Off-Page SEO Techniques/Activities To Change Your Ranking Game!

In order to understand off-page SEO techniques, we need to get down to the basics. What is the first thing you do when you come across a new word, issue, or anything else you’re not exactly familiar with or want more information about? You search for it on Google, right?

This is why search engine optimization is so important. One of the most significant sources of traffic on the internet today is organic search, which means if you haven’t integrated SEO as part of your campaign, then you’re completely missing out on exposure to the masses.

Another essential factor to consider is that search engine optimization comes at a negligible cost when compared to paid digital marketing campaigns and is also more sustainable.

Not only that, but it also establishes and strengthens brand credibility and authority and leads to an increase in traffic and eventually sales.

However, one thing you need to remember is that SEO is a process for the long run and takes effort, time, patience, and commitment and relies on offering quality products or services that allow the audience to trust that brand.

If you want to learn more about SEO and on-page and off-page activities in SEO, then you have come to the right place. Let’s first look at the definition of SEO, and then we will dive into off-page SEO techniques that will change your ranking game for good.

Off-Page SEO Techniques – the Basics!

What Is SEO?

As mentioned above, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO includes different practices that optimize and improve the positioning and appearance of websites and web pages in organic search engine results.

According to a study by Advanced Web Rankings conducted in 2014, web pages on the first search engine results page receive approximately 95% of the traffic, while the remaining pages receive only 5%. The same research also mentions that 67% of all clicks go only to the top five listings; this is precisely why it is vital for every brand to have a good SEO strategy.

How Does SEO Work?

Different search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, use crawlers to find information about all the content that they can find online. The crawler starts from a well-known and authentic website or a web page and follows internal and external links on that page.

The content and links help the search engines understand what each page or website is about.

Thus, when a user has a query and feeds that into the search box, the search engine then pulls out all the results it believes are the most accurate, practical, and relevant to that query.

These results can include websites and web pages that contain images, videos, content, news articles, business listings, and more.

Let’s understand this further with an example:

Person X wants to surprise his partner on her birthday and decides to bake a cake. However, Person X doesn’t know how to bake. So, he goes on Google and searches for the words ”cake recipe for beginners.” When he clicks on “Search,” he sees the recipes, and all of them contain the keyword he searched for, along with some other relevant keywords, such as baking, chocolate, vanilla, and others.

This is why it is crucial for you to pick your keywords wisely while doing SEO. However, there is more to SEO than just putting up a few keywords here and there.

As Google and other search engines continue to update and modify their search engine algorithms, one thing is for sure: your SEO strategy needs to incorporate both on-page and off-page SEO techniques.

Now, let’s familiarize ourselves with on-page and off-page SEO.

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing the content of web pages for search engines to help you rank higher. Standard on-page SEO practices include optimizing titles, meta descriptions, meta keywords, headings, content, images, internal links, outbound links, alt tags, URLs, and so on.

It also includes avoiding keyword cannibalization and includes constantly updating the content according to trending keywords.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO is the practice of optimizing for signals that happen off of your web page or website.

Some good examples of off-page SEO include building backlinks, and according to Ahrefs, the more backlinks a page has, the more organic traffic it receives from search engines.

Off-page activities in SEO also include influencer outreach, content marketing, and increasing engagement and reach on social media platforms.

In other words, off-page SEO is everything that you can do off your website to help your page rank higher in the SERPs and to get search engines to believe that your website is trustworthy and authoritative.

In this article, we will be focusing on off-page SEO, along with the best off-page SEO techniques, practices, and activities that will help your page rank higher on search engines.

Let’s get started!

Off-Page SEO Techniques to be Followed in 2022

1. Create Shareable Content

One of the biggest challenges that marketers face nowadays is content clutter.

Users come across hundreds and thousands of advertisements on a daily basis and are continuously bombarded with marketing messages.

Today, content is given the term “content shock” as the number of Facebook posts, Google searches, Tweets, and WhatsApp messages sent in a mere minute is genuinely astonishing.

Thus, creating content that is shareable is now more challenging than ever. Social media algorithms are continuously changing. That is why you see Instagram influencers and bloggers constantly asking their followers to “turn their notifications on” and engage with their organic content as the algorithms keep reducing their reach.

Success might seem unlikely with all the clutter on social media, right? Not really! Brands and bloggers that rise above the sea of mediocrity thrive in the digital sphere.

