You got your website developed and optimized for SEO by the best developers in the world.
Invested heavily in quality backlinks and followed all the SEO guidelines for higher ranking.
Yet, you get only a trickle of interest, with only a handful of visitors per day?
What went wrong?
Technically you are on the right track. But you need to understand that successful SEO doesn’t happen overnight.
Search engine optimization can be frustrating, especially when you don’t know what to do to boost your website rankings.
But if you can develop an understanding of on page and off page SEO, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition.
To start with;
What is on page SEO?
On-Page SEO (also known as on-site SEO) is the practice of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher in Google and generating more traffic.
It entails both your effort in optimizing content and developers effort in optimizing your page for SEO, e.g. site responsiveness, source code, etc.
When working to boost your on-page SEO, you should consider factors such as title tags, alt tags for images, headings H1, and more.
On-page SEO has dramatically changed over the past few years, so it’s important to keep up with the latest practices so as to remain relevant.
What is off page SEO?
Off-page SEO focuses on increasing your domain authority through link building and other activities that happen away from your site. Here is a perfect analogy of how off page SEO works through link building.
If you have a bathtub with some bottle lids on it (bottle lids represent your pages) and you start filling your tub with water (water represents links), your bottle lids are going to rise to the top.
This is how authoritative sites like Wikipedia ranks first for nearly everything you search on the internet.
They have so much water in the bathtub such that if you throw another lid, it will float on top without much effort.
But off page SEO is more than just links.
It goes deeper than that. It encompasses other factors beyond your efforts; factors that happen away from your site.
For example, If a brand mentions your brand name or your site’s URL on another site, this boosts your SEO rankings.
In a nutshell, off page SEO tells Google what others think about your site. If many quality links are pointing back to your site, it signals Google that your site is reliable and reputable too.
In such cases, search engines (Google in particular), will assume your site has great content, and rank it higher.
Which makes sense, because why else would people and brands all point to your site?
Even in the business world, if your product is good and affordable, you get many word-of-mouth referrals.
5 ways to optimize your off page SEO without building a single link
Getting your brand or personal information to appear in Google Knowledge Graph is the simplest way to jump right into the front page.
The Knowledge Graph is like a giant billboard or a directory that enables Google to determine what to appear on the first page.
So how do you optimize your site or brand info to appear in the Knowledge Graph?
1. Create a Wikipedia profile for your brand
Wikipedia and wikidata sources are the two largest non-Google sources for knowledge Graphs.
Google heavily relies on Wikipedia data to fill certain parts of the Knowledge Graph such as statistics, company name, descriptions, etc.
Listing your site on Wikipedia increases its chances of appearing on the Knowledge Graph when a user searches for it.
If your brand doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry, you may be losing a lot when it comes to ranking.
Get a professional to create one for you, and include all the relevant information about your brand, including label, official website, description, and a Freebase ID if you have one.
2. Create a Google+ page
Bloggers and business owners who have learned how to leverage the power of Google+ knows it’s a paradise for endless opportunities.
If your Google+ presence is active, there is a high likelihood that Google will add a knowledge graph rich snippet with your feed on it.
Therefore, it’s advisable to strengthen your Google+ presence by posting regularly and running periodic campaigns to keep it active.
Also, make sure your Google+ page has the brand name that people use to search you.
3. Citations, business reviews, and comments boost your off page SEO.
Citations are listings of your brand name, address, and phone numbers (NAP) on external web pages.
Getting your name mentioned or listed on high-profile sites such as the U.S Chamber of Commerce significantly boosts your off page SEO.
Reviews form an essential part of off page SEO since they determine the credibility and reputation of your brand. Positive reviews create awareness and build trust.
In fact, research shows that 84% of people read online reviews before transacting or striking a deal with a business. These findings also revealed that 54% will visit a website after reading several positive reviews.
Putting your site/brand on high ranked review sites will not only generate traffic to your site but also boost your site ranking.
4. Create a YouTube account
Google relies heavily on YouTube data to display information about videos and audio.
So if your company produces any multimedia content, it’s a wise move to add it to YouTube.
For example, a search for Kanye West lists 3 of his favorite songs on YouTube. Clicking any of these links will direct you to the Google carousel which brings you to his official YouTube channel.
4 brilliant strategies to include in your off page SEO toolkit
Your off-page SEO toolkit needs to be loaded with all the goodies that Google considers ‘relevant’ in its rankings.
Not many years ago, authority used to be determined solely by backlinks. With time, the search engines quickly learned that sites with the most backlinks were not always the most trustworthy.
So here are the strategies you should implement to ensure your off page SEO toolkit is complete and on point.
1. Know where your audience “hangs out.”
Knowing where your audience contributes to discussions can bring you a myriad of benefits.
These may include:
- Increased awareness/trust among your audience.
- More natural links
- More brand mentions.
Let’s assume that your target customers are people interested in growing their websites, boosting SEO, and link building.
These people by virtue of their interests will hang out in places such as IncomeDiary, Quora, Reddit, etc.
By joining these forums and getting involved in the discussions, you can give your SEO insights while at the same time refer to some useful content on your site.
You can even answer SEO related questions, and with time, people will be more aware of you and start linking to your site.
2. Community creation in major social networking sites
Also known as online reputation management, community creation in social networking sites can significantly boost your off page SEO if done correctly.
The secret here is to become a member of as many social networking sites as possible and also create one of your own.
Think of LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Ecademy, Orkut and more.
By doing this, you can effectively connect with your friends, create, new friends, and use these channels to promote your business, a great way to enhance your online reputation.
Remember the first place customers will voice their concerns about your brand/products is in the social media.
