Off page SEO is a term used to describe action you take outside of your own site to influence its position in the search engines.
The relevance, authority and trustworthiness of the off page SEO is still a huge contributor to where your site ranks in the search engines, but it is an area of SEO that is fraught with danger because of its links to the Blackhat world of link building and artificially boosted rankings.
Fear not however; let’s have a look at the three major ways you can boost your rankings with off page SEO.
Link Building
There are three main types of link. Natural ones, where the site owner has genuinely linked to your site because of its quality and relevance to the subject they are writing about, manually built links which is where you make a conscious effort to create links by asking others to link to you via sharing content or guest posts and self-created links where you the site owner adds links to something like an online directory or forum or comment box or press release etc. It’s generally the latter type which can be frowned upon (or certainly carry less weight) by the search engines.
That said, the effectiveness of the link in terms of SEO is down to its equity; how popular is the linking site? How relevant is it? What is the anchor test? How trustworthy is the lining site? How many other links are on the page? Etc. All of these are crucially important factors in how effective your link will be.
Social Media Marketing
Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, Google+ or Instagram, social media platforms are an essential part of your off page SEO strategy.
Think about it, the whole design and usage premise of these platforms is to engage and enthral audiences and this is exactly what you need to do. Your content is the fire, but social media is the fuel; you need to harness its power to spread your message and gain further traction.
Offline
Offline off page SEO includes things like word of mouth, flyers, posters and print mailshots. Whilst not often as wide reaching as most online marketing tactics, you can at least concentrate your message towards certain demographics or client types. Need to engage with students? Get some flyers up and around the local universities. You want to work with tree surgeons? Send them something specific.
Hopefully you now have a good idea where to start with the three core elements of off page SEO.
