backlink and visibility in return!
Reaching out to bloggers in similar fields is a fantastic way to connect and share knowledge with like-minded individuals.
Broken Link Building
To start, begin by identifying any broken or dead links on other websites that are relevant to your industry. Make a note of the specific web pages where you find these issues.
Next, reach out to the site owner or webmaster and explain the situation with the broken link. Suggest that they consider replacing it with a link that points to your relevant content.
You'll not only get more exposure and traffic to your site, but you'll also be helping other sites maintain their own on-page SEO.
Infographics and Visual Content for Link Building
Infographics offer a blend of information and aesthetics that make complex concepts easier to understand. They’re sharable, and with high enough quality content, your infographics may be included in other creators’ pages.
Visual content performs well on social media, driving more traffic to your site. Infographics, images, and videos should all be part of your social media strategy.
Social Media Engagement
Social media platforms are as essential to off-page SEO as they are to everyday life. Your engagement strategies will improve your visibility and relatability.
Building a Strong Social Media Presence
A strong social media presence starts with a strong target audience. Determine who you’re aiming for and what platforms they use most.
Build a consistent schedule of posting updates and sharing high-quality content while responding to comments and messages. Remember that authenticity is key.
Sharing High-Quality Content and Engaging with Users
Focus on sharing unique and relevant content that will catch your audience’s attention and drive them to engage. Use visual elements like images, videos, and infographics that captivate your audience.
User engagement is also super valuable. Not only can you boost your metrics by responding to comments and messages, but you also show your audience that you care. This can foster a sense of community in your online spaces.
Leveraging Social Media for Brand Awareness
Social media lets you communicate directly with your audience. It’s a great place to show off your brand’s personality, values, and offerings. Features like targeted advertising add additional opportunities to increase your brand’s visibility and solidify public opinion.
Influencer Marketing
Influencers are people with large social media platforms who can nudge potential buyers, and working with them has become a big part of off-site marketing.
Identifying and Collaborating with Industry Influencers
Finding the right influencers in your industry to work with is a strategic process. It’s not just about follower count.
Look for influencers in a relevant arena that match your brand values and aesthetic. They should post consistent, high-quality content of their own.
Reach out with collaborations that offer them something valuable in exchange for a promotion, product review, or brand ambassadorship.
Benefits of Influencer Partnerships for Off-Page SEO
Influencer partnerships are great sources for high-quality backlinks, so you can solidify your SERP rankings while reaching a new audience. If their followers link to your website, the results can be exponential!
Partnerships with authentic, respected influencers can help bolster your brand reputation by association. There are tons of influencers out there, so find the ones who fit your brand best.
Measuring the Impact of Influencer Marketing
You’ll have to monitor the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns in order to understand their impact on your off-page SEO. Useful metrics for doing so include backlinks generated, following growth, and traffic flow.
Content Promotion and Public Relations
Content promotion and public relations are two powerful off-page SEO techniques that can turbocharge your reach and authority.
Creating Link-Worthy Content
Authentic, valuable content is the biggest determining factor in both on-page and off-page SEO. Your content’s quality largely determines whether people will link back to it.
Whatever medium you choose — blogs, infographics, videos — make sure you’re covering the topic comprehensively and giving your audience the information they’re looking for. Strike a chord with them, be relatable, and solve their problems. That’s the best way to create link-worthy content.
Outreach to Media and Press Releases
Proactive outreach to media and the press means fostering relationships with journalists, bloggers, and influencers in your industry. This is a great way to get your high-quality content to a broader audience.
A well-written press release on a big announcement can get picked up by media sources, generating valuable backlinks. Aim to create newsworthy content! Your audience will build trust by association with reputable coverage.
Amplifying Content Reach through PR Strategies
By using a variety of PR techniques, you can boost your content’s visibility beyond your immediate audience. Guest blogging, influencer marketing, and press releases can all extend your website’s reach.
Not only are you increasing visibility, you’re building backlinks and boosting your SEO rankings as well. Not to mention building authority!
Measuring and Analyzing Off-Page SEO Success
If you’re not paying attention to metrics like backlinks, social signals, and brand mentions, you’re missing out on key analytics that can make or break your ongoing off-page SEO success.
Monitoring Backlinks
By now, you surely know how important building backlinks are to your off-page SEO checklist. They build your visibility and authority and can bump your SERP rankings.
As essential, though, is paying close attention to the links you’re earning. Not all inbound links are created equal, and some can even be harmful to your rankings. That’s why measuring and analyzing your backlink scores is a must.
