What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO is a collection of techniques and tactics to improve your SEO ranking that do not happen exclusively on your website. With Off-page SEO, the focus is your brand’s image and authority elsewhere on the world wide web. Off-page, like technical, on-page and content SEO is a cornerstone of your wider SEO strategy. Read on to find out what off-page SEO ranking factors are and how to achieve them.

Different Off-Page SEO Tactics

As the name implies, off-page SEO takes place off your web pages. Off-page SEO is primarily focused on getting links to your website in other places on the internet. This can happen in several ways, the main categories of which are other website links, social media links and links from influencers.

Website Links

By far the most commonly associated way of building an off-page campaign is through link building. This can encompass natural links, manual links and self-created links.

• Natural links are any time someone links to your site without direct prompting. If a blogger or other business writes about you on their website they may include a link to your site.
• Manual links could include when you have asked someone to put a link to your site on their website. This could be if you ask a supplier to put your company as one of their retailers. Guest blogging can also be a way to create a manual link to your site.
• Self created link building activities are any where you or your team have created the links on another website. This could include forums, commenting on other blogs or directory links.

The biggest off-page SEO factor is the number and quality of backlinks to your website. More links is easy to quantify but the quality is a different matter. 

These links should be:

Relevant

• Featured on sites where they make sense, for example:
  • Directory links for local and online businesses in your industry is a relevant link to have
  • A link to your local business in a country or town directory where you do not operative is not relevant

Trustworthiness

• Google has a trust ranking for sites. Avoid adding links to sites that:
  • Sell links to sites without qualifying them
  • Have poor content on their site.
  • Otherwise don’t appear reputable

Authoritative

• The higher the “authority” of the linking page, the more authority it passes onto the pages to which it links. 
  • Ideally you should choose higher domain authority sites to link from to gain a better page rank for your site.

Social Media Marketing

Although social media platforms are in basic terms another website, the links created on these sites work slightly differently. Social media activity associated to your brand is more about how users engage with your content than just simply sharing a link on your profile.

Although social shares are not a direct ranking factor currently, it’s important to leverage its potential. 

Social media marketing can:

• Increase the amount of traffic to your site
• Build your authority by allowing other businesses find out about you and hopefully link to you.
• Improves your brand image by displaying your USP, customer service and promoting your products.

Influencer Marketing

Combining both website links, social media links, and influencer marketing can aid your off-page strategy as well as your overall digital marketing campaigns.  Influencer marketing is a form of marketing involving endorsements and product placement from “influencers”. These are people who have a social following and sometimes, but not always, expert knowledge in a particular niche. These attributes mean their audience is more likely to trust their opinion on certain products and services. 

Influencer marketing can help social media reach as well as gaining links. These links may be on social media but they could also be a link on their website. This would be beneficial to your off-page SEO. The right placement with the right influencer can:

• Improve your brand awareness
• Increase direct sales
• Improve your ranking, but only if they have links on an external site, not just social.

Building Quality Links

Off-page SEO is about focusing on acquiring quality links to your site from trustworthy and relevant sources. Always keep these attributes in the back of your mind when it comes to implementing off-page SEO tactics.

How to build links

Here are several ways of building links to improve your SEO ranking. There are countless ways to build links through the millions of sites on the internet today. Find your niche sectors and target their authoritative sites.

Ask suppliers and customers for links

One of the simplest ways to build links is through your existing network. If you are a retailer, you can ask your suppliers to link to your site. Manufacturer sites often have links to ‘where can I buy’ sites, especially if they themselves are not retailers. This can work particularly well for big named manufacturers who will have better domain authority. 

If you have some quality customers that would be happy to add a link to their site, then ask them. Just ensure it is relevant and not just added to the footer for no reason. A good example of a small link is when a web designer adds a link to a site that says ‘Designed by this company’. Or you could get them to write a review or blog article on their site that talks about your working relationship with them. As long as it is relevant to their niche, it could be a win-win situation for both parties. 

