OFF-PAGE SEO OPTIMIZATION
A component of search engine optimization, off-page SEO refers to all activities carried out outside the website with the aim of increasing its position in search engine results. Below you will find out exactly what off-page SEO is and why you need it.
When we talk about online promotion, we inevitably talk about SEO promotion, a complex process that is divided into two main stages. Below we’ll explain everything about off-site optimization.
WHAT IS OFF-PAGE SEO?
Search engine optimization is a fundamental part of online marketing and involves increasing a website’s position in the list of search engine results through a series of technical and creative activities that make it visible online and create awareness.
However, in order to be visible and to gain higher positions in the results page, a website has to apply increasingly rigorous optimization techniques, both on-page and off-page.
Unlike on-page optimization, i.e. within the site, the off-page optimization stage refers to its support through link building methods and is important because, no matter how well an on-page site is optimized, without off-page optimization, it will not appear in the results. The exception is in cases where competition is very weak or non-existent.
Off-page optimization is, in fact, the one that deals with obtaining a visible increase in search engines and involves, more specifically, developing a collection of social media mentions, advertorials and articles that refer, via links, to the optimized site. The existence of a network of backlinks is important because it helps to strengthen the authority and position of a website in search engines.
WHAT IS A BACKLINK?
A backlink is a reference displayed on a website that links to the source website, with the aim of reinforcing its authority. More concretely, we can call backlinks a method of linking between sites, which supports the search engine optimised site and the entire online promotion process. Or, even more simply, think of backlinks as votes of confidence. The more votes a site receives from external sources, the more important it becomes in the eyes of search engines. And the more the site is viewed by search engines, the more its authority and ranking increases.
An effective off-page optimization campaign focuses on the quantity, diversity and quality of backlinks, so make yourself seen in as many different ways as possible, whether on social media, personal blog, profile sites, etc.
Backlinks can be created organically, naturally, or deliberately, by listing in article directories, by exchanging or buying links, collaborations, etc. Although listing a site in directories does not have a high impact on site ranking, they are mostly used to create diversity in the backlink network.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LINK BUILDING
First and foremost, when creating your link network you need to consider two important aspects:
1. The authority of the domain providing your link. Its authority is given, in turn, by the link profile it has. A page on an authoritative domain will be better seen than a page on a domain with less authority. You can calculate this indicator – Domain Authority (DA) – on the MOZ website.
2. The anchor text under which you create the link. Anchor text is that key phrase that you click on to go to another page on or off the site. If you want to optimise an article with a certain keyword, for example, we don’t recommend creating too many links with the same anchor text. Google penalizes these aggressive optimization tactics. Try to increase the authority of your site by linking to synonyms of the initial keyword, long tail keywords or brand name in the anchor text.
Rules for using anchor text:
- The anchor text must be relevant to the targeted page;
- The anchor text should not exceed 5-6 words;
- Anchor text must be included in the first half of the article.
Other remarks!
At the site-wide level, “exact match” anchors – the targeted keyword phrase – should not exceed 20% of the total anchors used in the link building campaign. This can be checked in your Google Search Console account in the Links – Top linking text section or in the link analysis tools (Majestic and CognitiveSeo).
The purpose of search engines is to determine the quantity and quality of links that link to a particular site, to ensure that only pages with valuable and trustworthy content will be indexed and receive a higher rank in the results page.
Unfortunately, this has also created opportunities for manipulation of the system, with many of those doing SEO on their own preferring shortcuts. We don’t encourage these techniques because, in the end, Google will notice them and penalize the site in question.
What most people don’t understand is that it takes time to get visible results from SEO. But rather than cheating Google’s algorithms with less conventional techniques, it’s better to find other promotion strategies with immediate results, such as PPC promotion through Google AdWords.
As a matter of fact, most clicks are on organic results, so you can’t ignore search engine optimization. Moreover, for maximum results we recommend combining as many online promotion methods as possible – SEO, AdWords, Facebook Ads, remarketing, etc. – and not limiting yourself to just one of them.
To better understand the power of the link building process, let’s look at some link building processes and how they use search engines.
LINK BUILDING STRATEGIES
In the case of off-site optimization, the best link building strategy is based on two important factors: the type of business and the competition of the site. Depending on these, details such as: what type of material (educational or informational) to use and when, where to publish it for increased visibility, how to link it to social networks to increase your visibility, etc. will be determined.