Your presence on these social networking sites may not change people’s review about your products but can create awareness as well as change people’s opinions.
3. Video marketing
The future of digital marketing undeniably rests on video marketing.
Did you know that YouTube has over 1 billion videos? That’s almost a third of total internet users in the world. Here are more staggering facts to convince you that video marketing is slowly taking the world of digital marketing.
- 87% of marketers use video content for online marketing.
- More than 500 million hours are spent on YouTube on daily basis.
- 4 out of 5 consumers believe demo videos are more helpful.
Now that you know the power of video marketing, it’s a wise move to add video marketing to your off page SEO toolkit.
Create some video tutorial with relevant topics from your blog niche. Be sure to add titles and tags as you submit them to popular video submission sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Vine among others.
The good thing is that these sites do have high domain authority and good Alexa rank, so you can expect a good amount of referral traffic.
4. Compelling content marketing
Off page SEO optimization is all about content marketing.
After all, there cannot be inbound or outbound links without content.
Google ranking algorithm recognizes that content is king.
If you want to earn relevant links from other sites, you’ve to create unique content, content that will go viral, and content that will be relevant to your audience.
The more valuable and unique your content is, the higher the chances that someone will find it and link it to their blogs or share it on social networks.
The more your content is shared, the more your brand/site is mentioned, the better your off page SEO becomes.
Summary
Off-page SEO is more than just link building.
It encompasses many external factors that determine your site’s authority.
The conversations that people are making about your brand, the references made to it, and its presence in the Google Knowledge Graph have a lot to do with your search engine rankings.
So if you are a marketer and you’ve not given off page SEO the attention it deserves, you are losing a lot. Take your time to invest in a rock-solid SEO strategy, and with time, your effort will pay off.
Is your off page SEO strategy generating good results? We would love to hear from you in the comment section below.
This Off-Page SEO sounds very interesting on how you can rank higher in google search engines. Sounds like people are not taking full advantage of the SEO-tools that you can use to your benefit and Off-SEO definitely sounds reliable in using every kind optimization that you can use in order to rank higher in Google.
Anyways thanks for sharing this and I wish you good luck on your journey.
Off-Page SEO is harder to implement than on-page so many people don’t take full advantage of it. If you can take implement the different methods mentioned in this post you should improve your rankings. The best way to proceed is to produce outstanding content that will be shared by your readers and get your site mentioned.
Cheers,
Peter
Hey Peter, What a great article for off page SEO.
I understand that the important of SEO and to be very honest I focus more on on-page SEO but I didn’t know I’m so lacking of Off page SEO.
No wonders my ranking always far behind others competitors. That’s is very Sad things.
On next to do list I would want to try out your recommendation to boost up my Off page SEO factor – Video Marketing. I think I saw many websites already started to use this method.
Good to know more about off page SEO Peter. Thank you
Hi Max,
When we’re starting I think we all tend to focus more on on-page SEO. It’s certainly a lot easier than off page SEO. Don’t worry about your rankings too much if your site is quite new. I know it’s easier said than done, but concentrate on adding content and over time your rankings will improve. Video marketing is a great place to start your off page SEO.
All the best,
Peter
Hi Peter
Thanks for this post! I am well aware that there was a day when backlinks were the ticket to the top of the SERPS.
The idea that more links are the answer is a hard idea to desert. Of course backlinks are still a heavy player in the game; the concept of where from has changed.
And so these days I learn to come out of hiding, get social, and have useable content that actually helps someone.
I appreciate your post and am off to learn all about the Google Knowledge Graph.
Hi Mike,
It used to be easy to get backlinks to deceive the search engines. Today links are still an important part of the ranking algorithm but search engines are changing and want to give their searchers the best results possible. If you are posting great content this is the best way to get both good rankings and also to attract backlinks. Signals from social media can also help with your rankings although it’s not certain to what extent they can improve your rankings.
All the best,
Peter
I’m trying my hardest to accomplish high rankings although I’m in my early days with a niche affiliate website.
For every post, I always create headings by using the keyword tool looking for keywords with high traffic yet low competition. My top image alt tag always corresponds to my web post title and I place these same words in the same order somewhere in the top fold of my content.
Are H1 tags significant? The largest I use is H3 as I find anything larger doesn’t display on the page too well.
I link many pages across my website for each created post and externally too however once I publish I share a link to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+.
I’m finding my presence appearing now and again on the first page of google search results with a Google+ link, therefore, linking via Google+ is imperative for me to do daily.
Nearly every written article I embed a video from youtube. Does this increase your rankings? I would like to know this answer.
Thanks for your training, I’ve loads to learn and implement but I’ll take it one step at a time.
Simon.
Hi Simon,
It looks like your on the right tracks with your SEO. H1 tags with your keywords should be used once on your page, usually in the title of your page. To break up your content you can use the size of headings you choose, like you I usually use H3. Internal linking is very good and sharing on social media is another good move, which should bring more visitors to your website as you build your following.
As to embedding YouTube videos on your site, I have read people saying it does help and others saying it doesn’t help with rankings. Personally, I think it does help and I have seen a YouTube video “proving” it can help your rankings. So I would continue embedding videos when they are relevant to your content.
Keep going Simon, it may take time to get the rankings you would like to see but keep implementing the on page and off page SEO as you are doing and it will come.
All the best,
Peter
Hello Peter,
Amazing article to read. Your article is really descriptive about off page SEO. You clearly explain the ways of optimizing posts or your brand which is important for getting better positions in the search engines.
Thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed the post, Sonali. Off-page SEO is something that most of us neglect or don’t spend enough time on, myself included. To achieve the best results for our sites we need to have a strategy, there’s more to it than just building links.
All the best,
Peter