Off-page SEO (search engine optimization) refers to all strategies outside of your website to help you improve your website’s position in the SERP (search engine results page) — off-page SEO strategies include content marketing, link building, forum postings, and influencer outreach.

Off-page SEO helps search engines determine what people think about your website, products, or services. Increasing your chances of ranking higher can be possible even with just a few links from relevant-strong websites having high levels of authority.

However, off-page SEO is not just about getting a link to your website from just anyone — it is more about getting a link to your website from the right one and you also have to ensure that you’re getting the link juice from the backlinks as well.

What is a backlink?

Link juice as mentioned above is passed along in do-follow backlinks. You can think about a backlink like an acknowledgment or a vote from the source websites which lead an increase in the link’s authority — backlinks can be found on your linked articles, ports, or pages.

Another type of a backlink is a no-follow backlink — these are links that don’t pass authority from the source website to the linked one.

What are the different off-page SEO strategies?

1. Commenting

People might think that commenting is no longer meaningful in the world of SEO. However, there are essential reasons to keep on leaving a comment on other blogs — as long as you are doing it the right way and having the right audience to read what you have to say. It helps you build relationships with other blog owners and other commenters. In addition, this is one of the simplest ways to get more backlinks. Do keep in mind, however, that Google has decided that irrelevant comment backlinks are useless.

2. Social media mentions

Social media mentions play an important role in helping search engines know that people are talking about your brand, products, or services. Engaging with your audience on different social media platforms helps you increase brand awareness and brand mentions — this can be by providing them answers to their inquiries or providing them fast and reliable customer service. This can also help build trust with your potential customers, therefore, leading to a good relationship.

3. Forum posting

Finding relevant forums and participating in different discussions relating to the products or services you offer help build a connection with the right community. Reply to threads, create threads, help solve problems for others, giving advice and suggestions can do more than you think because Google loves relevant and informative discussions. You have to keep in mind that it is equally essential to create a complete profile with an anchor signature if possible and join on forums that offer do-follow links.

4. Social networking

Maximize and utilize the different social media platforms to spread your reach. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, nowadays, people are spending more time using social media platforms compared to previous years. Engage and leverage to increase the reach of your content. Whenever your content gets a click from your audience it sends Google a signal that one or more users are accessing your website. Therefore, it is important to make sure that you have relevant, informative, and quality content.

5. Content marketing

Social media platforms have different preferred content — Instagram is more about using images, Facebook and Twitter are more about expressing one’s thoughts, while YouTube is about streaming videos. Use this information to your advantage — say you have written a step-by-step guide on cooking, baking, or recipes. Create an Instagram account showing photos of the recipes and link the procedure to your bio which leads to your website. You can also create a video of a step-by-step guide on baking your favorite sweets, post it on your Facebook and Twitter pages, and then add your content URL in the caption.

Conclusion

Off-page SEO is considered one of the most important parts of SEO together with on-page SEO. Keep in mind that no matter how strong your off-page SEO strategies are, without on-page SEO, you may still not make it to the highest rank in SERPs. In addition, the higher authority websites you have talking about you and referring to you — the more chance of ranking higher.

If you’d like to learn more about different off-page SEO strategies, you can download our Web Development ebook.

Are you looking for help in planning your off-page SEO strategies? Talk to one of our web development specialists now!