13 Off-Page SEO Techniques to Increase Organic Traffic
Off-page SEO refers to optimization activities taken outside of your website, to increase the rankings of your website in SERP (Search engine result page). Off-page SEO only notifies Google about what other individuals consider about your website.
Before we get into the meat of the matter, let’s define SEO, Search engine optimization is an art as well as the science of getting the result on the first page of search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu. Users search their query for two reasons, to find information (informational query) and buy (commercial query). Both the searchers are very important. 93% of traffic to websites comes from search engines. Nearly 80% of visitors ignore advertisements in search results. 75% of people never go to page 2 and further pages, in Google and other search engines.
The search result pages show both paid and unpaid result pages. Paid search is referred to as PPC (pay per click) or Search engine marketing (SEM), it is used for immediate results and shorter duration. Traffic that comes from the search engine is known as organic search traffic; it takes time but lasts long and is cost-effective.
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SEO can be categorized into three types
1)On-page SEO means everything you do on your website.
2)Technical SEO, relates to the features of your website that have a direct impact on how search engines index and crawl it.
3)Off-Page SEO is a process that alludes to techniques that are used outside of your website.
Off-Page SEO covers all the processes and activities you can do to improve your website’s authority, relevance, and reliability.
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13 most important Off-Page SEO factors are as follows:
- Link Building
- Social Media
- Local SEO (Google My Business)
- Blog post & Blog Commenting
- Guest Posting (Directories)
- Forums
- Build Trust
- Videos and Images
- Influencer
- Web
- Brand Image
- Document Sharing
- PR (Press Release)
Link Building
According to search engine giant Google, there are more than 200 factors for ranking on search engine result pages. Among them, the most important factor for off-page SEO is link building.
According to Google, almost 100 billion searches are made on Google every month for content, products, and services and more than half of those searches come from mobile devices. Search engines are paying more attention to understanding, why and how others interact with your web pages.
Links are very important to Google to determine any web page’s value, authority, and rankings. If no links are pointing, no matter how useful, fresh, or in-depth the content might be, it will not get proper ranking.
How Does Off-Page SEO Help in Ranking?
Do-Follow Command that suggests crawler or web spider follow the link and crawl that webpage, only follow links help in SEO rankings. No-Follow command that suggests crawler, not to follow that link and crawl that webpage, does not help in SEO rankings.
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There are 3 types of backlinks.
1. Natural links: Natural links are those backlinks that you get without doing any activity, it means people mentioning your website link, on their website without you asking them. Example – Your happy customers writing a review or a testimonial about your product or service on their website or blog recommending it to others.
2. Manual Links: Manual links are activities that you conduct on purpose to obtain fresh links for external websites, such as contacting influencers and bloggers and asking them to advocate, or review your product or service on their blog.
3. Self Created links: Self-created links are where you go, and create these links by registering at the local directory, creating social media profiles, answering in Q&A forums (Quora, Reddit) blog comments, signature, web directories, forums, press releases, etc.
Backlinks are taken into account by Google when ranking a webpage:
A) Link Volume: Links volume means the total number of backlinks your website has.
B)Link authority: The popularity of the connecting site, the relatedness of the linking site to your website/webpage, the linking site’s reliability, and the linking site’s authority are all factors to consider.
C)Anchor text: Anchor text is another element of a link that Google considers. The anchor text clarifies what the receiving link’s content is all about.
D)Link Placement: The location of the links on the page is referred to as link placement. Links placed in the body of the page, along with the content have more weightage than the links placed in the sidebar or footer.
More than 90% of digital consumers are on social media platforms. Social media isn’t considered as an official ranking parameter for SEO purposes, but Google has understood the value of social media and its worthiness. Social networks are increasingly used as search engines, with more and more users looking to find answers to their questions. Social media drives more traffic than organic traffic, but it doesn’t mean to replace SEO as both serve their purpose.
Shares and likes are the social media platform magic wand; they make your business escalate, and spread like wildfire. You get new subscribers, fans, and leads, whenever new and engaging content is shared. To earn more links from social media, build your personal and brand authority with relevant influencers.
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Local SEO (Google My Business)
Google My Business plays a vital role in the online presence of any local business. As per a report, 46% of Google searches are looking for local information, and 80% of customers use google maps for local information. Take a look at the tips and tricks to help you optimize your listing, and understand how to make the most of the platform, as part of your off-page SEO strategy.
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Blog Post & Blog Commenting:
Blogging is an effective technique to increase the number of people who learn about your company online. The goal should be to publish valuable content, and not to publish promotional articles. A blog adds new content to your website every time an article is published, and search engines reward websites that consistently supply new information to their blog posts with higher rankings.
A well-written post contains numerous critical elements that are necessary for generating traffic and converting it into leads. A compelling article title. Your article should also appeal to search engines to remember to include an industry keyword. Your title is for SEO purposes; your title should indicate, what the article is all about.
