Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-Page SEO is everything that increases search engine result rankings that is not directly done on your website. This involves social media, business directories, guest blogging and more. This even technically includes other marketing efforts such as direct mail campaigns, billboard advertisements, although those are our recommended off-page SEO strategies. Most effective off-page SEO campaigns are designed with the intention of increasing backlinks.

What Are Some Examples of Off-Page SEO?

Social Media Marketing

Now that you have amazing content you need to share it with the world. Social media is one of the best ways to do that. Social media not only helps you engage with your customers but it helps you build backlinks by getting your content in front of the people that are most likely to benefit from it. In the modern era, social media is a crucial part of a full-scale search engine optimization strategy.

Guest Blogging

Writing a blog post for someone else is a great way to improve your brand awareness. The perfect scenario is finding another company that has some overlap but doesn’t directly compete with your main offerings. Writing guest blogs is a fantastic way to establish yourself as an authority on your subject. Accepting guest blogs gives your website a fresh perspective. Guest blogging is a win-win situation and more people need to be taking advantage of this strategy.

Press Releases and Public Relations

Are you doing something newsworthy? Don’t pass up this opportunity to improve your presence in search engine results. Include the proper keywords and add strategic links. If a news outlet picks up the story there’s a chance that they will use your link in their article. As always ask yourself if your press release will provide value to the reader and always write for people, not computers.

Create High-Quality Content

Technically this counts as on-page SEO since this is an action that you are taking on your own website. Although, if you have a cohesive SEO strategy then all aspects of your search engine optimization efforts should benefit from each other. The best way to gain links is to create amazing content that people want to share. Your goal should be to earn links not to manufacture them.

Industry Relevant Business Directories

If you haven’t listed your business in an online directory you are missing out on crucial exposure and are limiting your business’s discoverability. Almost every business should be listed in Google My Business as well as Yahoo and Bing’s business directories. These directories show up directly in search result pages and increase the likelihood users will visit your website. With this being said, don’t go list your business in every directory that you can find. Choose industry-relevant directories in your niche. Choose high-quality directories that you’re proud to be listed in. Other quality directories to consider include, Facebook, LinkedIn, Whitepages, Yellowpages and many more. Don’t pass up this opportunity to increase the online visibility of your business.

Video Sharing

Videos are an amazing marketing tool. They are proven to increase engagement and conversions. There are so many ways to promote your products and services with video. You can create a video demoing your product. You can create how-to videos so that your customers use your products to their fullest potential. There’s always the classic commercial featuring your brand or product. Videos are a great tool for social media and email campaigns. As with any good off-page strategy, video creation is a powerful tool itself and the added benefit is improving your backlink profile.

Important Things to Know about Off-Page SEO

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links from one website to another website. These backlinks are votes of confidence that your website is trustworthy, high-quality and relevant. Search engines use off-page signals as endorsements for your website. An endorsement or backlink from a high authority source is worth more than several backlinks from unknown websites. That is why it is important to earn backlinks from quality sites rather than many questionable sites that are not relevant to your business.

What is the Best Way to Improve Off-Page SEO?

The common theme you’ll see in all categories of search engine optimization is that you should create high-quality content and serve your customers as best as you can. This tenant is as true for off-page optimization as it is for on-page optimization. Backlinks should be earned and not created. The best and easiest form of off-page SEO is generating great content that people want to link to. Make great content and people will want to share it. If it’s truly valuable to your customers then people won’t hesitate to link to it.

What is the Worst Thing I Can Do for Off-Page SEO?

The easy answer is if you have to ask yourself if an off-page SEO campaign is spammy or questionable then it’s probably doing more harm than good. Anything you do to game the system or deceive the search engine algorithm will eventually come back to hurt you. One of the absolute worst things you can do is to buy links. This is a classic example of black-hat SEO. Black hat search engine optimization is the practice of violating search engine guidelines in order to manipulate search results and increase rankings. Another example of black hat off-page SEO is redirecting users to content they weren’t intending to click on or similar uses of redirects. Don’t try to cut corners, put your customer’s best interest first and you won’t go wrong.

When Should I Engage in Manual Link Building Activities?

If and when you decide to manually build links make sure that you are doing it for the right reason. Don’t build links for the sake of getting backlinks. Engage in off-page activities that are beneficial for your business even if you never get a single backlink. For example, social media has many benefits such as improving your customer service, gaining more control over branding, and appealing to a wider range of demographics. The cherry on top is that you get a better search engine presence and have a place to share your amazing content. You shouldn’t list your business in every directory you can find. What you should do is list your business in niche industry-specific directories. Be very careful with manual link building because search engines might penalize you if your links are created with the intention of manipulating algorithms.