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What is Off-page SEO?

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What is Off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO (or off-site SEO) refers to the actions taken outside of your website the effect your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Off-page optimization involves improving ranking factors that are outside of your website. These ranking factors impact the perception of your website’s authority, trustworthiness, relevance, and popularity. Optimization of these factors is achieved by having reputable sites “vouching” for your content and website.

Why is Off-page SEO Important?

According to Moz, Off-page SEO ranking factors could make up more than 50% of the ranking factor weight.  While ranking factors for search are always changing it is clear that a website’s authority, relevance, trustworthiness are major factors in its ability to rank. 

In order for Google and other search engines to rank your web pages properly, it is important to have other websites link to you. When other websites vouch for your website search engines will see that your content is relevant and trusted. As more sites share your content it grows in popularity as well. The result is your content ranking higher. The more successful you are at this, the better chance you have at outranking your competition. 

Common Off-page SEO Terms

  • Page Authority – A score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages. This score ranges from 0 – 100
  • Domain Authority –  A search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages. This score ranges from 0 – 100
  • Link Juice – A term used in the SEO world to refer to the value or equity passed from one page or site to another
  • PageRank (PR) – an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results

Off-site Ranking Factors 

As of today, there are over 200 ranking factors according to Google. Here are some of the most important factors when it comes to links. 

  • The Number of Linking Domains – The number of domains linking to you. 
  • The number of linking pages – The number of pages linking to you is a factor, even from the same domain. 
  • PageRank of linking page – Not all pages are equal, some have more authority than others. It is better to have a link from a page that has a high PR than on that has a low PR
  • Link Relevance  – it is believed that having backlinks from pages that are related to the topic of your page is more beneficial as they carry more relevancy. 
  • Authority of Linking Domain – Domain Authority is believed to be a ranking factor as well. Like Page Authority, it is more beneficial to have a link from a high authority domain. 
  • Links from HomepageSome believe a link from a domain’s homepage will carry more weight than other pages. 
  • Number of Dofollow vs no-follow links  – Google has said they do not count links that contain the rel=nofollow attribute. We can assume that links without this do affect a page’s ranking. 
  • Diversity of link types Having a variety of link types is good. If your site has too many links from a single type it could indicate spam. 
  • Contextual links  – These are links that are in the page’s content. It is believed that they carry more weight than a link outside of the content. 
  • Link AnchorThe anchor text of your link is important and a factor, These are also used as a spam indicator. 

The Three Types of Backlinks are: 

When you are ready to begin building links there are a number of ways to do this as there are different types of backlinks.  

Natural Links

This type of backlink requires no action from the website owner. Natural backlinks are editorially given. 

Manually Created Backlinks 

The links are acquired through various link-building activities. A good example of this would be providing others with content and including a link back to your website or guest posting. 

Self-created

These backlinks are acquired by adding your site to a directory, forum, blog, or comment section with anchor text that has been optimized. Some forms of self-created backlinks may be considered black-hat by search engines. 

How Do You Get backlinks?

As we see above there are a few different types of backlinks. One of the best ways to get backlinks is by producing great content. If your audience finds your content entertaining, educational, interesting, etc they will be more likely to share it on social media and possibly their websites (this is an example for an editorial backlink). As they do this, your contents reach will increase, growing the number of people who see it. 

You can also offer your content to others as a potential guest post. This works for both parties as they get fresh content and you get the backlink to your site. Digital Giants will share content with those who work in industries that work closely with ours but are non-competitive. An example of this would be graphic designers. 

The last example, self-created links is when you actively seek out open forums and comment sections where you or others can share your links. This is considered black-hat is some cases and can have the opposite effect on your site as it is flagged as spam. 

Ready to Build Links?

Now you understand the basics of Off-page SEO and link building, go get some quality links! If you have any questions regarding some of the topics we covered, feel free to reach out to us here. 

 

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