Every marketer desires their website to appear higher in the search engine results pages (SERP). The method of improving website traffic via organic search engine rankings is known as SEO. On-page SEO and off-page SEO are two of the most common search engine optimization techniques.
The former refers to things you can do on your website to improve your search engine rankings. The latter refers to actions made outside of your site to increase your ranking. A successful SEO strategy must include off-page optimization. It helps to increase brand recognition and develop brand trust across different target groups. In this blog post, we will be discussing about Off-page SEO technique and its importance in increasing website ranking.
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What is Off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO refers to using certain techniques to improve the page ranking on search results. It generally occurs outside your site and comprises of link building, guest posting, social media sharing, directory listing and much more. It includes all the SEO practices that take place outside your website.
They help both search engines as well as site visitors to understand your website in a better way thereby increasing your website’s authority, trust and recognition. The main purpose of Off-page SEO is to create quality, trustworthy and relevant backlinks for boosting search traffic and rankings.
Importance of Off-page SEO
Optimizing your website for Off-page or Off-site SEO should be the key component of your digital marketing strategy as it helps in boosting credibility, popularity and authority for both search engines as well as users.
Google algorithms take account of numerous factors before ranking a webpage on search results and off-page SEO is one of them. When it comes to Off-page SEO, acquiring backlinks should be the dominant aspect of your strategy. The more powerful and high quality your backlinks are, the higher will be the chances of appearing in the topmost Google search results.
Links are crucial for increasing your chances of ranking at the top of the search results. At times website does not rank on search results due to absence of link building. Backlinks are the heart of Off-Page SEO. They serve as indicators for high quality content.
Each link received is counted as a vote and endorses that your site quality is good. Search engines measures off-page factors such as the number and quality of backlinks directing to your site. Using these metrics, search engines analyse how relevant and useful are your webpages to search queries. When a good number of links point to your website, it signals that your content is valuable and useful for the readers. This in turn improves ranking on SERPs.
Some of its major benefits are:
- Boost rankings on search results
- Improves page rank
- More domain referrals
- Turn visitors into loyal customers
- Increase website exposure
- Builds brand credibility and trustworthiness
Popular Off-page SEO Techniques
Link Building:
Off-page SEO technique aims to generate natural links to your website from reputed sites. Links help users to easily navigate through different pages on the site. Links also indicate the authority, trustworthiness and relevancy of the page content.
Social Media Marketing:
Social media sites are a great platform to build a strong brand presence and raise awareness of your website. Staying active on social media sites, replying sincerely to the comments and feedbacks received are some of the keys to engage users and foster customer relationships.
Forums and online communities:
Being an active participant on different online communities and forums is a great way of obtaining traffic and creating brand recognition. Helping people resolve their issues, adding comments on others posts, optimizing anchor text is a key to direct more visitors to your site.
Influencer Marketing:
Influencer Marketing has a major impact on user behaviour and their purchase decisions. Inlfuencers have a large following on social media channels and people look upto them for information on specific product niche. Hence, they can have a prominent influence on your brand image and product promotion.
Newsletters:
Keeping your customers imformed about latest product offers, new launches, sales, etc. by sending newsletters is one of the simplest yet underrated Off-page SEO strategy. It is important to send them at the right time and create interesting posts for increasing readability and user engagement.
Local SEO:
Local SEO is useful for improving site ranking for local search terms. Google, My business is an extension of Local SEO wherein your site shows up whenever a user searches for keywords within a particular location.
Reviews:
Reviews are an integral part of customer buying journey. Nearly 89% people read online reviews before purchasing a product or service. When presented rightly, reviews help Google in better understanding the page content resulting in, improved brand image and rank.
Factors affecting Off-Page SEO links
Number of referring domains: Having more links from unique sites lead to higher rankings and more search traffic.
Authority: A link from high-authority website is considered more valuable than link generated from low-authority site.
Type of link: Google prioritizes dofollow links compared to nofollow links. At the time of link building from a particular website, ensure that their outbound links are followed.
Anchor text: Backlinks with anchor text related to the page topic have a positive impact of the site rankings, resulting in, improved traffic and high CTR.
Relevance: Page relevance is also important while earning backlinks. Make sure that the links obtained are relevant to the page topic and context.
Page traffic: Links from pages with higher organic traffic has more weightage than pages with less traffic.
Off-site SEO is important in ranking for competitive keywords for your brand. It plays a key role in building your brand and increasing revenues through various practices that boosts your authority, reputation and rankings on SERPs. Off-page SEO techniques go hand in hand with on-page SEO tactics. It might appear easy, but it is important to remember that results obtained from Off-page SEO are not completely under control. However, if implemented in the right manner, Off-page SEO can have a significant impact in your website rankings.