SEO has changed drastically over the years, and to stay competitive you need to keep up with the latest trends. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the best off page SEO strategies that are working now from experts in the industry.
The main goal of a successful Off Page SEO strategy consists of building a strong link profile so that your website can rank easier on the search engines.
Therefore, my number 1 off page SEO tip is to make sure that the number of unique and quality domains linked to your site is always increasing. Besides getting new referring domains, you should monitor the existing backlinks over time.
Often overlooked, content also plays a very important role in off page SEO. The webpage linked to your site needs to present unique, interesting, and relevant content. In addition, the backlink’s anchor text should be chosen after careful keyword research and be inserted naturally in the text. it is recommendable to avoid over-optimized anchor texts.
1. Avoid stock photography if you want to rank in Google Images. Image results contain unique images, not the same image over and over.
2. While the raw number of links to a website can give you an indication of how popular it is, it is always worth looking at the ratio of links vs links from unique domains. This will quickly tell you if the backlink profile is made up of many unique mentions or just lots of sitewide type links.
3. Google won’t index things after ‘#’ in a URL, with the exception of hashbangs (#!) Although it was deprecated years ago as part of their AJAX crawling, you can still see these URLs being indexed today which can cause duplicate content issues, don’t get caught out thinking they will be ignored! Link to docs in comments.
My experience with off page SEO will definitely lead me to stress upon Link Building as one of the major game changers where ranking is concerned. Especially with how much weight it carries in the Google algorithm.
Link building is basically where you generate backlinks for your blog or webpage by getting other pages to link to it and that goes a long way to show Google that your content is credible.
One easy way to collect backlinks is to search for similar content pages and use SEO tools to find their backlinks and reach-out to those yourself. You can find such pages either organically or using keywords, whatever suits you. The more referring domains you have, the better your overall page ranking is going to be.
So, my #1 off page SEO tip will be to Link! Link! Link!
If you’re an expert in a certain area, let other people know, and build your profile based on your experience and skills. Reach out to different media publishers and create an organic relationship with them. This will set up the foundations of any future collaboration or promotion, which will eventually generate passive backlinks from reputable sources. The best media exposure requires time and patience, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
This works especially well if you are a niche brand. It takes some effort, but if you make connections with well-known influencers in your niche, you can request they provide insight, feedback, and other engagement with your brand online. It’s one of the quickest ways to grow on social.
A close second is participating in community forums where your brand’s authority can be shared. Google loves this because unlike the tactic of people shoving backlinks to their products/services into comments, this is true engagement. You will have to spend time answering questions and providing value with your responses, but it will drive traffic to your brand. This works especially well on LinkedIn.
Shari Berg, President/Founder The Write Reflection
While links to your website from social media posts may not directly help with SEO, the traction and interest that you get from the audience you attract definitely will.
What counts with Google and other search engines is a web page’s authority and reputation. How do you get that? By creating interest in your website and driving traffic to it. The more people land on your site, look around it and engage with it, the better for your SEO.
That’s why you should judiciously use social media in tandem with your website content to build your audience and site traffic. The more social media followers you get, the more traffic you can drive to your site, the more authority it will gain, and the more page ranking love you’ll get in return.
Your goal here is to be a credible source, and you gain that credibility by gaining quality followers. Note the emphasis on the word “quality”. Don’t fall for anyone who offers to bulk-buy social media followers for you. It’s a scam. Google sees everything and can recognise a rent-a-crowd when it sees one. This will harm your authority with Google and then your page ranking. It will take time and effort but building your audience one follower at a time is the only way to go.
One final word: for social media to help your SEO you need to optimise your social media postings. This will make them searchable. If a local audience is important to you then you should also include location-specific information to show up in local search results.
Often when stores are selling products they might not stop to think about the importance of image quality, and might be happy to use default images provided by a supplier.
I’ve found that if a company is able to invest in their own bespoke, fully original photography which helps to reflect their brand as well as the quality of their products, not only can it help to increase conversion rates but it can even help with SEO efforts. Other websites might be more likely to feature a product or to give a mention and link if they have something interesting to use – and so having those images can be a great asset.
