Step 1 – Understanding the Off-page SEO fundamentals
What is off-page SEO?
Off page SEO refers to all of the activities that you and others do away from your website to raise the ranking of a page with search engines. Though many people associate off–page SEO with link building, it goes beyond that.
To simplify it down it’s basically the activities you do off your site to get Google and other search engines to see your website as trustworthy and authoritative.
Why is it important?
Backlink’s and other off site signals such as Google my Business create the foundation for Google’s algorithm.
Studies have found that there is an indefinite link between backlink’s and google rankings and Google has gone on record to say that they still use PageRank.
Google stated that “linking is only one part of off-page SEO and that they use other off-site signals to size up websites”.
Google focuses a lot on “Reputation research” which includes online reviews, recommendations from experts, mentions on news sites and Wikipedia.
To clarify, links are the most important off-page SEO signal, but there are many more.
Step 2 – How to boost Off-Page SEO through backlink’s
Building backlinks for off-page SEO is all about quality not quantity and if you actually want the links to boost your rankings in the SERPs, make sure they are authority links from related sites.
You need to be a data source!
Backlinko recently conducted research into the links pointing at keywords. Their findings found that most people don’t link to a page because it’s a “high quality” piece of content but in order to cite a stat or quote the author. So they added more stats to their site to see if that would automatically get more people to link to them. It worked extremely well.
So why not use more stats if you know it works?
Broken Content Building
With broken link building campaigns you automatically look for broken links that point to a certain page. We know that finding broken links within your niche can be a huge pain.
With Broken Content Linking you can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer as a broken link search engine. Then, use traditional BLB to build links to your site.
If you type in something like ‘Content marketing’ into the content explorer and choose the ‘Only broken’ option. This will show you the popular content that is now dead. Now, you will have pages you can use for Broken Link Building.
Get on Board with Long Form Content
Will publishing long forms of content automatically get you links? NO. Although, it can increase the chance of other people linking to you.
Strategic Guest Posting
Guest blogging will help boost your Off-page SEO in many ways.
Starting with getting your brand in front of a whole new audience, guest posts can lead to linked brand mentions and you can also build links from your guest posts.
Although this only really works if you post guest posts on sites within your sector. It’s important to note that they don’t need to be in your exact niche of work.
Step 3 – Generate Brand Signals
This is what Google uses to find out if your brand is authoritative and legit.
How Can you Boost Your Site’s Brand Signals?
Audit your brand searches to see how many people search for your brand in Google. These searches can be users typing in your exact brand name or your brand name plus another phrase. You can use Google Search Console to do this.
Put Marketing Spend Behind YouTube
YouTube is an effective way of boosting your brand signals. YouTube has a massive audience and why not try to reach some of that? This means more people will be talking, writing and searching your brand online.
YouTube makes it hard for people to search for your brand from YouTube, so most people will naturally google you after seeing your YouTube content.
Create Brand Tracking
This can allow you to see how many people are talking about your brand on blogs, new sites and forums and see if there are changes to the pattern over a period of time. Some tracking tools you can use are Mention.com or BuzzSumo.
Write Research Based Content
Producing research based content can send high quality links your way and social media shares.
Although Google doesn’t use ‘Social Signals’ to rank content but social shares can indirectly help your Off-page SEO. Social shares get more people engaging with your brand which leads to more people searching for your brand.
Step 4 – Improve E-A-T
E-A-T has become a major talking point within the SEO industry and proves really effective for ranking. And despite what you may have heard, there’s A LOT more to E-A-T than adding a bunch of author bios to your site.
That’s because Google largely measures E-A-T based on signals that happen off of your website.
Get Your Brand Mentioned on Authority Sites
Links and mentions can help determine a website’s E-A-T, links are your best option, getting mentions on an authoritative site can prove harder to get.
Encourage Positive Online Reviews
Google uses its ‘Quality Rater’ to put emphasis on online reviews, and if people hated your business why would google want to show your site to more people?
Reviews affect your website’s E-A-T in the eyes of Google, and if no one has reviewed your site then Google will then focus on any awards you’ve won; and what other experts in your field think of your website.
Step 5 – Other Off-Page SEO Techniques
Want some extra Off-Page SEO techniques then keep reading…
Press Releases
Sending out press releases can directly lead to getting your brand mentioned and backlinks. Ensure the content is valuable as you’re more likely to get more shares using quality content than quantitative content.
Get Involved in Roundup Posts
This is a really easy way to get links and mentions.
Get interviewed
Getting interviews on podcasts, news sites and other websites is a good way to boost your Off-Page SEO. This can give you backlinks but even if they don’t link your page, your tapping into a new audience and giving your brand the opportunity to be searched for.
Partner With Bigger Brands
Bigger brands are always wanting to partner with smaller businesses if you can provide value to them and in turn they will happily send some traffic your way.
Create Visuals That Other Blogs Can Use
Creating visual content is a really good method of getting other blogs to mention or link your site without needing to put time into the blogger outreach.
If you implement even some of these methods you’re on track to tackling your Off-Page SEO and getting your Google ranking improved.