Off-page SEO refers to everything you can do OFF your website to increase your ranking. This includes blog marketing, forum marketing, article submission, link building, etc. Off-page SEO is a crucial part of any well-developed SEO plan.
If you want an effective off-page SEO strategy, you need to ensure it includes all of the following elements.
Social Networking Sites
Social networking has grown by leaps and bounds from what it was in the past. Getting involved in various social networks is a fundamental step in off-page SEO. Make sure to sign up for the most popular (and relevant) social sites, including:
- Google+
Also, there are niche specific social sites to use, as well. These are a great source to find new customers and connect with others who may benefit from your services.
Blogging
When you write a blog on your website, you give people a reason to keep coming back. It also ensures search engine spiders are crawling your site frequently. This helps you achieve a higher rank in the SERPs.
The question many people have is, “what do I post?” There are countless ways to reach customers, but the key is to provide them with the information they want and need.
While blogging is actually an on-page SEO tactic, the off-page element comes in here. You need to submit your blog to niche blog directories, as well as blog search engines.
Blog Marketing
Make sure you are posting comments on other blogs in your same business niche. This often gives you the opportunity to add your own link in the comments section. The links are then crawled by the search engines, which points them back to your site. These blogs are referred to as “Do-Follow” Blogs.
Link Building
This is perhaps the biggest and most important form of off-page SEO. Blog marketing (described above) is one form of link building. The key is to build external links on other people’s pages that lead back to your website. Some of the most effective ways to build your external links include:
- Blog directories – similar to the “yellow pages” but each entry provides a link back to your website.
- Forum signatures: Comment in forums to get a link back to your site.
- Article directories: Publish various articles on an article directory, which can give you two or more links back to your site – per article.
Good vs. Bad Links
An important note with link building is that there are both good – and bad links.
Domain authority is determined by a websites “trust” factor. The more Google trusts it, the higher DA it will have. The goal is to try and have all your links attached to sites that have a high DA.