To boost website rankings on SERPs, SEO experts spend a good amount of time and effort on influencing factors outside their site. In this article, On Digitals will show you what is considered an effective off page SEO plan with the most impactful techniques.
Off page SEO refers to every optimization action and plan to create influence on factors outside the website, including quality link (backlink) building, social media marketing, social bookmarking, etc.
The main purpose of off page SEO is to push the website to the top of the Google SERPs, thereby increasing the site traffic.
When doing on page SEO, you have full control over every action because they are taken on your site. On the contrary, off page SEO is more passive, as the number of backlinks, social media engagement rate and review counts, and many others are beyond your control.
To rank a website, Google will evaluate these on page factors:
On the other hand, off page only has 2 factors to take care of:
○ Posting on blogs with content related to the website;
○ Participating in the evaluation of websites with similar content;
○ Connecting your site with Facebook or other social media accounts.
To gain a high ranking on SERPs, website owners need to invest in an effective off page SEO strategy with a list of planned activities. Some even think off page accounts for more than half of the weight of ranking factors.
Also, the right off page SEO technique will increase brand mentions on social networks, and users can share them with others in their communities. So what are the specific benefits that off page SEO brings to business owners?
Here are three biggest perks that off page optimization can promise you:
The quality and quantity of backlinks are important to Google. Through processing the data collected by the Pagerank algorithm, Google will decide the ranking of a website.
Therefore, link building is an integral part of off page SEO. As long as your goal is on the top rankings on SERPs, don’t even think of breaking this sacred relationship.
One of the reasons that backlinks become an indispensable part of off page optimization is its ability to endorse the quality of a website.
Building engaging content does not only increase the chance to earn backlinks but also boosts the link quality. After all, when it comes to link building, quality must be prioritized over quantity.
This type of backlinks is easy to build on social networking sites. Creating an account or profile for your website on social media is a great way to increase interaction with potential customers.
On the other hand, social bookmarking sites provide an online service that allow users to add, annotate, edit and share bookmarks of pages in a website.
Recently, social bookmarking is not as prevalent as before, but many companies still benefit from its ability of circulating new content in certain circles. To do social bookmarking, follow these 2 simple steps:
IFTTT stands for IF This Then That - an intermediary web service that performs a certain task when a condition occurs. The operating principle of this tool is to automate off page optimization.
In other words, when a change is detected on side A, IFTTT will make sure a planned action is implemented on side B.
After setting up a fixed formula on IFTTT, you can get dozens of quality backlinks without spending too much effort. To make good become great, IFTTT is completely free to use.
Blog commenting is another way to create backlinks. For example, below a blog post, you can leave a comment introducing one of your articles. Remember to provide some basic information such as your name, some lines to introduce (comment content) and email address. Some blogs also require you to register for an account or link to your social account such as Facebook.
On the other hand, online forums are a great place for users to exchange valuable information. Choosing the right blogs and forums to post your comments is a proven off page SEO technique.
PBN is a website system built for creating quality backlinks, but it takes more time to develop than other techniques.
Also, to build a successful private blog network, you need expertise and a considerable amount of investment, but it’s truly worth its weight in gold.
This is also an effective off page SEO technique. Based on high authority websites, you get the foundation to create quality content and develop a sustainable backlink system.
Here are some popular web 2.0 sites for off page SEO practitioners:
Some say it costs an arm and a leg to link with newspaper sites, but the fact that this practice is still on the market must mean something. Through this partnership, your site will get a surge in exposure, traffic and the trust of users. This impact is doubled when you build backlinks through reputable long-standing news sites.
With these benefits, this is one of the most effective off page SEO strategies for link building, and it mostly caters to the needs of organizations.
Guest posting means you post your content on another website or allow them to post on your site. This is considered a win-win relationship.
Regarding whether the post is free of charge, it depends on the negotiation of two website owners. Guest posts will often have a link directing to the main page and include the author biography.
Here are some benefits you can enjoy from guest posting:
Content syndication is the activity of distributing content across different platforms. This action maximizes your reach to the audience, but it must be completed by a 3rd party website.
Content that is re-posted by another website will include the entire original content or a short excerpt. Of course, the name of the author and URL of the original article are also included. The more websites perform content syndication, the more backlinks you get.
In every off page SEO plan, the most important thing in the checklist is link building. Backlinks play a crucial role in site rankings, thereby increasing the traffic, reach and conversion rate.
Therefore, to guarantee backlink quality, choose to place links at sites with high authority, reputation and stable traffic. For example, websites that end with .edu or .gov are prioritized by Google.
Besides, Google is known for “respecting the elderly”, so the older the domain the better. Avoid websites that change their content so often, use a lot of flash or publish controversial and illegal content.
Google never stops crawling, indexing and evaluating the quality of top-ranked websites, so you cannot have a long rest on your laurels. If your website does not regularly update meaningful information and provide value to users, competitors will claim your throne before you know it.
To avoid losing the championship, pay extra attention to Google algorithm changes. At the same time, focus on creating SEO copywriting content around what users are looking for. This tactic never loses its charm.
Anchor text plays an important role in off page optimization, especially in link building. After deciding on the keywords, create detailed and unique anchor texts for each backlink. Note that it’s better that the anchor text matches user intent and preferences.
Beware: If you only have several anchor texts for multiple backlinks, for example certain keywords, it increases the risk of being marked as spam and penalized by Google.
Building backlinks through a framework requires a substantial investment of time and effort. Of course, the results justify the costs.
There are two most popular frameworks for link building: Domain Authority Stacking and Link Pyramid. The latter is employed more often in off page SEO.
When using the Link Pyramid, your backlinks will go through multiple layers before pointing back to the main website. That’s why it is also known as the “backlink to backlink” framework.
Let’s take a look at the simulation of a 4-stage Link Pyramid framework:
Website content is no longer limited by text. Now users enjoy viewing images, watching videos and many other forms of content. Turning one piece of content into multiple forms is both economical and SEO-efficient.
Therefore, in the process of building backlinks, try to take advantage of the “multiverse” of content for the highest results:
On page and off page SEO, albeit different in practices, are both employed to reach the same goal: brand development and traffic improvement. SEO experts who know how to leverage both on page and off page techniques will be able to maximize SEO efficiency.
To receive the latest Digital Marketing trends and professional support from a reputable marketing service provider, visit On Digitals. We provide dedicated consultancy and solutions tailored to your specific business case.