Introduction to Off-page SEO & Techniques to use
Let us first understand the term Search engine optimization. SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of your website in search engines. This process includes website submission, meta tag incorporation, keyword research, usage, and etc. SEO activities are broken down into two types,
1. On-page SEO
2. Off-page SEO
In this article, we are going to reveal the effective techniques around Off-page SEO techniques that will help you to improve your website ranking.
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page optimization is a technique that you can use to improve your website ranking on the SERPs (search engine result pages). It is also known as Off-site SEO. Off-page SEO is a kind of optimization that takes place outside of your website. It involves actions such as link building, social media marketing, blog commenting, submitting reviews. These are techniques that will help you to promote your website or online business.
Link building plays an important role in the off-page SEO process. Link building increases the visibility and trust of your website. By building quality, relevant backlinks, you can improve your website ranking on search engines, as the trustworthiness of your website assessed through backlinks. And also, Backlinks are one of the primary Google ranking factors.
Some of the powerful backlink factors are,
- Linking domain age
- The number of links
- Authority of a linking domain
- The popularity of the linking sites
- Trust of the linking sites
- Link from an authority site
- Relevancy of the link
- Link’s position on the page
- Contextual links
- The anchor text used on the linking site
- The diversity of link types ( Whether that be FOLLOW or UNFOLLOW)
Here is the list of some effective off-page SEO techniques to increase your page rankings on search engines.
1. Blogging
2. Guest posting
3. Broken link building
4. Social media shares
5. Submit to forums and directories
6. Web 2.0
7. Write testimonials
8. Influencer marketing
9. Blog commenting
10. Competitor backlinks
Let's discuss briefly the above techniques that will help you to improve your ranking.
1. Blogging
Blogging is the most important off-page SEO technique. It is one of the great ways to promote your product and services. Writing blog posts on regular basis will help you to retain visitors and attract new visitors to your website. It also improves your website ranking on search engines result. While writing a blog post you need to ensure that your post content is relevant, valuable, unique, and well structured. High-quality content has the ability to attract website traffic and backlinks as well. As mentioned above quality backlinks make your website looks trustworthy, which helps to build branding and loyalty.
2. Guest Posting
Guest post is an effective strategy for getting backlinks to your website and it is the natural link building method. When you write a guest post to another person’s website you are allowed to place your website article link inside of that article. At the end of the post, you are allowed to submit your bio as well, which is called the author box. Guest posting helps you, to expand your audience base and it increases your online reputation. It is the most effective way to build a relationship with other bloggers.
3. Broken link building
A broken link is known as a link on the website page that doesn't work or an invalid link. When a visitor clicks on a broken link, it displays a 404-page error (invalid link indication). Broken links create a bad user experience and it negatively impacts your ranking as well. When Google spiders crawl into a broken link in a page, they stop crawling and move on to the next one, which means that the page won’t be indexed. Broken links on your website can damage your reputation. And it will affect your conversion rate as well.
Common causes of broken links are,
- The URL of the link has changed
- The Website is temporarily unavailable
- The Webpage has been deleted.
- Misspelling in the link
Tools like Online broken link checker, Google webmaster will help you to find broken links in your website. If the broken link redirects to an external website, contact the webmaster and explain to them about the broken link on their webpage. You can ask possible update link to your blog.
4.Social media shares
Social media platforms are the best place to expose your business. Social media signals do not directly impact the ranking but it indirectly affects the ranking of your website. Every share, mention, and like of your website on social media may affect your ranking.
The number of backlinks and the traffic of your content or blog helps your website to get a higher ranking.
If you share quality and informative content on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and Linkedin will help you to generate more backlinks. It drives traffic to your website and it increases your visibility as well. A strong social media presence helps to build a reputation.
Learn how to increase website traffic through social media.
5. Submit to forums and directories
Submit your content to forums and directories will help you to reach a completely new audience and that will help your website to get more visibility on search engines as well. Here is the list of sites you can submit your blog contents,
- Forum submission – Forum submission sites are online discussion sites. Find search forums that are related to your website and join that community. By commenting on the forum, you can get a backlink to your website and you can boost your traffic as well.
- Directory Submission - It is one of the most effective ways to create high-quality backlinks to your website. If you choose an effective directory and proper category definitely you will get some quality backlinks. And it improves the search engine rank of your website instantly.
- Social bookmarking Sites - It is one of the best platforms to promote your site and it is the best way to share your bookmarks with others. Social bookmarking sites will help you to build quality backlinks for your website. Submit your blog post on some high authority social bookmarking sites like Tumblr, Slashdot, Diigo, that will help you to increase your page rank and website traffic also.
