A Comprehensive Guide to Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO plays a significant role in all your SEO efforts. Some of the strategies involve acquiring backlinks, leveraging brand mentions, utilising social media, focusing on local SEO, and creating linkable assets to enhance website authority and visibility in search engines. These practices boost site credibility and engagement, that help in higher rankings and improved online perception.

To make your website rank on Google’s first page, you will have to go further than on-page SEO techniques. There are activities outside your website. And, such practices fall under off-page optimisation, which collectively help Google value your site. With this off-page SEO guide, you will learn the following. 

• What is off-page SEO?
• Off-page SEO vs on-page SEO
• Why is off-page SEO important for your website?
• Best Off-page SEO techniques
• Case Study of Ahrefs' Linkbuilding Strategy  

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO improves the perception of your website, which helps in search engine rankings. 

This optimisation process involves promotional activities that other authoritative sites and people do for you online. 

One simple example is when more reputed brands in your industry mention your page in their content. It can drastically improve your website’s authority and increase your brand popularity. 

Off-Page SEO vs On-Page SEO

For your SEO efforts to work, your business will need both on-page and off-page optimisation. 

On-page SEO is directly within your control. That is, you can include headers, optimise your content with high volume keywords, rich images, and internal linking to fix on-site SEO issues. 

These activities make sure that your content-optimised page gets enough organic traffic. Based on that, the reader will engage more with your content. 

But, your SEO efforts do not end here. 

Suppose you chose a topic with high keyword volume as mentioned on any SEO tool.

During keyword research, you will see that higher volume keywords have high competition. 

Let’s take an example of the keyword ‘seo’ on the Ubersuggest tool. 

As you can see, the keyword difficulty (SEO Difficulty on Ubersuggest) is very high. 

As on Ubersuggest the top ranking page on Google has 96 backlinks. Backlinks are those which the site receives from other websites. If you click on the Backlinks button, it will show the sites that are linking to the page. You will also note that the referring sites have a high domain authority – above 80.   

The same high ranking page also has the highest number of social shares on Facebook and Pinterest. 

Now, let’s say you have a new website. You want to write on SEO. You have to surpass the competition not only with your high quality content but also quality backlinks (a good number!) and social shares.

If your website is not very popular or less than six months old, your page may never see the first page of Google. The reason is, your site does not have enough domain authority. Also, Google has many ranking factors and on-page SEO is just a part of it.  

Enter – off-page SEO. 

This optimisation process involves others linking to your pages on forums, some social media handles referring to your content, and/or citing your page as a stat, etc. 

Off-page SEO also involves your off-site efforts. You can reach out on forums, emails and social media. The more people read your content the higher is the click-through rate. Hence, more organic traffic. 

The success of these off-site activities is beyond your control. They depend on how people react to your brand. And, that is the basic difference between the two. 

As a side note, off-page SEO differs from technical SEO too. The latter is used for optimising site speed, structured data, and others. 

Why is Off-Page SEO Important for your Website?

Off-page SEO adds to your site’s credibility. When top sites are using your pages as links in their content, that is a good way to build your authority.

Let’s look into its importance through the lens of Google. 

Google’s PageRank Still Works

Google has a PageRank (PR) system which gives importance to pages with incoming links (backlinks). The same system also looks into the page that uses the link. 

Today, users can’t see this metric anymore. And, Google removed it from Google Search Console (then Webmaster Tools) almost more than a decade ago. But it still works behind the ranking algorithms as mentioned by Gary Illyes of Google in a 2017-tweet. 

This means backlinks form a considerable part of your page’s ranking. 

Reputation Research of Google

Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines uncovers quite a lot about reputation research. 

This clearly indicates that external perception is valued for rankings in the Google search engine. 

Top Ranking Pages Get More Backlinks & Shares

Web pages that rank higher on Google are more likely to get backlinks. According to an Ahrefs’ blog on backlink growth study, pages at the first position get ‘followed backlinks (from new referring domains)  at a pace of between +5% and +14.5% per month.’ 

If your page consistently ranks higher, you will also gain more social mentions. 

Best Off-Page SEO Techniques: Basic to Advanced

Now that you know what makes on-page SEO different from on-site optimization and the importance of off-site SEO, check out the best techniques for the same. 

Link Building

This is a way of acquiring links from other websites. These links between websites are known to be backlinks, as mentioned earlier as well. 

Types of Backlinks 

Here are all the types of backlinks that you should know. 

• Dofollow Backlink – This type tells Google that the link is authoritative. Examples include high domain authority websites such as Statista, Forbes and the like. 
• Nofollow Backlink – This tells Google that the link is to be ignored. This is differentiable with a tag in HTML  – rel = “nofollow”
• Sponsored Links – Also known as paid links, these links refer users to other websites. It appears as rel = “sponsored” . This type of attribute is important because it tells Google that the link is for advertisement. Otherwise, it may be looked upon as non-trustful. 
• UGC Links – These links specify to Google that they are from forums. The attribute they have is rel = “ugc”. 

