A Complete Guide From Semalt To Off-Page SEO
You can no longer ignore off-page SEO. It is a fundamental part to improve your online findability.
To get your site to rank higher on Google and to grow your brand awareness, you have to look beyond your own website.
In this guide, we'll explain what exactly off-page SEO is and why it's so important. In addition, we'll explain which tactics you can apply to improve the findability of your website.
What is off-page SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It includes all optimization techniques for search engines, i.e. to become more findable online.
Off-page SEO is part of the optimizations that you can do without making any changes to your own website or content.
Collecting backlinks is one of the best-known off-page SEO tactics.
However, there are many more things you can work on, such as:
- Social Media
- Guest blogs
- Names of your brand
- Influencer marketing
- Brand awareness and more
Why is off-page SEO important?
With the help of off-page SEO, you ensure that your site can be found on multiple platforms. Think of findability via Social Media, other websites, forums and even in newspapers or news sites.
Both search engines and users will start to trust your site more and more. You gain more authority, which makes it easier for potential customers to find your company.
The authority of your website is an important ranking factor. A site with a higher authority will rank higher on Google more easily than a site with a lower authority. A good off-page SEO strategy, therefore, contributes to a better ranking in search engines. In fact, without applying off-page SEO tactics, ranking in search engines is very difficult.
The difference between on-page SEO, technical SEO and off-page SEO
SEO covers all the tactics for optimizing your website and your content to be found in search engines like Google.
You can divide SEO into three parts, namely on-page SEO, technical SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO. All adjustments you make to your website to be found better by search engines fall under on-page SEO. Think of writing good content and optimizing title tags, meta tags, subheadings, internal links, images and more.
Technical SEO. These are all technical things that make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website. This includes site speed, structured data, canonicalization and more.
Off-page SEO. The SEO tactics that take place outside of your own website fall under off-page SEO. Think of link building, content marketing, social media, appointments or participation in podcasts, guest blogging, influencer marketing and more.
All SEO components contribute to better online findability. To take full advantage of off-page SEO, the other SEO parts of your website must first be in order.
Link building
Link building is one of the most important off-page SEO techniques. Backlinks are a big part of the Google algorithm.
However, you need to understand how the algorithm works and what a link must comply with. Simply collecting as many links as possible from untrustworthy and irrelevant sites is not going to help you.
Backlinks can make a big contribution to your rankings if they are relevant and come from authoritative sites. This shows that a reliable site trusts you and that in turn inspires trust for your website.
The more relevant and quality backlinks you collect, the more confidence your website will radiate. This gives your site more authority and it will rank more easily.
As you accumulate more and more good backlinks and thus build up more authority, you can try to rank for more competitive search terms. If successful, you can attract many more visitors to your website.
How do you get backlinks?
Generating relevant and high-quality backlinks takes a lot of time and energy. You have to work hard for it, but it also pays off.
In the beginning, you will mainly have to collect backlinks through outreach. This means that you will approach websites yourself with the question of whether they want to link to your content.
For example, you can use SEO tools like the Dedicated SEO Dashboard to see which sites are ranking for your competitors. This all-in-one tool is a very advanced software capable of performing 90% of the SEO tasks in a fast way with very good results.
Make sure you write quality texts that are worth linking to. This will make it easier to get a positive response from sites to link to your content.
By approaching sites that are already giving away backlinks, you at least know that they are willing. Now it's a matter of composing a personal email with a good reason why they should also link to your content.
In addition to outreach, there are some other link-building tactics, namely:
- Mentions on Social Media with a link to your article.
- Ask to replace broken links on a site with a link to your site.
- Creating high-quality content that is naturally linked to.
- Create infographics that visually explain a complex part.
- Approach an online newspaper to publish your story.
- Become a guest in a podcast or interview.
- Answer questions on forums with possibly a link to your website for more information.
However, always keep in mind that a relevant, quality and unique link contributes more to the authority of your website.
A quality backlink shall be relevant, coming from a high-authority website and unique.
Relevance
A backlink that is relevant to the topic you are writing about is worth more. A travel agency will therefore mainly want to receive backlinks from travel blogs, online publishers (Lonely Planet) and sites with tourist information.
A link from a recipe website to a site about motorcycles is not very relevant and not very valuable.
The more relevant backlinks you have, the more confidence you radiate. Relevant backlinks, therefore, contribute to the authority of your website.
That said, it doesn't hurt to have some less relevant backlinks. However, try to avoid making the majority of your backlinks irrelevant.
Authority
The authority of a website where the backlink comes from also plays an important role. The higher the authority, the more valuable the backlink is.
Uniqueness
Multiple backlinks have more value when they all come from different sources.
So a website with 100 backlinks coming from only 5 different domains will still not exude much authority.
