Off-Page SEO: What You Need to Know to Boost Your Site Rankings

Off-page SEO refers to everything you can do, outside your website, to improve your rankings on search engines.

And this guide will teach you how.

Contents:

• Chapter 1: Off-Page SEO Basics
• Chapter 2: Create Backlinks to Improve Off-Page SEO
• Chapter 3: Improve E.A.T.
• Chapter 4: Off-Page SEO Techniques

Chapter 1: Off-Page SEO Basics

This chapter will explain what off-page SEO is and why you must understand how to master it.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO consists of the strategies that web admins implement outside of their sites to improve search engine position.

These activities include creating links, boosting branding, engagement, and social sharing.

In a nutshell, off-page SEO means working outside your site to prove to search engines that you are trustworthy and authoritative.

Why is Off-Page SEO Important?

If you want to learn SEO, off-page strategies are an essential part.

When Google crawls and evaluates your web page, it considers many points, including links.

Other factors are:

• E-A-T
• Online reputation signals
• Social signals
• Branded searches
• And many others, including the content quality and factors such as RankBrain.

What is the Difference Between On-Page and Off-Page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to what you can do within your website (including adding optimized keywords within content, image alt text, titles, and URL) to improve search engine rankings.

Instead, for off-page SEO, think of strategies you can perform outside your website, such as getting links and improving branding and online reputation.

Chapter 2: Create Backlinks to Improve Off-Page SEO

Backlinks are probably the most crucial part of a successful off-page SEO strategy.

The reason? Google search results are based on the PageRank algorithm, which considers the quality and quantity of links pointing to a site. Although Google has removed the PageRank toolbar, it still uses it to scan web pages.

For this reason, there is a direct relationship between the amount of referring domains and the number of keyword rankings:

There are two strategies to acquire backlinks:

• Link Building (artificial backlinks)
• Link Earning (natural backlinks)

Artificial vs. Natural Backlinks

Before delving into each of these strategies, it is essential to understand the difference between artificial and natural backlinks:

• Artificial Backlinks: when you buy or exchange a backlink to your site to improve rankings.
• Natural (or Editorial) Backlinks: when a web admin spontaneously inserts a backlink to your site or page because he considers it useful for his users.

Now, let’s see a few effective ways to create links for your site:

• Email Outreach
• Community Sites
• Pillar Articles

Email Outreach

Email outreach is one of the most effective ways to create relationships and links.

With this strategy, you contact people in your industry to inform them about your content.

If you’ve created something great (be it an in-depth guide, a product, a service, or a collection of stats), you can decide to seek out influential people in your niche to communicate with them.

There are several methods to search for contacts, like forums, directories, blog comments, or even Google.

Once you have a list of people, divide them into categories. First, the most important contacts, and then to follow, the most accessible ones.

Use different approaches to get in touch with influencers in your industry. If they are big ones, be sure to find a way to get introduced first before asking for something. For the middle and micro-influencers, you can use a template to contact them and ask for feedback on your content (to get a share or a mention in the form of backlinks).

Community Sites

Forums, Q&A sites, and online communities like Reddit are all excellent places to share your knowledge and promote your content.

While most of these links are “nofollow,” you should know that a natural backlinks profile has a mixture of both “dofollow” and “nofollow” links.

Blog comments are another great way to market your website and get links. Yes, commenting on most websites will give you only a “nofollow” link, but a meaningful comment will put you in front of a broad audience (especially if you are targeting a prominent site in your industry).

Do you know that Google used not to count no-follow links in the past?

But since September 2019, they announced the introduction of new tags:

• rel = “sponsored”: applied on sponsored content.
• rel = “ugc”: UGC means user-generated content. You can find this tag on testimonials, comments, or forum posts.

Chapter 3: Improve E.A.T.

Off-page optimization provides Google with an indication of how users perceive a specific site and, above all, the brand and business behind it.

It is because websites with high-quality content and valuable information are more likely to:

• be linked from other sites;
• obtain shares on social media (Facebook likes, Tweets, Pinterest shares, etc.);
• be placed in browser bookmarks;
• receive mentions among communities of like-minded users (e.g., forums and blogs);
• get your content included in SERP features.

