Off-Page SEO

As an experienced SEO agency, the importance of off-page SEO cannot be understated. Search engine optimization has many moving parts to it and to have a successful digital marketing campaign you need to blend off-page SEO, on-page SEO and technical SEO into your website build. They need to work in sync with one another. With this article we want to help you better understand why off-page SEO shouldn’t be neglected and how it benefits your online presence. When it is done right, off-page SEO can improve your authority and trust with search engines and with potential customers.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO or also known as on-site SEO, means improving elements outside your website that contribute to raising your rankings in search engines such as Google. Unlike on-page SEO, off-page SEO focuses on building authority, trust and a good online reputation through backlinks, content marketing, guest posting and citation building.

When this is done properly, you can make your website more trustworthy, and you will see an increase in search rankings.

In this guide, we will focus on the main parts of off-page SEO so you can grasp a basic understanding of what we do for our clients. This also serves as a guide for what you can do on your own if you choose to go that route. Off-page SEO factors that we will outline in this article will focus on getting high quality backlinks, using social media outlets, and ways to create interest in your topic so your audience will enjoy it.

While off-page SEO isn’t just about things outside your website, it is important to know that it also involves managing your brand’s reputation, so customers see your company in a positive and meaningful way.

Breaking Down Off-Page SEO Elements

Off-page SEO is an important ranking factor that needs to be carefully executed and planned. Everything that we do as an agency is always white hat marketing. It is easy to get into trouble with off-page SEO and get caught up in the black hat world. If you don’t know what that means, then I suggest you understand the difference. Essentially, white hat marketing is doing things that abide by Google Search Guidelines and the other is not abiding by those rules. 

With that being said, let’s look at the main parts of off-page SEO so we can help you understand the different outlets we use to expose your brand outside your website.

Backlinks

Backlinking is when another website creates a hyperlink with an anchor text that points to your website or article. It is also known as inbound linking or incoming linking. When an author of another website links to your site it helps build trust and authority. Getting links from highly credible sites can improve the strength of your website in search rankings. You can earn backlinks through guest posts, directory submissions, citations, social mentions and having a piece of good content referenced by another site.

Backlinking Best Practices: When you create backlinks, make sure you do your due diligence. You don’t want a backlink from a website that has a spammy backlink profile. This will ultimately not help you out and it may hurt you. Do your research on a tool called ahrefs which is a great platform to figure out if a site is worthy of talking about your company. Also, do not pay for links, this will get you in trouble with search engines and could potentially get you banned.

Guest Posting or Guest Blogging

This type of off-page SEO is to talk about a topic that you are an expert in on another person’s site. Preferably you want to guest post in an industry related to yours. Guest posting is writing an article for another website in which they will post on their blog if they find it credible. When this happens, you will generally get a link back to your website. The link you receive is a contextual link, which is one of the best links you can get.

Guest Posting Best Practices: Reach out to website owners who are within your industry for the best results. This gives credibility and trust to your website when they publish your post. Just don’t use paid guest posting services. These are typically low quality and spammed to death!

Content Marketing

This is our favorite type of off-page SEO. Content marketing is creating posts around the central topic of your industry. The goal is to establish authority and trust by writing high quality articles on topics in your industry. When you write great articles, others will notice them and link back to you. This is called natural link building and by far the safest way to go about off-page SEO.

Content Marketing Best Practices: Do your research and figure out how to create clusters of topics related to your niche. Do some keyword planning and write well thought out pieces that are unique and people will want to read. When you create something that is engaging, others will link to it, which boosts your rankings online.

Influencers and Bloggers

Another form of off-page SEO is to reach out to influencers and bloggers in your industry. The goal is to get them to talk about your company in a positive way and spread the word through blogging on their websites and social media accounts. When your website gets talked about on social media channels it has the potential to reach a vast audience really fast. 

Influencer and Blogger Best Practices: After you write a great article, reach out to local influencers, and see if they would be interested in talking about your product or service. There is a good chance that they want to support local businesses and will give you a shout out. 

Social Media Platforms

Off-page SEO isn’t always about reaching out to others with authority and hoping that they will talk about your company. Utilize your own social media and grow a following by publishing your engaging content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to name a few. The goal is to get likes, follows, and most importantly shares. When your content gets shared and talked about, then you are sending social signals to search engines that your content is trustworthy and relevant.

Social Media Best Practices: Publish all your content to all your social media accounts and start gaining a following. Make sure your posts are engaging and click worthy. This strategy takes time like all off-page SEO but can be the most rewarding.

Online Reputation Management

Maintaining and building your online reputation is really important to establishing trust in your industry. Online reputation management is a form of public relations that deals with the reputation of your brand and public perception of your company. With off-page SEO, you want to maintain a positive appearance in your industry by gaining reviews through Google, Yelp and Facebook to name a few. The goal is to have customers share their experience with your company through these channels. When you get enough positive reviews your trust within search engines also increases which will result in higher rankings.

