On-page SEO is absolutely necessary for anyone who wishes to have a strong online presence. But what about off-page SEO? How much emphasis should you place on off-page SEO?
Turns out, off-page SEO is typically the differentiator. It’s not hard to do on-page SEO well: just hire a guy to do it for you, choose the right keywords, and follow Google’s guidelines. But doing off-page SEO properly is a different beast. So what do you do?
Link Building
Link building is the bread and butter of off-page SEO. From 1997 on, PageRank (the proprietary algorithm that determines where you are in the search rankings) has determined a site’s ranking based on the quality of websites that link back to it.
Reaching out to site owners is still a great way to build quality links, however there are other strategies such as broken link building.
Social Media Power
It’s not enough to just create social media profiles and have links to your website in those (although that IS something you should be doing). Google likes content that gets shared. Creating shareable content on social media that people get real value from will help your page go up in the rankings.
Blog Commenting
Many blogs turn off their comments due to spam. However, some blogs leave them open. Do not spam these blogs by simply leaving a link! Contribute to the discussion, and have a reason to put your link there. This way, blog owners will benefit from the comments you post as well.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is an old strategy, but it still works extremely well. Reach out to blog owners in your space. Then, ask if you could write a piece of high-quality content in exchange for a link back to your site. How do you know they’ll say yes? The key is to write amazing content for them. That way, it benefits them as well.
Video and Image Submission
An excellent way to get good quality links is to submit video content to various websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Dailymotion. This video content should be relevant to your site and high-quality as well. By submitting this content, you can build a following on these websites while also taking advantage of the traffic they bring. The link juice helps, as well.
Press Release Links
Sending out press releases and leaving links to your website in these press releases is still a good way to get good quality links to your site. However, Google does not prioritize these links as highly as they used to.
Questions & Answers
Using Question & Answer portals like Quora and LinkedIn, especially if people find your link to be relevant to their question, can be an excellent source of high quality links AND high quality traffic to your site. This requires some level of authority, but if you’re posting good answers, this can help you tremendously.
In Summary
- Off page SEO optimization work will improve your website’s rankings.
- Build quality links, and avoid black-hat strategies.
- Invest some time into making good content for social media and Q&A portals.
