Off page SEO – Why does it matter?
Search engines take account of multiple factors when it comes to rank a web page. E-A-T (Expert, Authoritative, and Trustworthy) is one among them. Demonstrating good E-A-T within and outside your site will help you achieve higher rankings on the SERPs. Implementing off-page SEO techniques help you to achieve it.
Off-page SEO indicates search engines how authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant your site is in a particular niche. It gives cues to search engines about how other website owners and users are perceiving your site.
The most important Off page SEO Techniques are,
1. Link Building
2. Brand Mentions
3. Social Media Marketing
4. Influencer Marketing
Link Building
Link Building is the process of building links to your sites from external websites. A Backlink, aka ‘Inbound Link’ or ‘Incoming Link’, is a hypertext link you receive from an external website to your web page. It serves as navigation among websites.
These links are considered as a ‘Vote’ for a web page, which means if your web page has a high number of quality links from active & authoritative sites, then it’ll get higher rankings on the SERPs.
Initially, Google considered sites with more backlinks as more authoritative. However, the majority of sites exploited this mechanism, which resulted in sites with spammy links getting higher rankings.
As it was easily exploitable, Google changed its algorithm and penalized sites that indulged in such activities.
The important algorithmic updates are,
Panda– Released in February 2011, in order to track the low-quality websites with content farms
Penguin– Released in 2012, in order to track the link farms, low-quality links, and over-optimized anchor text.
Today, Google determines the authoritativeness of a site based on the quality of the backlinks rather than the number of backlinks.
Gaining quality links from relevant and authoritative sites will add weightage to your site and increase your rankings.
Common Backlink Metrics
- ⚡ Moz Domain Authority
- ⚡ Moz Page Authority
- ⚡ Moz Spam Score
- 🔥 Ahref Domain Rating
- 🔥 Ahref URL Rating
- 💣Authority Score By SEMrush
Types of Backlinks
🐕🦺 Do-Follow Attribute
It lets search engines to follow the link and reach your website. These links, built from high PR and domain authority sources, will pass on the authority (link juice) to your page.
🚷 No-Follow Attribute
Search engines will not follow these links because of the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag. Therefore, it doesn’t pass authority to your site.
👤 UGC Attribute
💵 Sponsored Attribute
Knowledge Base
Backlink Attribute Checker 🧰
Anchor Text
Anchor Text is the clickable text that displays in the hypertext link. It lets search engine crawlers know what the linked page is about.
Professional SEOs will use specific keyword terms in the anchor text. The more number of links with certain keywords will help you get higher rankings.
Remember, over-optimizing the anchor text with a particular keyword will result in the Google penalty. However, using semantic keywords in the anchor text can help prevent from being penalized.
Consider these factors of a linking site before you get a link,
Domain Authority
Page Authority
Relevancy
Quality backlinks should come from relevant, niche-related sites that have high domain authority among search engines and users. Therefore, the higher the scores, the higher the quality of the backlink will be.
Link Building Techniques
- Guest Posting
- Create Great Content
- Competitors Backlink
- Testimonial
- Forums Signature
- Broken Link Building
- Infographics
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing helps brands to improve their visibility by connecting with the right audiences and promoting valuable content. It comes under off-page optimization. In fact, it’s a form of Link Building.
Though, the links you get from social sites are “nofollow”, it doesn’t mean it has no value to your SEO efforts. The proper configuration of your social profiles and more mentions on these platforms will improve your rankings and give an edge to your SEO activities.
Brand Mentions
Google tends to rank brands at the top of the results. It’s because of the same concept ‘E-A-T’. Google aims to make its users’ experience great. As most users consider these brands more reliable than others, Google automatically ranks such brands higher on the SERPs to ease their user experience.
Like Links and social mentions, brand mentions will not necessarily have a link pointing towards its website. Rather, it’ll be mentioned in the blog comments sessions, forums, articles, reviews, etc.
Web crawlers will crawl these mentions to see how the mentioned brand is viewed by other people.
Therefore, brands need to pursue positive mentions of their brand. It’s equally important to monitor their mentions over the web properly to respond to negative comments.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is another off-page SEO tactic that provides greater results. However, the challenge is finding the right influencer. With the right influencer, you can gain visibility among larger audiences. It helps you gain trust and authority in your niche.