In today’s world, your content needs to be shareable. If it is creative, people will share it, which will lead to more backlinks to your site or blog.

One of the easiest ways to create shareable content is by keeping an eye on the latest trends.

Other than that, look at what your direct and indirect competitors are doing. This includes international competitors as well. This will help you figure out what your target audience likes seeing online.

You can also incorporate storytelling content in your strategy. According to Content Works, Generation Z has an attention span of eight seconds, while it’s 12 seconds for Millennials.

Most users also find advertisements disruptive; this is why incorporating storytelling can make your message relatable, touching, and compelling, which will help you grab their attention.

One of the best brand storytelling examples is Lego’s “Rebuild the World” campaign, which incorporates different storylines and encourages individuals to build, rebuild, unbuild, experiment, fail, try again, and break the rules.

2. Have a Presence on Social Media

One of the biggest reasons for your business to have a social media presence is that your customers are on social media.

The other day, I was looking for a new dentist for my regular checkup and asked two of my friends for recommendations. I then searched for the dentists they recommended on social media, and only one of them had a social media presence. I was able to check his reviews, testimonials, and prices and ultimately chose that dentist for my checkup, even though I’m sure the other dentist is credible too.

This is why having a social media presence is at the core of off-page SEO and can help any site rank higher on the search engine result pages.

The pandemic has also changed our everyday life in several different ways, including the way people use the internet and social media. According to Statista, the average time that users spend on social media in the United States has increased to 65 minutes per day, compared to 54 and 56 minutes the years before.

As well, the number of active worldwide internet users currently stands at 4.66 billion users worldwide, which is 59.5% of the total global population (Statista).

With so many people using the internet every day, having a social media presence is highly crucial for businesses that want to reach their audience online.

Thus, if you want to grow your business, you need to have a website, blog, or social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, or others and engage with your audience. This will also help your pages get more backlinks

3. Be Engaged on Social Media

Having a social media presence is not enough; you need to engage with your audience and win them over to rank higher on SERPs.

The pandemic has had a significant impact on our lives and has changed almost everything, including how we use the internet and social media. According to a study conducted by Digital Commerce 360, 72% of the respondents stated that their social media consumption increased during the pandemic.

Thus, with the use of social media soaring, business owners and marketers need to provide users with engaging, relevant, trendy, and exciting content.

You need to be where your customers are, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, or other platforms. The users on these platforms keep increasing, and more and more businesses, companies, and marketers are seizing the opportunity and promoting their brands online.

Thus, we recommend the following things when it comes to social media engagement:

a) Respond to Queries

People will talk about you, whether you’re a small business or a huge corporation. The conversation can be about whether they are satisfied with your product or service, or people might make a suggestion to a friend, write a review, comment on delivery time, or share a bad experience.

However, whatever the scenario is, you need to be empathetic and engage with your audience.

b) Keep an Eye on Influencers

By influencers, we do not necessarily mean people with droves of followers.

There are many thought leaders, well-known professionals, influential people, and other people that are respected for their opinions in a community and could spread the word about your business by simply mentioning your brand.

Keep an eye on these influencers and reach out to them to build meaningful connections.

c) Do Social Listening

Social listening is the activity of capturing all mentions regarding a specific product, service, brand, or keyword online. These mentions are considered as links when it comes to Google’s search algorithms, and this is precisely why every brand needs to stay on top of things.

To monitor these conversations, different social listening tools can be used. Through these monitoring tools, you can get to know what is being said about your brand and then use that chance to reach out to the audience and win them over.

Essentially, social listening will also provide you with insights that you can use to optimize your social media marketing strategies. It will also help you understand the image and perception of your brand as compared to your competitors.

4. Use Influencer Marketing

You’re probably wondering, “Why do I need to do influencer marketing to improve my SEO?”

The thing is, influencer marketing is an excellent alternative to traditional marketing and can help create awareness for your brand and ultimately develop credibility by delivering your marketing message and promoting your brand to a considerable amount of people.

In the end, ensure that the influencers you are selecting are relevant and can influence your target audience. Don’t select someone whose content is all related to traveling while your product is related to cosmetics. Ask influencers to check out your blog and ask for link backs from their blog.

5. Create Relevant Backlinks

Creating backlinks that are both relevant and useful is an effective off-page SEO technique.

