This is part four in a series of articles in which we discuss the reasons why every small business should be worried about SEO and the best way to start addressing and improving organic search ranking without breaking the bank. The focus today is Off-Page SEO.
Part 3 Recap
- On-Page SEO is the process of optimizing each page of your website as well as the content that appears in relation to each specific page.
- You do so by selecting keywords which you would like to rank for on search engines like Google
- You cannot use a keyword as often as possible to rank, there are strategies
- Your home page is the most important page on your website in relation to SEO
- The content on your website is a large contributor to your organic search ranking
- There are also HTML elements which contribute to your organic search ranking
- You can control all of the content and HTML contributors that positively affect your site’s organic ranking
- There are elements that you cannot control which contribute to your organic ranking, known as Off-Page SEO
What Is Off-Page SEO
Where On-Page SEO is all of the elements that contribute to your organic search ranking which are on your website’s domain, Off-Page SEO are all of the contributors that occur on other domains.
Many SEO experts urge having strong On-Page SEO before ever worrying about the Off-Page SEO but everyone agrees both are important. Your Off-Page SEO efforts will largely go towards link building to increase your website’s authority on Google, our internet God.
Remember when we talked about link juice? You want as much as you can get.
While building your backlinks up is arguably the biggest factor, there are a number of other ways to work on your Off-Page SEO. We are going to look at some of the most important factors and methods to succeeding when working on your Off-Page SEO. Just remember, much of it is out of your control.
Link Building Strategies & Methods
As mentioned, link building is probably the most important thing you should focus on when it comes to Off-Page SEO. There are a few different schools of thought on how to best optimize with backlinks but here is a great place to start.
- Quantity vs. Quality
There is no doubt you want to have a large number of backlinks. It is important Google and other Search Engines see other sites linking to you because it gives you credibility. On top of wanting a large quantity of backlinks, you want to make sure they are also quality backlinks.
What does quality mean in this sense? Essentially, making sure the backlinks your website receives is from other sites with good authority on Google. This means getting a backlink from a major news source vs getting a backlink from a small time blog (like this one).
Quality can also mean getting backlinks from sites relevant to yours. Say you have a small, side project poetry blog. You can choose to have a backlink from a large publisher whose audience is largely business readers or a medium size literature publication, which do you choose?
The large publisher will pass along more link juice but the audience that comes from the smaller sized publication may be much more impactful. If you can make both happen, you win on both ends.
Take this blog post for example. I would love to have a smaller publisher that focuses on business related content link to my article but it would also be great to have a large blog link to it.
The ideal case would be if I could manage to get a Business Insider or Forbes to link to me as it would provide me quantity in exposure and link juice but also quality in relevance and authority.
It is hard to decide which to focus on, quantity or quality, but keeping both in mind will ensure success.
**Make sure your backlinks come from different domains to gain more of that SWEET, sweet link juice.
- Link Types
You want to make sure all of your backlinks are “dofollow” links so that Search Engines know to pass along the link juice.
It is unlikely a website will make a nofollow link to your site but some do it deliberately. Nofollow links do not pass along any juice so they are not as good but they are not useless when it comes to ranking.
Nofollow links still pass along referral traffic though, so don’t turn down an opportunity on this point alone.
Non-Link Related Strategies
There are a number of non-link related strategies which help create awareness and introduce new audiences to your site. These include:
- Content Marketing
Basically, any time you go somewhere off of your site and contribute it is content marketing. This includes writing a guest post on someone else’s blog, being a guest on a podcast or writing content elsewhere than your site.
- Social Media & Forums
Both social media and forum presence are good ways to increase your off-page SEO. Social sharing doesn’t provide any link juice but it does bring referral traffic. Traffic is traffic am I right???
Having an active presence and being closer to your audience is always a safe bet as it also builds personality. Many companies actually use their social media as an arm of their customer service.
In other situations, social media can be considered a form of search engine in their own right. Using the right hashtags and connecting with the right influencers can increase traffic which is the goal.
Local Business Strategies
There are a few things local businesses need to keep in mind when it comes to Off-Page SEO.
- Google My Business
We know already that Google is God for SEO, making sure your local business has a fully filled out business profile on Google is very important. It gives potential customers all the information they need.
- Reviews
Reviews are important because they give you credibility among your audience. They do not contribute too much to ranking but they can be the difference when someone is considering checking out your site.
- NAP Citations
These are any time your company’s name, address and phone number are in the same place.
We Made It
We learned today the ways you can influence your website outside of your website and improve your organic ranking by leveraging several different strategies.
While increasing the quantity and quality of your backlinks is paramount, it is also important to engage in other Off-Page SEO tactics like social media and forum work.
Your website’s legacy exists beyond your website and largely is influenced by how you are represented elsewhere. It is important to use backlinks and other Off-Page SEO tactics to increase your website’s authority on various search engines.
Your SEO journey is far from over but we have finally made it to the end of the easy stuff.
Now go take on Google, you crazy bastard.
