Whenever people talk about off-page SEO, they immediately think about link-building. However, there are quite a few other factors Google finds relevant. These off-page SEO factors are just as important as the content on your web-pages and blog posts and just as important as technical SEO.
This is part of a series of posts about all the factors Google considers for how your website ranks in search results. This link will take you to the original post if you want to start from the beginning.
You have to have as many of these things handled as possible if you want to rank well in Google. No one can cover all of the factors Google looks for, but don’t ignore any of them that you can improve on.
Content is King but it needs help from off-page SEO
Link building vs content has always been a debate among SEO professionals. I believe content is king. It won’t matter how many inbound links you have if your visitors do not find your content relevant and interesting. The other side of the argument is that without links, no one will ever see your content. Both statements are valid, that’s why you have to pay attention to off-page SEO just as much as content or on-page SEO.
Below, we will go over ways to improve with off-page SEO. We will discuss PageRank, Backlinks, Link Building, Link Attraction, Reviews, Branding, Content Marketing, Business Directory Listings and more.
What is PageRank and how important is it?
Off-Page SEO improves PageRank and a higher PageRank improves your search results. PageRank mostly applies to just Google, however, the factors that get you a higher PageRank will also help your rankings in other search engines. It is an indicator of how relevant or important your website is. The more relevant it is for your search terms, the higher you will likely rank in Google for those search terms.
It is measured on a scale of 1-10. There are a number of Google Chrome extensions that will help you with checking your PageRank and other SEO factors. (opens a new tab so you can save your place.) Improving your PageRank will certainly help you improve your off-page SEO results.
Don’t focus just on the number of backlinks, focus on the quality of the backlinks if you want to improve PageRank. The more “high-quality” backlinks you get is more important than 100s of non-related random links. That’s why we don’t recommend purchasing SEO services that promise to build you 100s or 1000s of backlinks in a short amount of time. They cannot promise that many related or “high-quality” backlinks.
And Google is smart enough to know that 100s of websites didn’t find your website and decide to link to it all in that same short period of time. And Google knows they didn’t all choose the same exact anchor text to link to your website.
Link attraction is better than link building, but it takes more time. Link attraction is achieved by creating and sharing high-quality and/or popular content. Link building requires actively pursuing people to link to your website.
7 Creative Ways to Earn or Build Links to Your Site
- Produce unique research.
- Respond to a popular/trending article.
- Update or elaborate on links in relevant posts.
- Offer free tools.
- Create unique images or graphics.
- Review the SERPs.
- Build trusting relationships.
Source: Search Engine Journal
You should be using both link attraction and link building methods if you really want to rank well in Google. As a business owner, you likely need a professional SEO to do this for you. Click here to contact us about improving your PageRank and producing high-quality content that will attract more links to your website.
More About Off-Page SEO and Link Building
The goal is to get high-quality or authoritative websites to link to your content. So when prospecting for links, try to get websites that have a lot of traffic, a lot of high-quality backlinks and sites that are authoritative and reputable to link to you.
According to Google
What makes a website source reputable and authoritative?There are many factors that make a source credible. Whenever you are looking at a source on the internet, you should check several things to verify that the information is credible. These things include the source’s authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, and coverage.
You also should pay attention to the number of unique domains link to your content. One website that links you on every page like in the sidebar of their blog helps no more than them linking to you within one blog post or page. The type of website or blog that links to you is important as well. Is the website linking to you from a website or page that is related to your own services, products or topics? Relevancy matters. You want links from related sites.
Will Paying for BackLinks help me rank in Google?
There are a lot of services out there that claim they can get you hundreds or even thousands of backlinks in just a few days. As I wrote above, Google knows that many websites did not suddenly find you and all of them decided to use the exact same anchor text.
Be very careful when hiring someone to build links for you. Some SEO services will create those hundreds of backlinks for you, but will those links still be active after you’ve paid for them?
Additional Info: Buying links is against Google’s webmaster policy. Paying others to link to your website can get your site banned from Google. As important as backlinks are, it’s not worth the risk to pay for backlinks. The same thing goes for reciprocal links. Google considers these tactics as trying to manipulate rankings. Don’t do it.
