When you own a business, you know how important it is to create an online marketing strategy. Whether you do this yourself or hire a company to handle it for you – it’s essential. 

However, you may not realize that there’s more to good SEO (search engine optimization) than on-page efforts. Off-page SEO is just as important but something that’s overlooked far too often. In fact, it’s an extremely important Google ranking factor that you can’t afford to ignore. 

Off-page SEO occurs when you gain backlinks from other websites going to your site. In fact, the top results on Google have about 3.8 times the backlines than results that appear in positions two through 10. 

While this is true, off-page SEO isn’t just about building backlinks. It goes much deeper. Examples include brand mentions, which occur when another site mentions your brand name or site URL without any hyperlinks. This is also an important part of off-page search signals. 

With off-page SEO, Google finds out what others think about your site. For example, if you build several valuable links that point to your pages, then search engines automatically assume you have quality content that offers value for your users. 

Remember, people who see what you offer will only share, reference, and cite content they like. Even for brick-and-mortar businesses, if your products are affordable and helpful, you will get more word-of-mouth referrals from existing customers. 

Keep reading to learn more about off-page optimization and how to put it to work for your marketing efforts. 

Off-Page SEO Defined

Off-page SEO is a term used to define all the activities you and other people do beyond your website to increase a page’s ranking within search engine results. 

While many people think of off-page SEO as just link building, it’s more than that. Some things that don’t result in a standard link on another site are a crucial part of off-page optimization. 

On-page SEO occurs within your site, and off-page SEO happens off your site (as the names imply). If you create a guest post for another blog or even leave a comment, you have engaged in off-page promotion for your site. 

Preparing Your Site or a Page on Your Site for Link Building

Google still values links. Google can’t determine a web page’s value if there aren’t any links pointing to it, regardless of how fresh, useful, or in-depth the page content is. 

Some website owners will skip the preparation stage for link building; however, this should be a priority since properly preparing a site will ensure you are mindful of the links you are sending to them. 

Tips to ensure your pages are ready for this link building include:

  • Structure your internal pages 
  • Complete your on-page SEO first
  • Select thematic keywords (yes, for off-page SEO, too)

Tips for Receiving Authority, User-Friendly, Relevant Backlinks

Google processed 12.1 million search queries in January 2022 alone. Just think about the potential traffic your website could get if you could capture a small fraction of these searches. 

The truth is, backlinks are a critical element of off-page SEO and something you really can’t afford to ignore. 

This is because receiving natural links from relevant and authoritative websites provides you with a “vote of confidence” from another site or person. This will increase the trust that search engines have in your website even more. 

When Google’s (or another search engine’s) spider crawls your site, searching for fresh content, it will index your new pages and get them ready for people who are conducting searches. Once your site pages are added to the index to be sent in search results when a relevant search query is triggered, Google uses different algorithm factors to determine where your pages will rank. 

This is referred to as Google’s ranking factors in the SEO realm. They are the determining factors for any organic web page rankings. The good news is that you don’t have to know all the ranking factors – which is a good thing since there are hundreds of them. 

Regarding SEO, the most important factor to remember is links. Maybe not the links exactly, but the impact of the links. 

Some of the other off-page factors that make a difference in your site’s SEO performance include:

  • Total number of linking domains: The number of domains you have linking to you is a crucial ranking factor. 
  • Total number of linking pages: You could have several links from one domain to your site, and this number is also a ranking factor. However, it’s best to have different links from different domains rather than the same ones. 
  • PageRank of the linking page: Not all pages are the same or equal. Links from pages with a higher PageRank will be more impactful than those with lower PR pages. Because of this, you need to try to build links from pages with higher PRs. 
  • Relevancy of the links: Many SEOs think that links from pages related to your page’s topic will carry more relevancy for the search engines. 
  • Authority of the linking domain: Like page PR, the domain’s authority is often a ranking factor. Because of this, links from low PR pages to high PR sites are worth more than those from lower PR ones. 
  • Homepage links: Also, links from a home page of a linking domain may have more strength than those that come from one of its pages. 
  • Dofollow vs. nofollow links: Google made it official – it does not count nofollow links. That means that your total number of dofollow links may impact your rank. 
  • Diversity of the types of links you have: The types of links that you build to your website matter. If you have too many links of one type, it could be an indication of spam and have a negative impact on your rankings. 
  • Contextual links: Links within your page content will be more than links on the sidebar. 
  • Link anchor: The anchor text for a link can also be a strong ranking factor. It can also be used to identify spam, which can have a negative impact on your rankings. 

In the past, if you generated 100 links to your page and you had just 20 links, Google would have viewed the page as more valuable and authoritative than others. That’s because link quality wasn’t as important at that time. 

Today, though, links are perceived differently. Several questions arise when Google finds a link pointing back to your web page. Some of these include:

  • Where is the link coming from?
  • What made the owner of the site link to your page?
  • Is the link quality? (this means if it is from an authority website)
  • How fresh is the link?
  • How natural is the page’s link profile?

Important Reminder: When building links to a website or internal pages, make sure to focus on SEO-friendly, authority, and relevant links. 

Why Off-Page SEO Is a Smart Marketing Strategy 

It’s smart to get off your website and take time to network with other bloggers and site owners in your industry if you want to boost your ranking in search engines. 

It’s important to realize that Google Penguin and other updates to the algorithm were not just targeting search results that did not have a lot of incoming links. It’s necessary to stick to white-hat link-building strategies if you want to improve your site’s off-page optimization. 

However, it is also imperative that you prepare your website to receive the “authority link juice” as you continue working to build and earn new links. Be sure your site is easy to navigate, too. 

If your goal is to create a better content-based experience for your visitors, you have to ensure you are answering their questions. The first step is to identify your ideal customer’s questions. You can visit different sites to find these, including social media. Also, creating content that is high quality is considered an essential SEO technique that you cannot afford to ignore or forget. 

Just remember, search engine optimization isn’t a one-hit-wonder. It’s something that requires ongoing time and effort. 

Why Your Site Needs an Off-Page SEO Strategy? 

If you haven’t built an off-page SEO strategy yet, now is the time to do it. This will help you achieve your goals when it comes to your website and get more people visiting your site. It will also get your site noticed by Google, eventually leading to higher rankings in the SERPs. Be sure to keep the information here in mind, which will help you with your strategy and ensure you achieve the desired results. While this is something that will take time, it will also pay off and help you achieve the goals you have for your marketing strategy. 

When it comes to building any marketing strategy, working with professionals makes sense. Keep this in mind to achieve the best possible results for your off-page SEO strategy. It will ensure that the right steps are taken and that they are effective when it comes to your goals.