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INTRODUCTION TO OFF-PAGE SEO

Hi there! Welcome to another content for WebsitesAdvice’s SEO SERIES. Today, we will be providing you an insight about OFF PAGE OPTIMIZATION.

“Off-page SEO” (also known as “off-site SEO”) refers to actions taken outside your own website to affect your search engine results rankings (SERPs). Optimizing off-site ranking factors involves improving search engine awareness and perception of the popularity, importance, trustworthiness and authority of a site. This is done by linking to or promoting your website through other reputable places on the Internet (pages, blogs, individuals, etc.) and effectively “vouching” for the quality of your content. It is also one of a website’s most critical, and most neglected, SEO techniques. It may seem intimidating and frustrating, but if you have a breakdown step – by – step, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner. This article will help guide you through the process, and explain how to get started.

Are you ready to learn more about it?

WHY DOES IT MATTER, ANYWAY?

For many search engines links and keywords are the top two ranking factors. Unfortunately, ties and other factors related to off-page optimization are often the most neglected elements of a SEO strategy. The reason they ‘re overlooked is that it takes a bit more time and energy to optimize your on-page. Optimization off-page can be the difference between having an average piece of content that might rank for a keyword, and having a great piece of content that ranks for several keywords.

Although search algorithms and ranking factors are constantly changing, the general consensus within the SEO community is that the importance, trustworthiness, and authority that an effective off-page SEO offers for a website still plays a major role in a page ‘s ranking capability.

While we do not know the full algorithm that Google uses to rank content, data from our analysis of Search Engine Ranking Factors indicates that factors related to off-site SEOs are likely to carry more than 50 percent of the weight of the ranking factor.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION?

There are two types of off-page optimization:

• Link Building
• Non-Link Building

Link Building is the process of gaining further links that lead to your website. Usually this involves reaching out to the website owners and selling their content. Building a non-link includes activities such as finding unlinked mentions, promoting your social media content, posting guests and working with influencers to promote your content.

TYPES OF LINKS USED FOR OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

There are three primary types of links (and each of them we’ll break down in more detail). These are directory links (or quotations), manual links (these come from outreach) and natural links (links you got which were not the product of any outreach that you conducted).

CITATIONS/DIRECTORY LINKS

There are three primary types of ties (and each of them we’ll break down in more detail). They are directory links (or quotations), manual links (these come from outreach) and natural links (links you received which were not the result of any outreach that you conducted).

There are hundreds of specific directories for your business, sector, company, or country. Identify the places you ‘d go if you’d be your ideal customer, and find a solution. First, find the website contact information (or a submission button or link), and add your website.

MANUAL LINKS

By conducting the outreach, manual links are established. This process involves identifying sites that you want to boost the number of links pointing to that page on your site. First, you’ll find relevant websites in your industry and email the website owner asking them to connect to your story, blog post or service page.

NATURAL LINKS

Natural links are the “holy grail” of link building. These links come from creating good, high quality content that people find interesting and relevant. As a result of finding your content really informative or educational, they may link to your website without having to send any outreach emails.

COMPONENTS FOR LINK BUILDING

There are several words that we should describe before you start with your link building campaign so that you can ask the right questions when you are performing the outreach. This will ensure you ‘re getting the best results from your campaign to build connections and the best chance to get links that lead back to your website.

Domain Authority. No formal metric for “domain authority” exists. Each tool gives it a different name, but what you’re basically trying to figure out here is how trustworthy a website is. The higher the confidence is, the more it is worth the connection, because the search engines see it as a website that is more trustworthy.

URL: URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is the address of the website you’ll share. Mysite.com / thispage is a case in point for a URL. You want to make sure that the URL you use when requesting a website to connect to you is condensed and has no special characters like mysite.com/thispage&filter=mostrecent? Search= none. This example is not a suitable URL for you to use in your outreach.

Authority: Linked to the domain authority, this portion asks if the site to which you will reach is authoritative in your niche or industry. Have your competitors already been given links from this company? Does the website you will be contacting have content that is relevant to your industry on their website. If so, it would have been a perfect fit!

Anchor Text: The text of the anchor is the text that a traveler must click on before they land on your website. Ideally, you want a combination of anchor text. In some situations, you want the anchor text to be your brand name. Many times, you ‘re going to want the anchor text to be about the keywords you ‘re targeting and trying to rank with. Don’t use a single keyword for outreach again and again. Alternatively, add some variants and synonyms to the keywords or keywords that you are trying to target.