Investing in product photography can really pay off in the long term, even if there is an initial extra cost involved. Those images last a long time – and potentially can be seen by an almost endless amount of people. Ignoring the conversion rate element here, I know I’d rather feature or link to a product if I have some cool, original footage that you won’t find elsewhere on the web.
Having unique imagery in this way also gives you a better shot at ranking well in image searches within the likes of Google, another often overlooked (and therefore less competitive) element of SEO.
Not only should it be a major part of any SEO strategy you put into place, it’s highly effective!
By backlinks, I mean any external source linking back to your website. That could be on a social media platform, another website, a blog, news article – anything that’s hosted externally to your website. Whenever external content links to your site, Google sees it and increases the authority and reliability of any information on your website.
And the more backlinks you have – particularly those from websites that also rank well – the higher your authority will be within the Google Search arena.
Whenever I write a blog for clients, I deploy on-page interlinking strategies. This encompasses both internal and external high-quality links worked into the blog post. However, on-page interlinking only goes so far.
Especially if you’re just starting out or are a small business, overtaking your competitors who already have strong domain authority is challenging. They’ve been building credibility with Google for far longer. If your business can find a way to obtain those high-quality backlinks, your site will rank higher faster (now is the time to emphasize quality > quantity). Isn’t that the goal of SEO?
You can find backlink opportunities everywhere, but focus on the high quality ones on sites with strong domain authority (ex: NY Times, Hubspot, Investopedia). Importantly, backlinks should come from sites and content that is very closely related to your business. That way, you’re attracting the right audience.
Laying a solid interlinking foundation allows you to begin focusing on other off page SEO strategies, as well, including guest posting, social media, and PR, all of which tie back into link building.
When you are trying to improve your domain authority, it can be tempting to immediately create new articles and pitch engaging guest post content to generate buzz and guide traffic back to your website, BUT consider using content that you already have first. Consider uploading some of your media content of your products to stock photo websites. Why? Stock content is used in a range of different ways from marketing proposals to blog posts. Uploading some of your graphics to stock image platforms is a great way to boost your website and product visibility with little effort. As well as your products being featured in long-form articles and videos, this is practise also improves your off-page SEO efforts as your products may be featured and referenced in engaging blog posts. Spend time conducting keyword and competitor research to guide you as you create titles and tags for the images/videos you upload. Think about who may search for these images and where you would like to see them.
When done correctly, posting on forums can help you to gain relevant backlinks. Such links improve authority and help in driving the right kind of traffic to the website, which I’ve done for some of my clients with visible results after a few months of executing.
A forum is an online discussion board that allows users to have meaningful conversations in the form of a posted message. When carried out correctly, forum posting can bring multiple benefits for your business:
• Exposure to new customers and clients
• Tone of voice of your ideal customers
• Better understanding of your customers challenges
• Opportunities to answer any questions customers or potential customers might have
• Ideas for blog content to write about on your own website
Forum posting involves a long-term strategy in order to build a trustworthy reputation amongst other members of the forum. Finding forums with a ready-made community, is like a goldmine, because if you can contribute and add value to the topics with expert knowledge, facts and advice, to the user’s questions, then you may also find opportunities to add a link back to your website as part of that discussion.
Identify forums threads on topics relevant to your business that you can add value to, such as expert knowledge on a specific topic to help answer a user’s question. Where appropriate, there may also be the opportunity to add a link back to your website as part of a forum discussion.
Always check domain history before spending your money, content and time on the website.
By domain history, i mean to say that you must check the website history using some archive tools.
Eg. Some websites are currently is of finance niche and for english users but when you check the history of the website you may find that the website is of health niche 6 months before and for chinese users.
Dexter Hudson, Digital Marketing Expert
In this article, we’ve shared some of the best Off Page SEO practices orchestrated by experts in search engine optimization and digital marketing. We hope that you found it helpful to learn about these insights on how to optimize your website for better visibility online.
Remember that building links is one of the most important elements if you want a strong web presence, so don’t forget to start brainstorming strategies with your team now!
Do any of these tips resonate more than others? What do you think will be the most challenging aspect for you as an organization or business owner when trying them out? Let us know in the comments below!
Yaron Been is an Ecommerce Entrepreneur, host of the EcomXFactor podcast and a Conversion Rate Optimization Expert.