Directory links

Another easy way to create links to your website is through online directories. A web directory or link directory is an online list of businesses or more specifically it’s a list of links to business websites. There are thousands of directories out there, but don’t get suckered in by spamming every single one with your website. You should choose directories that are relevant to your location, services or working style:

• If you only work in one particular area you should find local directories to add your details to
• Are your services quite niche? You can find directories that are specific to your industry
• If you are a freelancer, there are directories that are specifically designed for these types of jobs.

Whatever directories you choose to put your details on, ensure that as much accurate information is added as possible and you update it anytime something changes. It can be handy to keep a running list of all the links you’ve created as well as log details if necessary.

Commenting on blogs

Another self created link type is to leave a link to your website in the comment section of blogs. As per the above instructions, these need to be relevant and not placed for the sake of creating a link. For example, if you have an online baking store, you might want to comment your website on blogs that have a food-focused angle. 

Leaving comments in forums

Similar to the blog comments area, making links on forums is another way to create links to your site. Forums are frequently used by people to find recommendations for businesses, find where goods and services are sold or to ask questions that relate to particular problems. Although forum link building can be time consuming it can help you create a good set of quality links. Plus you may help someone out in the process of answering their question. 

Digital press releases  

The majority of news outlets now use their website as the main way to update their readers. Utilising digital press releases not only will increase brand awareness, it will guarantee you a quality backlink to your site. Ideally you would gain a press release from a prestigious national newspaper but local newspapers as well as industry specific magazines are a great way to gain that all important link. 

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to gain a quality backlink to your site. You need to find a quality site with its own high authority for this to be a successful strategy. Choose a website that is in your niche, and write content that is going to add value to their readers. You may get visits from the blog you’ve produced but more importantly it will improve your page ranking. Ensure that any links you add to the blog post go through to relevant pages on your own site. 

How to create a quality link profile?

Now before you go off and spam the hell out of the internet with links to your site, you need to remember the rule of SEO above all else. Create content which includes links for humans, not search engines. You cannot game the system, Google is smarter than you think. With this in mind, here is how to create a quality link profile.

Understanding Do Follow vs No Follow links

The first thing to understand when it comes to link building is there are two types of link for search engines; Do Follow and No Follow links. Search engines only count Do Follow links to your website when it comes to adding to your page ranking. You can think of these links as a vote for your site. No Follow links on the other hand are not counted towards your SEO ranking but they are still important when it comes to referral traffic and brand awareness.

No Follow Links

The majority of links on the internet were Do Follow until 2005 when Nofollow was introduced to the web. Links that are Nofollow have an attributive tag to show this. It looks like this; rel=”nofollow”. Sometimes this can be seen in the hyperlink but certain websites can hide this so even users are unaware that this tag has been attributed to the link. This was introduced to stop black hat SEOs from creating thousands of links to their sites that had no real value to audiences. This has cleared up a lot of the spam sites out there that are used as farm links but it also means that you need to work hard to create a superior backlink profile.

Some sites will automatically add the NoFollow tag to any links produced on their site, this includes:

• Blog comments
• Social media
• Forums
• Some Press release sites
• Sponsored content
• Any other sites that SEs deem low quality 

As such, if you are creating links on these types of sites, don’t expect your ranking to improve particularly. However, that’s not to say that links from these sites have no value at all. To begin with, some webmasters will allow Do Follow links on some sites like these. If you are adding to blogs and forums with valuable content and a link to that content, then this can have other beneficial effects over SEO. Posting on blogs, forums and other user generated sites can improve your brand’s reach and increase referral traffic from qualified leads. 

Applying best practices

Now we understand how the different types of link work, it’s time to apply the best practices for creating those links.

Attribute Links Correctly

Google has clear guidance on attributing links to get the most out of your link building strategy and any good practices taken now could be rewarded in the future. There are attributes for Sponsored Content and user-generated content as well as No Follow. By using these tags correctly you can help search engines understand your brand better and help flesh out the internet landscape appropriately.  Ultimately you want a balanced profile of Do Follow and No Follow backlinks. Do Follow links may be more beneficial for your SEO strategy, but both types of links should be part of your online marketing strategy.

Create Relevant, Helpful Links

As stated before, make sure your content/links are relevant to the audience you are posting on. For Example; If you sell carpets and someone on a forum is asking how to clean their carpet, you can direct them to your blog post on how to clean carpets. It’s relevant to their query and isn’t merely to send them to your website to buy products.

