If you find that your website is struggling to rank on search engines, despite you putting in a lot of effort with your site and your content, then off-page SEO, or a lock of it, could be the things hindering you. There are two areas of SEO: off-page and on-page optimization. A lot of people connect off-page SEO as looking for backlink opportunities, but is that what it is all about?
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO describes all of the efforts that are taken from outside of a website, to help to improve search engine rankings. Link building is definitely part of that, but off-page SEO goes further than that. Link building is one of those things, but off-page SEO also involves content marketing, podcasts, reviews on landing pages, social media, and building local listings, and so on.
On-page SEO are the areas of your website that are completely under your control, such as meta descriptions and adding HTML tags. This isn’t always the case for off-page SEO. As an example, if you reached out to someone asking for a link back, that is off-page SEO. You didn’t change anything about your site during this exchange, but it is a help for your search engine rankings. If you did something like optimizing the images on your website, then that is on-page SEO, as it is something that you physically did to help your site to rank. So as a simple definition, off-page SEO is something that isn’t in your control.
Why is off-page SEO important?
There are a number of things that search engines will take into account when deciding where a web page should rank. Links and backlinks are just one area of those factors, as there are a number of others. That is why it can be hard to rank on just your own content. Without doing something about your off-page SEO, then you will find it more difficult to rank for any competitive search terms.
If you think about your off-page SEO as a way to build up the authority of your website, then without doing anything, your site won’t be able to outrank others that already have a much higher authority, which is naturally what tends to happen. By taking steps to improve your off-page SEO, then you can help to increase the authority of your site, as well as building your brand.
Some of the off-page SEO techniques that will help, alongside link building, are:
- Brand Building: brand building activities are a key part of your wider SEO and marketing, but should also part of your off-page SEO
- Content Marketing: creating great content is what will get shared with others, and where others will link back to
- PR: you can use some PR tactics to help to promote great content, as well as linkable assets, helping to get traffic as a result
- Local SEO: using something like Google My Business can help to get listed locally for someone searching in your area.
- Social Media
- Influencer Marketing
- Podcasts: part of a marketing strategy that can make a difference to the number of people looking for your website online.
- Reviews: an online reputation is so important, and can help to build trustworthiness of your site.