A website with 15 quality backlinks all coming from different domains will have more authority.
Social media
We can no longer ignore social media. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are all used to create Recognition. Being active on Social Media is therefore a good off-page SEO tactic.
The more active Social Media profiles you have, the larger the audience you will reach. In addition, active Social Media profiles also send a positive signal to Google.
However, being present on Social Media does not necessarily directly contribute to a higher ranking in search engines. It, therefore, ensures that you are visible to a larger audience.
You can also link to your articles from Social Media. Then try to get positive reactions to this. You radiate confidence and authority again.
Finally, you can use Social Media as a contact channel. Make it possible to personally answer potential customers' questions via Facebook chat or Twitter.
It lowers the threshold for the public to contact your company. For you, this is the ideal opportunity to easily get in touch with potential new customers.
Guest blogs
Guest blogs are articles you write for another website. You can use this much broader than just generating backlinks.
An article written by you or your company radiates a lot of authority. It shows that another site has invited you to provide in-depth information on a topic.
This shows that you are an expert in your field and that people can come to you for answers.
Especially when you write as a guest for a very relevant website.
The traffic from a related site simply leads to your own website via a guest blog. This allows you to appeal to a whole new and larger audience.
Guest blogging is therefore a very strong off-site SEO tactic on several levels. You can build your brand, radiate expertise and also work on the authority of your website.
Brand mentions
Brand mentions are mentions of your brand on other websites or platforms. Even if it doesn't have a link to your website, Google will notice and contribute to your website's authority.
Of course, also for brand mentions, the relevance of the site on which you are named is important. A site is best related to the same topic for which you provide information or services.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a very different tactic than the ones we've discussed so far. With the previously discussed tactics, you contact other websites yourself. With influencer marketing, you take a different tack.
You don't go to work yourself to ask websites for links or to write guest blogs. Instead, you have your services or products promoted by someone else, namely influencers.
Influencers have a large reach and often a strong bond with their followers on Social Media. By paying them or letting them use your services or products for free, they can promote your brand or website to their audience.
They will let their audience know how they feel about your product. When they give a positive impression to their followers, it can give a huge boost to your website traffic and your sales.
Influencer marketing is therefore another technique that you can use to appeal to a new audience. You create brand awareness.
As long as it's not too flashy that you pay content marketers to promote your products or services, this is a strong tactic to generate more trust.
Other off-page SEO techniques
In addition to the above techniques, which we have explained in detail, there are six more to name:
- Brand building. Search terms with a brand name in them radiate authority. Building your brand will make people search for your branded items.
- Local SEO. Local SEO is now a very own part of SEO. Still, there are some off-page tactics involved, such as setting up Google My Business.
- Forums. Links from forums don't affect your authority much anymore. However, through a forum, you are in direct contact with the public who asks questions to which you have answers. So you can easily present yourself as an expert.
- Events. Online events, such as webinars, can be of great help. You can engage audiences in what you do and count on social engagement and even backlinks.
- Podcasts. See if you can be a guest on a popular podcast. Like influencers, podcasts often have a loyal audience. When you are seen as an expert by the podcast publisher, the listeners will follow. You can easily appeal to a new audience.
- Reviews. Reviews can help Google better understand your site. Google uses them to infer brand signals, which can increase your site's domain authority. Ultimately, this can improve your position in the search results.
Black-hat SEO
Improperly done off-page SEO backfires and is called black-hat SEO. When you do off-page SEO well, it's called white-hat SEO.
If you're getting started with off-page SEO, it's important to know what black-hat SEO is. You can be penalized by Google for it, which leads to lower rankings, or even the exclusion of your page from the search results.
It is mainly off-page SEO that can be done incorrectly. There is little control that can be exercised from external websites.
Link building is a good example to further explain this. In the case of white-hat SEO, you collect selective links from relevant and authoritative websites. This provides authority and leads to higher rankings.
However, you can also go for convenience and enable a link farm. You pay for the service and they will get you hundreds or thousands of backlinks in no time.
The backlinks that such a link farm gives are usually irrelevant and from low-authority websites. In addition, they are not unique, because they come from only a few IP addresses. This is black-hat SEO.
A large number of these links causes Google to become suspicious and therefore penalize you. Instead of ranking higher, you will rank lower with these kinds of techniques.
Getting started with off-page SEO
In this guide, we've shown you many off-page SEO tactics. Building backlinks remains one of the most important SEO techniques for boosting your rankings.
Therefore, start collecting backlinks. Start with backlinks to blogs, articles or pages for which you would prefer to be found via Google.
By starting here you can search for relevant websites in a targeted manner. Obtaining links to these articles provides immediate benefits.
After setting up a backlink strategy, you can get started with the other off-page SEO tactics. Use an SEO campaign to create an overview and plan activities.
If you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.