According to Impact Plus, 91% of all web pages do not get any organic traffic from search engines, primarily due to the fact that they do not have any backlinks. The same source also states that the more backlinks a web page has, the more traffic it gets from Google and other search engines.

Thus, it can be concluded that backlinks are one of the most crucial factors when it comes to Google ranking.

Search engines such as Google are more likely to rank a site higher if it has more backlinks. Impact Plus stated that the top results on Google’s first page contain 3.8 times more backlinks than the ones below them.

Nevertheless, the noteworthy thing is that Google’s algorithm is so advanced that it ensures that backlinks are relevant to your domain.

Below are two types of links that can be created to help your ranking on SERPs:

a) Natural Links

This type of link is generated without taking any action and is often a sign of appreciation, trust, and endorsement.

For example, if you’re a clothing brand and come up with a post regarding body positivity and a blogger from the body positivity community sees your content and decides to link it from his or her site, this will be considered a natural link.

b) Self-Promotional Links

This type of link can be created through marketing your brand online. All you have to do is to ask customers, clients, or influencers to share your content.

Creating relevant backlinks will help search engines view your site as a reliable source.

However, remember that creating relevant backlinks takes a lot of hard work and a long-term off-page SEO strategy, but if done right, it can significantly improve your ranking.

6. Use Local Listings

A local listing contains basic information about your business, such as the name of the company/brand, location, hours of operation, website, phone number, etc.

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Local listings are oftentimes free and help consumers while they are researching or evaluating the alternatives and enable them to find your business.

It is also a fundamental off-page SEO technique and helps businesses increase their rankings, traffic, revenue, and reputation.

Following are some of the directories you can list your business on:

At the end of the day, ensure that all of your business information is identical across all listings, as misspelling a word or using synonyms or abbreviations can create confusion for search engines.

7. Perform Search Engine Submissions

Google is one of the most popular search engines in the world; however, it is not the only search engine present. You have other search engines, such as Bing, Yahoo, and more.

Thus, to let search engines know that your website exists, we do something called search engine submission.

Search engine submission means submitting your website URL to various search engines so that your website or web page is visible across a broad range of users.

However, many search engines do not rely on manual submissions and find new websites through crawling. This is one of the reasons why Google and Bing both discontinued search engine submission in 2018.

Now, the only way to submit your website or web page to the search engines mentioned above is by submitting your sitemap. For search engines like Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, you don’t have to submit your website.

8. Submit Articles

Article submission is a powerful off-page SEO technique in which you curate an article about your business, its offerings, and other valuable information and details, and publish it on a third-party website.

Article submission can help your business achieve quality backlinks to your website, web page, or blog and offers several other benefits, ultimately improving and enhancing your business’s ranking in SERPs.

Article submission can make the website or business owner seem like an industry expert and can help build trust among your target audience and potential target audience by providing them with a reason to visit your site.

Following are some free article submission sites:

9.Use Question-and-Answer Websites

One of the easiest ways you can get traffic and rank higher on SERPs is through question-and-answer websites; yes, you read that right!

Question-and-answer platforms are extremely powerful when it comes to reaching your brand’s audience, spreading brand awareness, developing thought leadership, and confirming your place in the niche you’re in.

Search for questions related to your industry, business, niche, website, or blog, and provide answers to these questions.

At the end of the answer, provide a link to your site, which will help attract a new audience and increase visibility.

Following are some of the best question-and-answer platforms:

Final Thoughts

For a long time now, both on-page and off-page SEO techniques have been used to raise brand awareness and drive organic traffic to a site.

In this article, we provided you with a list of nine off-page activities in SEO that you need to focus most of your time and effort on to drive massive traffic to your website. These activities will also lend you a helping hand when it comes to your organic marketing endeavors.

One way is to have a social media presence and cut through the clutter by creating shareable content, doing influencer marketing, engaging with the audience, and creating relevant backlinks.

Another one would be to do search engine and article submissions to ensure that search engines think of your site as credible and trustworthy. Local listings and answering questions regarding your brand are some other off-page SEO techniques that help businesses increase their rankings and revenue.

Last but not least, remember to stick to such white hat off-page SEO techniques. Using black hat activities (such as keyword stuffing, unethical redirects, link framing etc.) will get you penalized by Google and other search engines. You can also get blocked by users or be blocklisted by subscribers.

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