Do Reviews affect how you rank in Google?
Absolutely. Reviews are something that affects your rankings in Google. That especially applies to Local SEO. You need around 80 good reviews to appear in the maps section of the Google search results at the top of the page when someone adds a geo-location to their search query. The number 80 isn’t set in stone. Google’s algorithm is fluid, meaning it changes all the time. However, 80 is definitely a good number to start with.
There are of course other review websites. Yelp, Angie’s List and others are authoritative enough that they can affect how people view your company and even how Google ranks your website.
We believe that reviews on Google and other websites may influence how Google sees the trustworthiness of your company and your website. You should be saving your customer’s email addresses. We can show you a surefire way to improve the number of good reviews you have.
Do not offer anything in exchange for a review. Do not ask them for a 5 star review. Do not pay anyone to give you good reviews. Do not buy fake reviews! Don’t do that on Amazon, Google, Yelp or anywhere else.
The same goes for testimonials. Fake reviews and testimonials can get you banned by Google and may even get you in trouble with the FTC. Contact us to find out how to legitimately get better reviews.
Is Branding an Off-Page SEO factor according to Google?
You should always be promoting your brand name. The number of people that search for your brand is a factor Google considers. And you don’t want your competitor ranking for your brand name either. Check your brand name often in Google. Look at the ads to see if another company or competitor is using your brand name as a keyword to show their ads to your potential customers.
Can you bid on a competitor’s name in Adwords?As of June 4, 2019, Google abolished the restrictions that stopped brands from bidding on a competitor’s branded keyword. The only remaining condition is that your competitors can’t use your trademarked brand name in their ad copy.
You may need to run ads using your own brand in order to appear in the same way your competitors appear in ads at the top of the search results for your brand name. It may seem unfair, but we don’t get to make the rules.
To increase brand awareness, make sure your company name is mentioned in all of your blog posts and web-pages. Make sure that you are using your brand name when using social media. The more places your brand name appears, the more likely your company will be found. Creating events sponsored by your brand name is another way to get well-known.
Add business directory listings to increase brand awareness and to create more ways you can be found. Each business directory listing should have a unique description. Don’t make them all the same. Don’t add 100 directory listings at once. Google knows that 100 sites didn’t suddenly find you in one day or week.
What is Content Marketing and how does it help me rank in Google?
The first step in content marketing is to create high-quality content. As I wrote before, content is king. High-quality, optimized content on your web-pages can get you ranked in Google all by itself, but combining that with backlinks to your content will get results you will really notice.
High-quality, unique content can help you draw more attention to your website. It will also attract back-links. People will also share that content with their own followers and some of them may link to your content as a resource. That’s why you need cornerstone content as well.
Cornerstone content is the core of your content marketing and SEO strategy. You cannot consider every post you make as cornerstone content. What are the most important pages in your website? Which blog posts are really high-quality and optimized for the keywords you want to rank for. We can create cornerstone content for you and help you identify which pages and posts should be considered cornerstone content. Contact us here for a free evaluation of your pages and posts and a free quote.
You’ll easily notice that we focus on content creation and content marketing more than anything else. We also focus on link-attraction over link-building. Link building should always be on your mind. If you engage with people on social media and make some friends, you can ask for a link back to your content. Others will link to your content if you focus on unique, well-written content.
Repurpose Content and help your Off-Page SEO results
How do I repurpose my content? What does that mean? When writing a blog post, it’s fair-use to include a paragraph from someone else’s blog post or web-page. Of course the information needs to be relevant to your topic and you need to link to the source of that information.
Here’s an example of repurposing your own content. Maybe you already use sites like Medium or LinkedIn. Let’s use LinkedIn for an example.
Say you wrote a piece of content about Schwinn bicycles on your own blog or website. Now go create an article on LinkedIn.
Write about 250 words of unique original content that is a prelude to what you are going to share. Use relevant keywords and phrases.
Now using a block-quote, add a paragraph from your own post or page. Link to the original content as the source or read more or learn more, etc.
Now write another 250 words below that block quote that summarizes the content you just shared. Add another call to action within or below that.
