How Off-Page SEO Improves Your Website’s Rankings?

In a marketing world dominated by digital marketing, every business and marketer is on a mission to climb the SERPs, claim one of the top spots, and drive more traffic to their website. However, competing with digitally savvy brands can be tricky unless you work with an SEO agency.

With over 200 ranking factors in the Google algorithm, it’s a minefield trying to decide which to target. Furthermore, it would be best to consider on-page and off-page SEO factors. In this article, we’re going to discuss the most impactful off-page SEO techniques and how they’ll improve your rankings.

Let’s get to it.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO is a set of principles that a marketer carries out to promote their website across the web, rather than focusing on your website's inner workings and experience, off-page SEO tasks to drive traffic and improve website traffic through external mediums.

Your off-page SEO checklist should include backlinks, unlinked mentions, social media, and Google Business.

Off-Page SEO Techniques

      1. Backlinks

Anyone familiar with SEO principles will know that backlinks have always been considered one of the most rank-enhancing off-page SEO techniques.

A backlink is when another website links to your content. As a result, this can be from any page on their website to any page on your website.

These links are so valuable because Google deems them to be an endorsement. Therefore, if someone else is referring to your content, it must be helpful, informative, trustworthy, and credible.

Google’s mission is to provide accurate information to users. Backlinks validate this accuracy. Therefore, the Google algorithm is more likely to show your content in SERPs for relevant search terms.

Backlink Quantity vs. Quality

Based on what's said, you may think your task is to get as many backlinks as possible. However, while volume is good, the quality of a link is much more critical.

Your aim is to get high-authority domains to link to your website. High-quality websites include well-regarded publications, industry-leading businesses, education establishments, government, governing bodies, associations, and high-ranking websites.

Furthermore, it would be best if you were wary of links from low-quality websites such as link farms and spam sites – this will cause your rankings to fall.

     2. Unlinked Mentions

Getting every mention of your business rubber-stamped as a backlink is near impossible. Often, you’ll find some publications that choose not to include links for fairness to contributors, and others forget.

Although these mentions don’t result in a backlink, meaning they don’t directly impact your SEO ranking, they raise brand awareness. The positive of this brand awareness increase is more people may be encouraged to head to Google and search for your brand.

Additionally, many businesses don’t know how to generate backlinks. However, unlinked mentions are low-hanging fruit in this area.

You’ve found content and articles that mention your brand. Unless it’s a negative review, it should be relatively easy to win a backlink here.

All you have to do is reach out to whoever published the content and request they include a link that mentions your brand or content.

     3. Social Media

Social media is another element that doesn't directly impact rankings but can improve brand awareness and indirect rank increases. For example, social media profiles often appear in the results when you conduct a Google search.

More often than not, social media results will appear for brand name searches.

Keywords and other ranking factors aren’t relevant for social media content to appear in SERPs. As a result, this is because there is so much content on social media. It is updated and added to every second, making it impossible for Google to present the most relevant information.

So, how does this help your rankings? Well, increased brand awareness encourages both brand and non-brand keyword searches.

If your social media content inspires users to seek your website, you’ll see more users on your pages. Increased traffic numbers can encourage more backlinks, conversion, time on site, and other SEO metrics, enabling you to climb to rankings.

     4. Google Business & Local SEO

Have you ever noticed the map at the top of some Google searches? It lists the top three businesses in your local area related to the search query you input, controlled by a platform called Google Business (formerly Google My Business). Essentially, this is a comprehensive profile of directory listings, enabling users to find relevant businesses close to them without trawling through SERPs.

Again, this off-page SEO technique doesn’t directly impact your organic rankings. However, it could put your business above all organic listings. Here’s how you can create a winning Google Business profile.

     5. Be Thorough

There are over 200 fields on Google Business. The more of these fields you complete, the better. As we know, Google likes to give users as much information as possible, so fill in as many relevant fields as possible.

     6. Citations

As with backlinks, citations are third-party directory listings that refer to your business and address. You should ensure your business information replicates as it is in Google across local and national directories such as Yelp.

     7. Reviews

Google reviews are another impactful off-page SEO technique for users and the local SEO algorithm. Frequent high-rated reviews will see your listing pushed to the top. In addition, you can encourage and incentivize customers to leave Google reviews to help this process.

Off-Page SEO vs. On-Page SEO

In this article, we’ve discussed off-page SEO techniques. However, on-page SEO is the element of SEO you are in control of and optimize directly on your website. These include:

• Core web vitals
• Page loading speeds
• Mobile responsiveness
• Content quality
• Internal linking
• Title tags and meta descriptions
• HTML header tags
• Image alt text
• Site navigation

In Summary

These off-page SEO examples are the ideal starting point for any business to improve its SEO rankings. Combined with an advanced on-page SEO strategy, you’ll see your website appearing higher in SERPs and more relevant traffic landing on your website.

If this checklist is intimidating and you don’t have the expert skills to implement it – we’ll be happy to help. So get in touch today to book a free discovery call.