Analyzing the Quality and Relevance of Backlinks
As more links start to come in, it’s time to start separating the wheat from the chaff. Using an analytics tool, look for signs of high-quality links: an authoritative domain, trust flow, proper anchor text use, and relevance to your content.
Disavowing Harmful Backlinks
Harmful or “toxic” backlinks come from spammy websites that use black-hat SEO tactics with low trustworthiness. Enough of these links can negatively impact your SERP rankings.
When you come across harmful backlinks, it’s best practice to request the site owner to remove the backlink. Failing that, ignore or disavow these links.
Social Media Metrics
Social signals may not have a direct impact on your rankings, but they’re an essential part of understanding what is and isn’t working in your off-page SEO strategy. Don’t sleep on socials!
Key Social Media Metrics for SEO
- Follower growth: The rate at which your follower count builds.
- Impressions: Total number of content displays.
- Engagement rate: Likes, shares, comments, etc.
- Reach: Total number of unique users to see your content
- Mentions: How often your brand is mentioned on socials.
- Click-through rate (CTR): The number of clicks your post receives.
- Conversion rate: How many social media users visit your website and take a desired action.
- Cost-per-click (CPC): How much you pay for each click on your social media posts.
Tools for Social Media Performance Tracking
Social media platforms and search engines often have built-in or proprietary tools for tracking your success. Google Analytics, Hubspot, META Business Suite, and more all offer great insights into how well your content is performing.
Adapting Strategies Based on Analytics
By consistently monitoring your social media metrics, you can adjust your strategies to focus on what’s working and move away from what’s not.
If one type of content is getting great engagement, consider making more like that. If your strategies are leading to a high cost-per-click with a low conversion rate, it may be time to consider adapting your content or targeting.
Brand Mentions and Citation Tracking
Brand mentions and citations are excellent ways to build reputation and trustworthiness, so it’s essential to monitor them.
Responding to Mentions and Leveraging Opportunities
As previously mentioned, implied links from brand mentions are an SEO ranking signal. They’re not as strong as a full-fledged backlink, however. That’s why it’s necessary to reach out to any mentions you’re alerted to ASAP to ask for a backlink.
Building Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) Data
Citations are central to local SEO rankings, so making sure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across all citations is super important.
Inconsistent NAP data can harm your voice search results in addition to local search rankings. Reach out to any pages that cite the wrong info for your business with a friendly correction.
Future Trends in Off-Page SEO
Time marches ever onward, and so evolves our digital landscape. As algorithms shift and change, it’s crucial to look to the future of off-page SEO and prepare.
Evolving Role of User Experience
Giving your audience a great user experience (UX) should be a top priority for you already. As search engine algorithms continue to evolve and change, it’s clear that UX is playing a bigger role in off-page SEO.
Good UX leads to engaged users, which leads to more backlinks, brand mentions, and social signals. Google’s analytics are getting better at tracking user journeys as well, so UX and backlinking will go even more hand-in-hand.
Voice Search and Mobile-Friendly Off-Page SEO
These days, folks are more likely to search on their smartphone than on a desktop computer.
Mobile-friendliness and voice search optimization are becoming more important than ever, so make sure your off-page SEO is taking those elements into account. Target long-tail keywords, focus on local SEO, and make sure your site is blazing fast to be prepared!
Integration of AI and Machine Learning in SEO Strategies
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are poised to revolutionize many digital industries, including SEO.
AI and ML can help better understand user search intent, analyze complex data, automate mundane tasks, and more. As AI and ML continue to mature, their impact on off-page SEO could be earth-shattering. Make sure your SEO is keeping pace.
Conclusion
Off-page SEO encompasses a lot—everything that’s not on your page itself—so it makes sense that we’ve covered a lot of ground in this piece. Let’s recap.
Summarizing the Importance of Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO uses techniques like link building, social media engagement, and PR to promote your website’s reach, authority, and positive brand reputation.
If you properly monitor and analyze your backlinks, social signals, brand mentions, and citations, you can learn what’s working for your off-page SEO and what isn’t.
Encouraging Continuous Learning and Adaptation in SEO Practices
As algorithms change and AI becomes more powerful, it’s essential to keep learning new off-page SEO techniques and adapt your website accordingly.
Off-page SEO is a long-term ongoing process and can take time to show the results you need to adjust your strategy. That’s why consistency, authenticity, and patience are important parts of the off-page process.
Want your website to be off-page SEO certified? Be Found Online’s off-page SEO services can help your site reach new audiences and build better backlinks. Reach out to a BFO analyst today!
