In the world of organic positioning, one of the questions that many professionals still do not know how to answer is what is off-page SEO. While more and more people become familiar with the factors that search engines value within the page itself, what to do externally to improve Google ranking remains unclear.
Search engine optimization is the term used to describe the set of processes that aim to improve the position of a website. SEO is important not only to get high-quality visitors, but also to increase a page’s usability and credibility.
Search engines use complex algorithms to determine which pages to include in their index and the order in which they display them in results. SEO has two components. The on-page part is the best known, while what is off-page SEO is kept a little more in the dark.
WHAT IS OFF-PAGE SEO?
Offpage SEO is basically anything that doesn’t happen directly on your own website. It deals with, among other things, link building, social media, and local SEO. Optimizing ranking factors externally involves improving search engine and user perception.
This is achieved through popularity, relevance, reliability and authority. To achieve this, it is necessary that other websites with a good reputation on the Internet link or promote the content, in a way that guarantees its quality.
WHY OFFPAGE SEO IS IMPORTANT
While search algorithms and ranking factors are constantly changing, the general consensus is that the relevance, reliability, and authority that effective offpage SEO brings to a website still plays a big role in a page’s ranking. There is Moz study data that says that the value of these factors can account for more than 50% of the total weight.
Search engines have been trying for decades to find a way to return the best results to users. To achieve this, they take into account onpage and offpage SEO factors. But the latter is the one that gives you a good indication of how the world perceives that particular website.
ADVANTAGES OF OFF-PAGE SEO
A successful off-page SEO strategy will generate the following benefits for website owners:
- Increase in rankings. The website will rank higher in the SERPs (search engine results page) and this also means more traffic.
- Increase in PageRank. Page rank is a number between 0 and 10 that indicates how important a website is in the eyes of Google. It is the system invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and one of the reasons why Google was so successful in showing the most relevant results to the search engine.
- Greater exposure. A higher ranking also means more exposure because when a website ranks higher it gets more links, more views and more mentions on social media.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LINKBUILDING IN OFFPAGE SEO
To know what offpage SEO is, you have to talk about link building. In fact, it is very common for the strategy of obtaining external links to be considered synonymous with off-page SEO. Although it is not completely like that, it is a capital part of it.
However, not all links carry the same weight. Link building is not just a question of quantity, but rather of quality. The best ones are those that point to a website naturally. That is, when an owner of one page likes the content of another and links to it. Of course, achieving this is very difficult and the best way to achieve it is by posting quality content that other people want to link to.
HOW TO MAKE A GOOD LINKBUILDING STRATEGY
Link building is key to off-page SEO. Therefore, it is very important to design a good strategy to get quality links.
- Know the audience. The first step to getting quality links is to know who the audience of the page is. In this way, the content can be adapted to that group of people, always with the idea of reaching new audiences related to the theme of the website.
- Create a list of websites that attract your desired audience. To get a new qualified audience for a page, you have to know where it is and what websites they use to get information.
- Write quality content. To get links, it is essential to provide valuable information that complements articles from another website. In addition, it must be designed to attract the desired audience.
- Relate the content with the list of websites. When valuable content is already available, it is time to choose the websites that have been analyzed and that would be interested in placing a link to their own page. The key is to find those that really fit the specific topic of the publication in which you want to get a link.
- Connect. Once you have analyzed which websites are interesting to get a link, you should contact them. If the content is interesting and improves on what they already have, there’s a good chance they’ll actually be interested in linking to it.
OTHER FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE OFFPAGE SEO
In a previous article we already saw a summary of 10 factors that influence SEO positioning, but if we focus exclusively on external factors, the number and quality of links is the main one, but not the only one.
Although social media is not essential for good search engine ranking, it is important for off-page SEO. In addition, they are a very valid way to get links.
Local SEO is essential if the business is oriented to a specific geographical area. Satisfied customers can leave online reviews that Google, and other potential consumers, use to see how it works and thus gain authority.
Offpage SEO is just as important as onpage SEO. For campaigns to be successful, they must mix both, since they go hand in hand. To shine in this branch you have to focus on link building, branding and appearance efforts. Even if a website is highly optimized, if it is not perceived as a quality destination for people, its positioning will not be good.