Let’s take an example. If you’ve recently opened an online shop selling organic products, it’s best to start your link building campaign by writing awareness (education) materials that familiarize the public with your name. Publish them on websites relevant to your business. Keep in mind your target audience. If you deliver locally, publish material about your business on local sites, and if you deliver nationally, make it known by publishing on general sites. Take into account the average age to choose the best sites to target.
You can also contact a few influencers in the nutrition and lifestyle fields to showcase your products, and they will write about you, mention you in their social media posts and/or become your customers. And whatever you do, don’t forget to make yourself known on social media! Create quality content, interact with your audience and provide them with useful information about your products and brand.
Next we will present the most popular link building strategies.
Articles/Advertorials
Google aims to satisfy the needs of users by showing only relevant results when they search for a particular topic, so it is imperative to write quality material. The more valuable the content, the higher the potential for display.
Be careful though about bounce rates and time spent on the site. It’s no use writing Pulitzer Prize-worthy material if it’s not properly written according to SEO copywriting techniques and readers don’t have the patience to go through it all.
More important than ever, user experience comes first. Google gives priority to sites with low bounce rates because it considers this index as a proof of the quality and relevance of the content. Moreover, sites that publish copied, poorly researched articles, created only to drive traffic, suffer because Google has started to take drastic measures against these link building processes.
Choose the topics to be covered in the articles based on an analysis of the volume of searches and the level of competitiveness on a given topic, and write the articles taking into account some important aspects, such as:
- Choose photos and videos that best illustrate your chosen topic;
- Structure the article properly, divide it into short paragraphs and add subheadings; write articles over 500 words;
- The article must be informative, original and relevant to the chosen topic;
- The message conveyed must be tailored to the audience.
In order to create more diversity, in your Google Search Console account, in the Links – Top linking sites section, you can find the sites/blogs where articles have been posted. It is recommended that you include a link for each site. Using this method does not dilute the authority of the site where the article was posted.
Registration in article directories
An article directory is a site where you can submit press releases or promotional articles with links to other sites. Although important in the SEO promotion process, article directories must provide qualitative links to sites in order to be considered legitimate.
Directory entry should be done carefully, at a natural pace. This means that you will have to choose only SEO friendly directories, that you will have to pay extra attention to selecting the optimal category and write the most relevant and informative material for your audience. An abusive and incorrect listing can lead to the site being penalized by Google.
Infographics
According to statistics, an infographic is 30% more likely to be read than other articles, making it a useful, relevant and valuable method of link building. Plus, it’s a quick and fun way to find out or learn more about a topic without having to read dozens of pages about it.
Images and videos
Since Google displays images and videos from profile aggregators in the results, it is advisable to use them in your link building campaign, especially if you have a business where visuals play an important role. Use Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr and other image aggregators for photos, and Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo for videos. Add a link to your website in descriptions of the materials you use.
Social media posts
Many websites are reporting increases in Google rankings following waves of likes and shares because Google’s algorithms have begun to place an increasingly high value on signals from social networks, which they see as important indicators of ranking in search results. Thus, an organic marketing plan that works for you puts SEO, social media and content marketing under the same umbrella.
Blog posts
Another way to generate links is to create articles and materials to post on your website’s blog. It is very important that the materials are not made on the key phrases for which the SEO campaign is being carried out. Creating a page on the site for a keyword phrase and writing a blog article for the same keyword phrase leads to cannibalization of the pages and, therefore, to a drop in the search engine rankings for that keyword phrase.
We recommend you to create articles on a diverse set of keywords starting from the initial one, which will help you to get indexed for long tail words.
Influencer marketing
One of the best ways to gain the attention and trust of a new audience is to associate with people or brands that already have a community built around them. Thus, collaborating with an influencer can help you not only to reach an audience interested in your services or products more quickly, but also to build a relationship of trust between your audience and your brand, precisely through the recommendation made by the influencer, which adds value to your messages.
Partnerships with bloggers and/or vloggers can result in highly effective and creative campaigns for both parties, so include this strategy in your link building campaign.
If until a few years ago link building was done in a crude way, without providing quality, today Google puts emphasis on user experience and relevance of links built and penalizes sites that try to build a network of links in an aggressive way or that do not respect Google policies. In order to benefit from a superior search engine ranking it is important to align with Google’s policies..
As you can see, the link building process is as complex as it is diversified and, being a creative strategy, has no standard recipe. Due to the complexity with which the elements on which the algorithms are based are implemented, each link-building strategy has a unique result.
TOOLS FOR OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION
Here are the tools you can use to optimize an off-page site.
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