So, you should work on improving your Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T acronym), which represents the three fundamental parameters used by Google quality raters to evaluate web content.

Avoid duplicate content and focus on building relevant and informative articles.

High-quality content means satisfying search intent with in-depth content that makes users stay more on your site, which helps improve dwell time, bounce rate, and click-through rate.

In a few words, focus on delivering the best user experience possible (paying attention to the core web vitals of your pages and website architecture).

Here are some practical ways to improve E.A.T.

Establish Yourself As A Thought Leader In Your Niche

You’ll grow a more robust audience and create more quality connections if you first establish your experience in your brand niche.

The more experience you are given, the more value will be attached to the content you produce. Ultimately, this will result in more people sharing and linking to it.

Make sure your content is relevant and authoritative. Participate in AMAs (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit and Q&A on Twitter to solidify your reputation and gain a more loyal following.

Provide Quotes and Interviews

Do you want to make your name known? One way to do this is to encourage people to ask you for quotes and interviews.

Not only it will give you a way to establish experience, increase name recognition, and expose yourself to a new audience (or them to you), but your interviewer will most likely include a link to your site.

It also works in reverse. For example, if you were making a collection of expert tips and needed quotes from experts in your industry, you would reach out to them and offer them the opportunity to participate in exchange for a link to their site. 

Chapter 4: Off-Page SEO Techniques

Creating links is the best-known off-page SEO strategy for improving search engine rankings.

Still, many other factors can be used, such as online reputation signals, branded searches, and social signals.

Brand Mentions

Whether you are getting linked or unlinked brand mentions, it can help your SEO.

If someone mentions your business with a link, it is helpful in search engine rankings.

But how can an unconnected mention be worthwhile?

One of Google’s patents shows that even unlinked mentions are taken into account by their algorithm to calculate the positioning of pages in search results.

If you think about it, it is a logical concept. A user is writing an article and mentioning your brand but not linking to it, which means he still considers it important. The only difference is that this mention will not bring referral traffic.

So work on your authority online to get more mentions, in general.

And if you wish, you can follow this strategy to research unlinked mentions and ask to get them linked to your website.

Social Signals

Social signals are all those engagement actions (shares, likes, comments) that your content gets on social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Today, we know that social signals have a relationship with search engine rankings, but they do not directly affect them.

Social media can help your Google SEO indirectly because the more your content is shared, the wider the audience can reach, increasing the chances of being read, saved, and eventually linked.

With that in mind, social media marketing can also be a powerful marketing weapon. Here are some practical ways to increase social shares:

• Place buttons on your website to help users share your content. If you are not into coding, there are a ton of social sharing plugins available for WordPress. I use the SocialWarfare plugin. It’s light and does not impact the site’s loading speed. The well-designed buttons are completely customizable and can display share count, including tweets.
• Write irresistible headlines. You have more chances to get your content shared, with beautifully crafted headlines. Consider using lists, numbers, and cliffhangers.
• Write outstanding content. It may look like classic advice, but great content gets shared, while bad content does not. So, invest in producing the best content you can create.
• Use attractive media. Consider using attractive images, interesting infographics, and quote-picture overlays that are easy and fun to share.
• Properly format your content. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, subheadings, and bold text. All these practices help readers better digest your content.

Online Reputation Signals

Testimonials and reviews are one of the most important off-page factors for local SEO and for positioning in the results of the Google Snack Pack (also known as “Local 3 Pack”):

In general, the more positive and authentic reviews you get on the Google My Business listing and trusted third-party sites (such as Trustpilot or G2), the only more likely you are to reach the ‘snack pack’ position.

Note: On the other hand, negative reviews have the opposite effect.

Google My Business is a free service that Google offers for listing your business. It’s basically how you want your company to appear on Google search and maps.

If you want to rank for keywords with local intent, claiming and optimizing your Google My Business profile is one of the most critical off-page SEO factors.

Final Words

 

Related Reading

• Page Speed and SEO: How to Improve Your Site Loading Time
• Keyword Research: The Practical Guide You Need (2022)
• Rich Snippets: How to Make Your Content Stand Out in SERP
• Dwell Time in SEO: The Complete Guide
• Link Building Strategies: +100 Ways to Build Links