Use Relevant Anchor text

If your link is appearing on another person’s website, whether you’ve created it or they have, it’s better to use anchor text that is relevant. Anchor Text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink i.e. the text in bold is the anchor text:

<a href=”https://middleton-marketing.co.uk“> Middleton Marketing Website </a>

By adding in anchor text that is relevant, you provide context to your audience about where they will go when they click the link.

Create Links with High Authority Domains

Ideally, you should be cultivating Do Follow links from high authority domains. This will result in a better page ranking, quality referral traffic and improve your brand awareness all in one swoop. Examples of a quality backlink could include press releases on quality newspaper and magazine sites or guest blogging on another site. 

Encourage Naturally Earned Links

Being able to get natural links to your site may create results for your off-page SEO but your focus should really be on your content strategy to create these kinds of links. Offering quality, valuable content on your website that is engaging and shareable will result in a higher amount of backlinks to your site. If you focus on producing amazing content, then you will naturally achieve this element in your Off-Page SEO strategy. 

Link building tactics to avoid

Here are the link building tactics you need to avoid if you want to build a successful backlink profile. Although all of these are concerned with how they will affect your page ranking, it’s also important to remember that invaluable links will also increase the irrelevant traffic you get to your site through referrals. To improve your sales, you need relevant traffic, not just a large volume of traffic.

Purchasing links

Don’t purchase links, they will not add any real value to your audience and Google knows you’ve done it (like a keyword Father Christmas keeping his Naughty List up to date). If you pay money or provide a ‘free’ product for a review, then this post will be identified as such.  If you are paying for this link as part of influencer marketing, then you can use the sponsored attribute in the hyperlink to show search engines you are being genuine about what links have been paid for. 

Link sharing

If you have several sites or are friendly with other website owners, don’t be tempted to just swap links for the sake of it. This is called cross-linking when it’s just for a quip per quo link swap and done excessively. If you are adding a link to your site, then you need to consider whether sending your potential customers to someone else’s business is worth it. 

Poor quality links

This will usually fall into the realms of black hat SEO and general users will not add links to poor quality sites frequently by accident. If you feel like the site is poor quality, you wouldn’t want to be represented by their brand, or they appear dodgy in some other way, don’t risk it. The same goes for cold calls or emails from ‘SEO’ experts who can get you thousands of links for only a few hundred pounds. Even if they are able to perform this, you will not benefit from either a brand or SEO perspective. You’re more likely to be penalised by search engines so it is best avoided.

Why is Off-Page SEO important?

As with other SEO strategies, off-page SEO is a core practice in your overall SEO campaign.

It’s a ranking factor

While technical and on-page SEO is more concerned with the content and crawlability of your site, off-page SEO is focused on your brand image elsewhere on the internet. Off-page ranking factors from search engines consist of understanding whether your brand is relevant, trustworthy and an authority in your niche. Search engines determine this by the other SEO techniques but in terms of off-page SEO, this consists of building a collection of links from other sites that are relevant to your niche, are considered trustworthy in themselves and have the authority Google’s looking for to say your site is great. 

It will improve your brand reach

By implementing a comprehensive backlink campaign you will also improve your brand awareness. Guest blogging, commenting on forums and blogs, social media and influencer marketing will put your brand out there. The more a user sees your brand the more likely they are to become a customer.

It will gain qualified traffic to your site

By wisely selecting the links you create, you will find that more qualified leads find your site. There is no use leading users to your site if they are not the right audience or they are not in the right part of the buying process you need them to be in. As much as it’s nice to gain lots of traffic, they need to be the right people at the right time. Off-page SEO can create that environment. 

You’ll get customers.

The reason we do marketing; to get you customers. Off-page SEO will improve your ranking with search engines which will lead to higher traffic of relevant consumers. Furthermore, Off-page SEO will gain you a bigger audience that will convert to customers as they learn to trust and love your brand over time. 

Start your Off-page SEO Strategy

If you would like any help in creating an off-page SEO strategy or would like an SEO Audit to see where you can make gains, please get in touch. Let’s see how we can grow your business together.