Online Reputation Management Best Practices: If you don’t care how your customers perceive you, then you better go work for McDonalds. Your reputation is everything when you want to grow your business online. Never stop asking customers for reviews and don’t stop responding to them. If you get a negative review, then put a positive spin on it. Own your mistake and show other customers it was just a one off instance and you are improving your processes.

Citations

Citations are mentions of your business information on review sites and business directories. The information about your business is called a NAP. Nap stands for Name, Address, Phone Number. By publishing your NAP info on various off-site sources, you are providing search engines with signals about your business and building trust. Citation building is important to establishing your company’s identity online. Building citations should be an ongoing effort and also should be one of the first things you do after you publish your website.

Citation Building Best Practices: Make sure with every citation that you build, that there is consistency. You want your NAP info to be exactly the same from one directory to the next. The best way to go about this is use the same information you put on your Google Business Page.

Niche Directories

List your business information in directories that are specific to your industry. For example, marketing agencies should all have a business listing with clutch.co and upcity.com. Niche directory listings will help you tell search engines how to categorize your website. You will also receive backlinks to your site in the form of no-follow or do-follow links. This goes to help build authority and trust by building backlinks to your website. These are typically the easiest backlinks to build and should be one of the first ones you target.

Niche Directory Listing Best Practices: Start out by searching in your town for local directories. These will give you a nice boost. A good example of a local directory is your local chamber of commerce. Not only will you get some local relevance, but you can also drum up some business by becoming part of the community.

Forum Comments & Posting

Forum comments or web 2.0’s are a bit dated and were spammed to death in the early 2010’s. They are no longer as relevant as they were in the past but should not be excluded. Find forums that talk about topics in your industry and provide your expert opinion and reference articles that you have written that provide value. By becoming part of the conversation, you will establish some authority and you may find someone who will share your comment or post. Sharing is good in SEO. It builds trust!

Forum Comment Best Practices: Don’t just start spamming links in any forum you find that provides a do-follow backlink. Focus on forums that are moderated and have an active following. Redditt and Quora are two good ones to share your knowledge on. If you get upvotes then you can get showcased in search engines when people search for a question. These may be no-follow links, but the social value is priceless and may drive relevant traffic to your website.

Press Releases

Press releases are a form of content marketing that is intended to be distributed to media outlets. By doing a press release, you are telling the world about your company and/or creating an official statement about something new in your business. Press releases are good for off-page SEO to quickly spread the word about an achievement or an advance in your company. The hope is that if you write a good press release that it will get picked up by major news agencies and they will want to explore the topic with you in more depth. This helps your company get really good backlinks and exposure. 

Press Release Best Practices: Press releases are just another off-page SEO tool to get your information out there in the search engines. It has lost a lot of power over the years so don’t expect to get great backlinks from them anymore. It is worth investing into a couple of them when you first open or have something new to talk about. Use in moderation.

Google Business Page

Your Google Business Page is a powerful off-page SEO tool and one of the easiest to set up for your company. By adding business information to this platform, you are able to show up on top of organic searches in your local area that you designate. It is important to fill in everything that Google My Business asks for in the profile. This is a form of optimizing your GMB and the results will be sure to get you some off-page exposure. 

Google My Business Best Practices: Fill in all the information, add photos of your company and utilize posting important and new information on a weekly basis. Use important keywords that you are targeting, but don’t get spammy. Eventually, you will see your listing rank in the top 3 map pack and the phone should start ringing more.

Video Sharing Platforms

Create and share videos on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. Video sharing is a great way to educate your customers about you and your products. Video sharing is one of the best forms of off-page SEO because it puts you front and center and can build trust quickly with the right messaging. In today’s digital world, customers prefer to watch videos rather than read about something. Video engagement is a lot higher than written content which is why it is so important.

Video Sharing Best Practices: Start out by introducing yourself and talking about the benefits of working with your company. Upload it to YouTube and link back to your website. Then put that intro on your homepage. This will help engagement rates on your site, and it will help create authority and boost rankings. 

Wrapping Up

By now you understand how important off-page SEO is to a digital marketing campaign. Off-page SEO is definitely on the more challenging side of search engine optimization and should be left to the professionals who have been around the business awhile. By focusing on building authority, trust, and a creating a good reputation for yourself online, you can significantly improve your websites visibility. It is important to execute an off-page SEO strategy carefully and strategically as to avoid a manual suspension or penalty from Google.

At Plaid Agency, we only use white hat link building strategies as to stay in line with Googles guidelines. Rest assured you will be in good hands with our team and you will be well on your way to sipping margaritas on the beach while your employees do the work for you!