Nofollow vs. Dofollow: An additional bit of code should be added to the connection that you can get from another website. This code will be noted below the dofollow link or the nofollow link. The dofollow connection tells the search engines to follow the tag and to find it a “vote” of the nature of the page on which the visitor will land. A nofollow link informs the search engines not to pursue the tag found on the reference website. This form of link does not have the same meaning as the dofollow link. Both websites will have a combination of these types of links. You’re trying to make sure it’s balanced.

WHY YOU SHOULD DEVELOP QUALITY CONTENTS?

Before you can start conducting your outreach for your link building and off-page optimization, you will first need to ensure that you have high – quality content that is worthy of promotion, sharing, and valuable to the person you ‘re emailing. The first step is to identify high quality content on your website. You want to find sites with the largest number of sessions on your website. This is a good sign that the content is already of good quality and that visitors are reading it.

Before you can start conducting your outreach for your link building and off-page optimization, you will first need to ensure that you have high – quality content that is worthy of promotion, sharing, and useful to the person you ‘re emailing. The first step is to identify high quality content on your website. You want to search pages with the largest number of sessions on your website. This is a good sign that the content is already of good quality and that tourists are reading it.

STEPS TO DO IN LINK BUILDING FOR OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

Alright, now that you’ve developed your high quality content, you’re ready to start your link building campaign.

• Step #1: Develop a list of pages on which you want to perform outreach. You were meant to do this, but finalize the list and make sure the content is top – notch. Focus on 3-5 pages at a time for each campaign. By doing this, you ‘re going to stay focused, and you’re going to be more likely to get results.
  
  
• Step #2: Build List of Applicable / Relevant Sites: A great place to start is by looking for sites that are already sending you referral traffic. This will give you an idea of other websites that might be relevant to getting out there. First, you ‘re going to want to do some general searches in your favorite search engine. Using the target keywords to see which places appear. These are likely to be competitive sites for outreach. You can also attempt an intitle search. Go to the search engine (it works better in Google) and type in the title: your keyword or title:”your keyword “The first example may yield wider results, while the second example is more likely to be targeted at your industry and niche.
  
  
• Step #3: Find articles on your target site related to your list of sites. Before you start the website setup process, you want to make sure that they have knowledge about your subject on their website to that they have written blogs about it in advance. Look through a couple of articles, see if there is anything lacking in them, including content or ties, and take note of that at the actual level of outreach. If you skim the contents, you can also look for broken links. Look at the post links and see if they’re going to a damaged website. If they do, please note that to fill the gap on the prospect ‘s website, you can place your site and your content.
  
  
• Step #4: Find Webmaster or writer contact information. You want to make sure that you find someone who can really make a change to the website and link to your content, the right contact information. You do not want to end your message in a spam tab! Visit the Meet or About page on a website as this is usually where contact information can be found. Another place to check is within the page footer. You will want to know the name and email address of the person you want to contact, so that in the next step you can make a more personalized pitch.
  
  
• Step #5: Draft and send a Pitch email. At this point, you have a list of target websites, the page you want to pitch on your site, possible pages from which you may get a connection, and the site owner or webmaster’s name and email address. Now, it’s time to contact yourself. You want to directly answer the messages to the recipient and explain who you are and why you are contacting them. During the introduction, if you want to go the extra mile, praise them on one of their recent posts which you found interesting. It will show you’ve taken your time and done some research on them, and not just spamming them with requests for connections. First, set your page to venue. You can do this by explaining why you believe the website should be linking to it, and how it will help its visitors. Remember, you’ve got to tell the person you ‘re emailing what they or their clients get out of it. Don’t expect it to be obvious. When you consider a broken link on their website, this may also be a good time to mention. When you send the email, try to send it between 8am-6pm during a time of day when they’d most likely read it (and be awake). That will improve the likelihood of opening and reading your email.
  
  
• Step #6: Wait, Learn, then Rinse and Repeat: You may have to wait a couple of weeks to hear back from the individuals that you emailed. If you haven’t heard any response in 2 weeks, send a short email asking them if they received your message and if you can provide any more information to help them make a decision. If they ask you to stop emailing them, or don’t respond, take it as a no, and move on. If you are successful and they say they will link to you, now is a good time to discuss the anchor text for the link and whether it will be a dofollow or nofollow link. After you’ve sent several emails, look at the ones that were most opened, and the emails that lead most often to getting a link. What patterns do you start to see emerging? Take those learnings and apply them to your next link building campaign so you can continue to get better results.