- Search engine submission - It is the form of internet marketing. Submit your website or page URLs to popular search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, AOL, Ask, etc, for inclusion in its index. It helps you to increase the ranking of your website as it will help to index your website pages quickly.
- Infographics submission - An infographic is a visual image and that will help the audience to understand complex data easily. Create awesome infographics and submit it to the infographics submission sites that will help you to build more quality backlinks to your website. Canva and Piktochart will help you to create better infographics. Submit your infographics on sites like Visually, Infographics archive, Infographic post, and give a reference link to your blog.
- Video submission - Videos attract the audience more than a text. Videos can help you to build brand awareness and help you to generate more traffic as well. Submit your videos on popular video submission sites such as youtube and Vimeo. Video submission is the best way to build high-quality backlinks to your website.
- Article submission - Write articles relevant to your business and submit those articles on high-quality websites which means that websites have a high page rank and high domain authority. It will help you to improve your ranking on search engine results. Article submission increases the visibility of your website. Popular article submission sites are Wattpad, Brighthub, and Tumblr.
- Image submission - Images help you to drive lots of traffic to your website. Submit your images on High PR popular image submission websites like Flickr, Picasa, and Shutterfly. It will help you to attract more audience to your website.
- Question and answer sites - Question and answer websites are sites where you can get an answer to your questions and give an answer to any questions. Join the question and answer sites like Quora, Yahoo Answers, and Blurtit. Answer questions that are relevant to your blog post and give reference links back to your website will help you to drive more traffic to your website. Also, it helps you to get more quality backlinks as well.
- Local citation - Local listing is an online reference tool that includes your business name, Address and phone number (NAP). The local citation will help you to promote your local business. It increases the visibility of your business and increases your local search rankings.
Submit your website to sites like Google my business, yellow pages, and yelp will help you to reach your target audience.
- Document submission - Create unique, informative, relevant, quality documents and share it on document sharing sites like Issuu and Scribd. This helps you to get backlinks for your site as well.
6. Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is one of the most effective & Popular technique to create a backlink and generate traffic to your website. Web 2.0 is the second generation of the world wide web. Web 2.0 allows anyone to create and share information online via social media, Blogging, and web-based communities with others.
You can create a blog post and share on web 2.0 platforms like Blogger, Wordpress, Weebly, and link back to your main website. Now you can create a high-quality backlink. Building backlinks from Web 2.0 sites help to increase your page rank.
7. Write testimonials
Testimonials are one of the user generated content and it highly impacts the buying behavior of other customers. According to a recent study, 93% of consumers said that online reviews have an impact on their purchasing decision. Testimonials help to build trust and authority on products or services. And it is a great way to get backlinks to your website.
8. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is promoting or exposing your brand to a new audience through influencers. If an influencers mention your brand or share your blog post on social media it will help you to generate significant traffic to your website and it increases your brand awareness as well. Influencer marketing is the best way to improve your social shares.
More shares mean, you have the opportunity to get more links to your website. Google loves the quality backlinks and the backlinks are the basis of SEO.
9. Blog commenting
Blog commenting builds a relationship between the bloggers and the visitors and it is the best way to share opinions about the particular blog post. It is the easiest way to get high- quality backlinks and the blog commenting plays a key role in generating traffic to your website. By commenting on the other’s blog posts you can create backlink for your blog post as well. Backlinks will help you to improve your page rank as discussed earlier in the article. Importantly, don’t comment on the irrelevant topic.
Most of the websites now provide Nofollow links in the comment section by default. Nofollow links do not allow search engine spiders to follow that links. Nofollow links do not help in website ranking. When you comment on do-follow blogs, definitely you will get a search engine ranking. But Dofollw, Nofollow both links are helped in generating traffic to your website. Commenting on low DA site’s blogs do not help in search engine ranking. Consider following things before blog commenting,
Characteristics of the right blog to comment on
- CommentLuv should be enabled
- Should have a good page rank
- KeywordLuv should be enabled
- Should have a high domain authority
- The blog should be active
Dropmylink, Putmylink will help you to find the right blog to comment on.
10. Competitor backlinks
You can find your competitor’s backlinks by using tools like Ahrefs, Semrush. Steal your competitor’s backlinks will help you to improve your search engine ranking. With the help of competitors backlink profile, you can get the idea, from where your competitors have built the backlinks. Follow the same strategies to build backlinks for your website.
Conclusion
Always use whitehat SEO strategies for improving your website ranking. If you use Black hat SEO techniques for link building Google will penalize your website. Off-page SEO techniques take some time to give better results. Go Slow, Steady, and you can succeed for sure. I hope this guide will help you to know some of the Effective Off-page SEO techniques.