How To Acquire Backlinks That Increase Your Authority

There are many ways to build links. Some tactics are mentioned below. 

• Editorial Backlinks As Citations

These are important for building authority. They appear as citations on any type of content, from a statistics piece to an infographic. 

The best way to gain such links is to have a solid content marketing strategy. High quality content that defines your subject expertise is essential. 

• Natural Backlinks Through Guest Posts

Guest blogging is another way to acquire natural links. But experts do suggest using it subtly and carefully. By writing for a site that has a domain authority over 50, you start acquiring more audience. That means, more people will know about your website through your blog post on an authoritative site. 

• Comment Backlinks Without Spamming

This is another way to get backlinks. You can link to a relevant page on your website when you comment on a blog. But do note that most readers look at it as a spam activity when the comment or link is irrelevant. This is why blog commenting is often considered better for increasing organic traffic than link building. 

Branding

Rand Fishkin from Moz stated that when brands perform well, they rank higher on Google too. So brand mentions without any links can work wonders as an off-page SEO tactic. 

That’s why it is essential to have strategic brand management in place when you are utilising off-site SEO.  The focus is to improve your brand signals that cover brand searches on search engines, YouTube and social media. 

Social Media 

Social shares are not a direct ranking factor in Google. But just like branding, it can go a long way to improve the perception of your brand when you do it right. 

You can connect with your followers on a personal level, take their feedback and respond on time. These are social media marketing best practices. At the same time, you may want to increase your Instagram followers.

Local SEO

Google provides the most relevant information about local businesses on searches. It also removes fake profiles so that user searches are fruitful. In 2021, Google removed 7 million business profiles that were fake (Search Engine Journal).  

One aspect that you should factor in your off-page SEO strategy is to utilise local SEO. And, you can use the native Google My Business platform to show up on local searches. You can also encourage customer reviews on the same. 

Linkable Assets

Linkable assets are high-quality, valuable pieces of content on your website. These attract backlinks naturally. You can try creating infographics, comprehensive guides, original research, tools, or any content that provides unique value. For instance, develop in-depth guides or ebooks on topics relevant to your industry. These resources should be thorough, well-researched, and offer actionable insights.

Digital PR

Establish relationships with key journalists, bloggers, and influencers in your industry. Provide them with valuable content or insights that they can use in their articles or reels. One way to do so is hosting events, webinars, or online conferences that offer valuable information. 

Broken Linkbuilding

This is one innovative way to get started with off-page SEO. What you can do is identify broken links on relevant websites and offer your content as a replacement.

Case Study of Ahrefs' Linkbuilding Strategy  

Let's talk about a case study from Ahrefs that demonstrates a successful link-building campaign using a statistics page. The team strategically created a page to attract links through outreach, sending 515 emails and securing 36 backlinks from 32 websites. The post now ranks #1 for “SEO stats.”

The process involved:

1. Creating a Statistics Page: Ahrefs chose a statistics page for its potential to attract numerous links and because such pages often contain outdated or sloppily updated information.

2. Research and Development: The team began by identifying a topic related to SEO or online marketing. They used Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to find relevant keywords and then selected those with top-ranking pages having many backlinks.

3. Finding Link Prospects: They analyzed the most linked-to statistics pages, identifying popular statistics and ensuring they were either outdated or missing from the pages. This helped in creating a list of potential link prospects.

4. Narrowing Down Prospects: The list was refined by removing low-quality sites and those with nofollow, UGC, or sponsored links. They also excluded sites with low traffic.

5. Creating the Page: The page included popular statistics from other pages, other interesting statistics, and was organized by category for easy consumption.

6. Outreach Campaign: They found contact information for their prospects and sent personalized outreach emails, resulting in a 5.71% conversion rate based on deliverable emails.

7. Results and Improvements: The campaign resulted in 36 editorial links from 32 unique websites. The team reflected on potential improvements, such as negotiating with prospects and sending follow-ups, which could have increased the conversion rate.

Off-Page SEO Best Practices

• Focus on Quality Over Quantity: It’s better to have fewer high-quality backlinks than a large number of low-quality ones.
• Monitor Your Backlink Profile: Regularly check your backlink profile to ensure the quality of links and identify any potentially harmful links.
• Avoid Black Hat Techniques: Steer clear of any strategies that violate search engine guidelines, such as buying links or participating in link schemes.

Parting Thoughts

This is all about off-page SEO and the best ways you can use it for making your SEO efforts count. Do refer to the SEO checklist as well. 

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