That’s 500 words of unique content and an interesting block-quote in the middle with good calls to action.
In addition to that, it follows things learned from Toastmasters on how to give speeches. But it also applies to most content creation. “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you just told them.” In that first 250 words, you are telling them what you’re about to tell them. The blockquoted piece from your original content tells them. The 250 words after that tells them what you just told them.
Be creative about producing original content while adding the block-quote back to your own website. Whether you wrote the content or paid someone like us to do it for you, it’s content that you own. If you have a really high-quality post that is long enough, you can use different blockquotes from it for different off-page SEO content and link each blockquote back to the original.
Consider each piece of content as property that you can continue to use. Don’t write a blog post and just share it on social media and forget about it. Go back and re-share old posts. Repurpose some of it, especially cornerstone content. Make the time you spent or the money you spent on each piece of content provide you with more value.
This is also a great way to ask someone to link to your content. Ask them to write their own post that includes a blockquote linking back to your content.
What types of content should I be creating?
Text of course. Also videos, images, infographics, whitepapers, PDF files, eBooks, Surveys, studies, and more. Be creative and vary the types of content you produce. Have an all-of-the-above attitude toward content creation and that will give you more sharing options, more content to repurpose, and Google loves that variety of content types on your website, especially if you create fresh content often.
Just make sure that the content you write entertains your readers, teaches them something, helps them find something they are looking for, or adds some other type of value to your visitors and to the web in general. Don’t just rehash content that has been written about 1000 times, unless you actually have a unique perspective.
How does Social Media and PR help with Off-Page SEO?
At the time of this writing, social shares don’t help you rank better in Google. However, some social signals may be used by them. Google has indicated that social signals will increase in importance, so I would act as if they already do. That way, you’re ahead of the curve.
Sharing your content on social media, engaging with people on those platforms, being helpful and only talking about your own stuff once in awhile. Share and like other people’s content. If you pay attention to them, they will pay attention to you.
PR isn’t just about writing press releases. You are doing PR every time you participate on other platforms, make announcements, talk about discounts or coupons or just by engaging with your target audience.
Add fresh content to share on other platforms, but don’t set a fixed schedule. Others will disagree with me possibly, but don’t over-saturate those platforms with content. That seems to others that you are all about you and not about them. As long as you are really providing value, people will not care that you share more of that valuable content. Just don’t write a post because a post is due today. Uninspired content does not help you.
Don’t count your blog posts. Make your blog posts count.
How do I get more people to share and link to my content?
Engagement. Just sharing content and linking back to your site will not lead to as much success as creating actual relationships with potential customers and even your peers. As I wrote above, like and share their content, comment on their content. Make friends. Networking works online as much as it does offline.
We used forums back in the 90’s to discuss topics related to what we do. People came in asking questions and you responded by being helpful to them. Forums used to be our social media. There are still forums you can join and do the same thing. Make it about them, not all about you. Make sure the forums and groups you participate in are relevant to your topics. Not just groups where your peers hang out. Find out where your target audience hangs out and post there.
What else can I do to help with off-page SEO?
Off-Page SEO includes doing things like a podcast. Hold a webinar. A webinar doesn’t have to be all about you. You can open it up to questions people have. You could also hold a webinar to celebrate something someone else did. Maybe something charitable. Be creative.
TikTok and YouTube are very effective marketing tools. Create YouTube videos and TikTok. Google owns YouTube so you know they are going to consider them as long as they are relevant.
Make sure you add written text in the section below the video and links to your own content. Remember, you can also advertise on YouTube on other people’s videos. All of these things will help with Off-Page SEO and link attraction.
TikTok has really gained traction and has become a haven for marketing. You can make short 3 minute videos to talk about something relevant to your followers. You can use your profile for links and a little about your company. You can also create video ads and get them shown to people who are interested in topics related to your website.
Contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation and quote for helping you with Off-Page SEO. Or call us directly at 514-808-2288.
You may also like…
- Google Ranking Factors having to do with your domain name.
- Google Technical SEO Factors to pay attention to
- Google Ranking Factors in regards to content.
For a free consultation about how we can help you with SEO, click here or call 514.808.2288