“Off-page SEO” refers to actions taken outside of your own website to influence your ranking within search engine results pages (SERPs).
Optimizing off-site ranking factors involves improving search engine and user perception of a site’s popularity, relevance, credibility, authority. This is done by having reputable entities on the internet (pages, sites, people, etc.) link to your website or endorse it, effectively assigning “value” to your content’s quality.
Why is off-page SEO important?
While search algorithms and ranking factors are constantly evolving, the general consensus within the SEO community is that off-page SEO is effective, and the relevance, trustworthiness, and authority a website provides still play a significant role in a page’s ability to rank well.
Although we don’t know the exact algorithm Google uses to determine content value, data from our study on search engine ranking factors shows that off-page SEO-related factors account for more than 50% of the ranking factor weight.
Links and off-page SEO
Backlinks are the heart of off-page SEO. Search engines use backlinks as an indicator of the quality of the content being linked to. Therefore, a site with numerous high-value backlinks typically ranks better than an equally matched site with fewer backlinks.
There are three main types of links defined by how they are acquired: natural links, manually built links, or self-created links.
- Natural links are provided by the author without any action on behalf of the page owner. For example, the attribution of a food blogger who includes a link to a post pointing to their favorite produce farm is a natural link.
- Purchased connections are made through deliberate link building activities. This includes things like getting customers to come to your website or asking other page owners to share your content.
- Self-generated links are created by practices such as adding a backlink to an online directory, a forum, a blog comment signature or a press release with optimized anchor text. Some self-created link-building tactics lean toward Black Hat SEO and are not well-regarded by search engines.
Regardless of how the links are obtained, the biggest contributors to SEO efforts are usually those that pass the most equity. There are many factors that positively contribute to the area being referenced, such as:
- Popularity of the link site
- How much it is linked to the subject of the linked site
- The “freshness” of the connection
- Anchor text used on the link site
- Reliability of the link site
- Number of other links on the link page
- Link domain and authority of the page
Unlinked off-page SEO
While earning links from external websites is the most commonly used SEO strategy, any activity that a) takes place outside your own website and b) is aimed at improving your search rankings can be considered “off-page SEO.”
- Social media marketing
- Guest blogging
- Connected and disconnected brand expressions
- Influencer marketing
It includes things like.
However, it is important to note that the net result of each of these activities is that it somehow generates a reference to your site from elsewhere on your website. This could be a link, a testimonial mentioning your brand or website, or something else. So, the concept of “link-related” off-page SEO is actually a bit of a misnomer!
A note on local off-page SEO:
Off-page SEO is based on human behavior (i.e. people only reference and share content they like). Therefore, this applies to both organic and local SEO.
How to do off-page SEO
At a high level, improving a website’s “off-page SEO” involves enhancing both the search engine’s and users’ perception of the site’s quality. This occurs through “votes of confidence” from sources outside your website, such as links from other sites (especially those that are reputable and trustworthy themselves), mentions of your brand, shares of your content, and other endorsements.