OTHER TYPES OF OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

Although most of your off-page optimization activities that fall under a campaign to build links, building links through outreach is not the only way to improve your off-page SEO. There are several other approaches for your business and industry which you should be aware of and check.

INFLUENCER MARKETING

Influencer marketing is one of the most popular techniques used for off-page optimization right now. Essentially, in your niche, you find relevant celebrities and you are partnering with them to promote your product. Let’s just unpack what that means.

When we talk about the use of influencers, we don’t talk about finding someone who is ultra-famous and has no connection with your industry. Rather, we are talking about the people in your industry who are celebrities. Who knows, and trusts everyone? Who tends to have many speaking gigs at a conference, or is often cited in publications. This is the one we’re going after here.

Similar to link building, you’ll want to approach influencer marketing. First, you’ll want to identify the products or services you want to offer to an influencer (usually for free). Next, you’re going to want to do the same process of outreach that you did when building links. You want to introduce yourself, compliment them on something they’ve done recently and then launch what you’re willing to give away into the offer. Third, you’ll want to define what you’re demanding in return for this free product in that email. It might be a review (and a link), it might be a video, a product on a podcast, or something else.

Before you send your product you will want to get the final agreement in writing. Then follow up with another email after they have received it to ensure delivery and discuss the timeline for the content they are creating or the product placement where they will mention you.

LOOK FOR UNLINKED MENTIONS AND ASK THEM TO BE LINKED

There’s a really good chance of your business being listed online that isn’t connected to your website. These are called unlinked mentions, and finding them, and asking the webmaster to connect to you is one of the best ways of gaining links pointing to your website and through your authority for your brand.

Start by going to your desired search engine and putting in your brand name (as well as any special product names or important people). To return the most relevant results you might need to add quotes around the search. Next take a look at the returned results. To get actual, relevant results, you may need to filter them and add them to an industry keyword (for example, “Tina Jones” programmer).

You will then want to go through some of the pages and see the context in which your company is being listed. Is that a good reminder? Or are they negative? If it’s positive, contact the website owner or webmaster and ask them to connect back to your website (you’ll need to review their contact information and arrange your email as well as your other email addresses).

GET SOCIAL MEDIA SHARES

Once you have finished your piece of content, that doesn’t mean the job ends. You need to get out and share your hard work! The sharing of your content on social media is one of the most underused techniques of off-page optimization.

Optimize your content by making sure you have enabled and optimized your OpenGraph tags and TwitterCards for the posts you’ll be sharing. Next, identify what pieces of content on which social media platforms you’re going to share. The goal here is to drive awareness of the brand and direct people back to your site, or to get them to look for your brand.

Develop a calendar and list the content piece, what day you’re going to share it, what social media platform you ‘re going to use, the text and, if applicable, the image related to the post. Make sure you vary the types of content you post every day so it’s not always the same stuff.

GUEST BLOGGING

While it’s not as popular as it once was, you can still find ample opportunities for guest blogging in some industries. A guest blog is where a website owner asks for support in writing content for their website and may give you a link back to your website, in return for you writing the content.

Finding opportunities is very simple by doing a quick search on your favorite search engine. Start by searching for phrases like “write for us” (including quotations, so it looks for the whole series, not every single word), “contribute to,” “become a contributor,” and “guest post.” By scrolling through the results of the quest, you can quickly come across several opportunities. Then just contact the site owner, pitch yourself and write a high quality piece of content this time.

HOW STATCOUNTER CAN HELP MY OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION EFFORTS?

Now that you know how to start your campaign of optimization off-page, let’s look at how Statcounter can facilitate your job and help you get results faster!

Now that you know how to start your campaign of optimization off-page, let ‘s look at how Statcounter can make your job easier and help you get quicker results!

FINAL WORDS

While the optimization off-page can often be overlooked, you need not feel overwhelmed now. You can take your site to the next level with a strong outreach plan that blends building with guest blogging, influencer marketing, discovering unlinked mentions and promoting on social media. This will mean more traffic, more tourists and more business to your web!

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