The article should be well written and clear to read; apply header tags and bullet points to separate the content into sections. Add Multimedia content, aim to include at least one relevant image on every blog post, video presentation, and infographics Link. To help you create more leads from your content, your links can naturally point to your internal and landing pages, allowing visitors to dive deeper into the resources they’re most interested in. To enhance lead creation, the post should include a CTA (call to action).
Deciding what to blog.
The most business blog starts with a purpose- what are you trying to educate, your industry and potential customers about. The education is not about your product, it is about common industry issues, the problems your potential customer faces, and the solutions your product or service offers to tackle these challenges. Business blogging is about lead generation. It is a fantastic platform for attracting organic traffic and engaging with your audience.
However, the primary goal is to drive conversions; to achieve this goal, add CTA to your posts then link them to landing pages. Other content used for lead generation. Longer format contents, like e-book, white papers, research reports can be used for lead generations, and also consider creating non-text-based offers, like how-to videos, webinars, slide shows, etc.
Blog commenting is a great off-page SEO practice for driving organic traffic to your site, and improving your SERP ranking. Some people spend a lot of time commenting on popular blogs, related to your niche, discussing the topics, and writing views, reviews, and citations around those. If someone comments on your blog, acknowledge them religiously.
Guest Posting (Directories)
Guest posting is all about writing as a guest, for someone else’s website and providing value and information to their audience. There’s no doubt that guest posting is still one of the most popular link-building strategies.
When done correctly, it can help you get your brand in front of a focused audience, deliver targeted traffic, and establish you as an expert in your subject. The major goal of guest posting should be to attract a new audience, get in front of the traffic of comparable size, and gain exposure. Develop your brand. When you approach the method with this perspective, you’ll find it to be beneficial.
Obtain a column on a large news organization that covers your market niche. This will undoubtedly benefit your reputation. As an authority figure, who can aid in the development of your reputation and visibility. Writing guest posts regularly will aid in the development of quality backlinks and the increase of organic traffic. Most media sites will provide you with an attribution link at the bottom of each piece, or an author bio page that includes a link back to you.
Submitting to trusted directories is a good place to start, local directory submission, get links by registering your business in local directory websites, like just dial, yellow pages, sulekha, classmates, Google my business, Magic pic, Foursquare, etc.; industry-based directories-signup in directories that are industry-specific like Practo for Doctors, Zomato for restaurants, common floor and 99 acres for real estate. Job posting site-create profiles in all job portals like Naukri, Monster, Indeed, etc.
Forums
Answering questions on forums like Quora, Yahoo, and Reddit is a great place to promote your website, and it’s one of the great off-page SEO techniques. And forums are great platforms for link building, and one of the greatest points of discussion of your interest with your peers and customers, to showcase your authority and authenticity about the topic and build a strong relationship and trust.
Build Trust
Off-page SEO, of course, includes trust. After all, trust is earned through social media and customer voting. Transparency is one of the most important factors in establishing trust. Don’t try to fool your viewers, with appealing titles and low-quality content, instead, provide relevant information. That is the best approach to increase organic traffic.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security feature that protects your website’s user interaction. This type of connection ensures that the information sent between the web server and the browsers remains private and safe. When entering private data such as credit card numbers, usernames, and passwords, or any other sensitive information, if users believe their data is safeguarded by this encrypted link, they are more likely to trust a website. Obtaining company evaluations is one technique to create and test your user’s confidence.
Begin by asking your current customers, to look over your rating area and leave a comment. It’s critical to explain how and why you require their feedback on your services, which should be voiced and posted openly. The greater the number of consumers you have, the more reviews you should receive.
Especially if you have a Facebook page, where people can stay up to date on your business, post reviews, and stay engaged. However, reviews require prompt responses from you, regardless of how positive or negative they may be; make it a habit to check your review area. And post comments regularly; your users need to know that you’re a real person that isn’t afraid to treat their consumers with respect and gratitude.
Video and Images
Short videos are better for getting people to watch the entire video, YouTube is the world’s most popular, video channel followed by Daily motion and Vivo.
Infographics generate more than 37% more backlinks than a regular blog post. Backlinks are very much important if you want to sustain your site ranking position. This shows the importance of creating infographics for link building, as per one of the surveys human brain processes images, and visual information 60000 X faster than plain text. Whether your company is B2B or B2C, use visual marketing to drive engagement with your target audience and earn editorial links from the best right sites.
Influencers
Influencers are persons who have a huge following, engaged and trusting fans, or other means of influencing a part of your target audience on social media. If you can reach out to them, and persuade or impress them enough to share your blog article, retweet, or anything, you’ll be able to reach a larger segment of the audience that trusts the influencer in a short amount of time.
Instead of creating links, use influencer marketing to establish a brand and reach new audiences. Getting influencers interested in sharing your content depends mainly on the trust and relationships you build with them.
Web presence
McDonald’s, Nike, Coca-Cola, and other well-known brands are ubiquitous, right? Isn’t it on YouTube? Check. Check out Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This kind of presence not only helps them reach all of their consumer categories but also boosts their brand authority. Likewise, vice versa. Consider how your visitors would search for your website. What is the goal of their search? For novices, understanding search intent, or the motivation behind every search may assist inform your site content and approach beyond SEO?
Discover where consumers first land on your site, and how they get there, uncover your best-performing pages, and learn what keywords your site visitors use to reach you. Use what you’ve learned to help you make better content and SEO decisions in the future. Go secure with SSL is good for your customers, good for you, and it’s required by Google in terms of SEO.
HTTPS is now officially recognized by Google as a ranking criterion. This is crucial not just for your safety, but also for the protection of your clients. Furthermore, 84 percent of users indicate they will cancel a transaction if data is delivered via an insecure connection. Meanwhile, 82% of users will not even look at an unprotected website (HTTP)
Brand Image
It is now common knowledge that Google favors brands. Branding is critical to the success of your content. And brand-building efforts should have, not only your overall SEO and marketing plan but also your off-page SEO strategy. And once again, it all adds up to an increase in your online authority, which is good for both users and search engines. Brand SERPs are another reason, why it’s critical to concentrate on brand-building initiatives.
What are brand search engine results pages (SERPs)? These are the search results that appear when someone types your brand name into a search engine. Search queries for your brand name in the SERPs are critical touchpoints and are thus critical to your business. You should keep track of them, evaluate them, and improve them regularly.
The first 2-3 pages of results for the search phrase ‘Brand + review’ represent Google’s, opinion of your credibility, and the first pages of results for the search query ‘Brand’ demonstrate, how well Google understands your brand. When you create a brand, you’ll notice, that you’ll start to get links and mentions all over the internet.
Document Sharing
You’ll be able to rank for keywords, which your site wouldn’t otherwise be able to compete for, for a variety of reasons, by publishing material about your business on other platforms. Upload documents to doc sharing services like Scribed, Academia, and Slide Share, if you think your piece of content will benefit others.
Treat the papers as though they were typical pieces of content, conducting keyword research and optimizing all aspects of them, including titles, file names, and transcripts. When it’s appropriate and practicable, include effective call-to-actions, and connections back to your website.
The advantage of posting documents on these platforms is that while PDFs and PowerPoint files cannot be indexed by search engines, they can be read by these sites. Additionally, create podcasts and videos on your brand topic, similar to written documents, and then publish them to Sound Cloud, YouTube, and other platforms with a transcript. The transcript is where you may make it easy for search engine crawlers to find your material.
Platforms for Content Distribution.
Create accounts on all of the content-sharing networks, such as Pinterest, Flickr for images, Slide share, PowerPoint for Presentations, Sound cloud for audio, YouTube and Daily Motion for video, and so on. It’s similar to SEO in general.
Press Release
Many SEOs choose digital press releases (PR) as a link-building strategy since it is a great way to get high-quality authority links quickly. You can utilize public relations strategies to promote a wonderful narrative and the related linkable assets, and you can get a lot of links as a result. Off-page SEO signals are aided by public relations in more ways, than just helping to build links.
A good public relations effort can also raise brand awareness and, as a result, brand searches. Bring your company to the attention of your target audience and encourage them to talk about you. Referral traffic has increased. It establishes you as a thought leader in your field and aids in the development of trust signals.
Do press releases whenever there are product updates or something significant to convey. You can help your business reach out to additional customer segments, and get your message heard by contacting and keeping solid relationships with journalists and publications in the field.
Frequently Asked Questions
1) What are SEO on-page and off-page?
On-page SEO is a technique for optimizing individual web pages in search engines so that they rank higher and receive more relevant traffic.
Off-page optimization refers to a technique for improving a website’s position on a search engine results page (SERPS).
2) How does off-page SEO work?
Five strategies to boost your domain authority using off-page SEO techniques are local listings, guest content, forum posting, and social media marketing, creating high-quality backlinks Backlink building is at the heart of off-site SEO, and it’s a tactic, that’s essential for every site that wants to rank on page one.
3) What are the benefits of off-page SEO?
Off-Page SEO benefits improve ranking. It aids in the ranking of your website in the SERPs, resulting in increased visitors’ fantastic exposure because of the number of links, social media mentions, and other factors. The higher the rating, the more traffic, and improved PageRank.
4) What is required for off-page SEO?
In addition to on-page SEO, they include a variety of basic SEO components that help a site rank. Such as popularity, authority, trustworthiness, and relevance.
Conclusion
The 13 Off-page SEO techniques discussed above are some of the bests from the list of more than 200 techniques that Google and other search engines consider for ranking. You can choose other techniques too which you feel are suitable for your activity.
