Once you build your site to foster solid on-site SEO — faster loading times, improved keyword density, frequently updated content and well designed landing pages — your attention should turn to another detail that will boost your domain up the search engine rankings: off-page SEO. What follows are the three off-page SEO tactics that the highest ranking pages in terms of local and widespread search results use to ensure their competitive edge in their individual markets.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is the process of embedding your content in curated lists compiled by news and categorized article websites, like reddit.com or stumbleupon.com.

While less important today, social bookmarking on relevant community websites is an excellent way to generate backlinks and get an idea of what feedback your content is generating in web communities comprised of your target market. If your content garners positive feedback from these communities, you have an idea of what your readers want from your content marketing, or what you may be doing wrong.

Social Media

Social media, an off-page SEO tactic utilized more often by high-ranking sites, is a great way to gain publicity and establish customer loyalty with interactive marketing and participation in rich, online communities. These strategies can also play a huge role in SEO ranking if you play your cards right.

While many people may think social media has little impact on SEO and is only a boost for customer service and reputation among consumers, the modern understanding of off-page SEO strategy suggests otherwise.

Marketing departments are increasingly relying on social media as a form of integration with SEO strategy due to social media's ability to help with two important aspects of SEO: link-building and understanding the needs of a site's users.

Ultimately, a higher ranking in a list of search results for certain keywords is becoming more and more about how your site and your site's content cater to what the site's users want from your marketing.

Content marketing has become more sophisticated, predicated less on just keyword density and more on providing useful, actionable content that readers want to follow closely. This has led digital marketers to emphasize content development more and to place important details strategically to reward readers for clicking links.

Social media's role in all of this is a way to put information in front of your site's users and to gauge feedback on your content. It's likely that one or more forms of social media is used by the vast majority of your customer base, and the most successful companies know how to reach those audiences effectively.

Simply by crafting thoughtful posts, linking to your blog posts, and gathering feedback from your audience on your site's content, you'll start to see backlinks being built naturally.

Link-Building

By far, the most impactful strategy used by high-ranking sites in terms of off-page SEO is link-building, a practice that invites external sites to link to your content in their blog posts and articles.

Search engines take into account the quality and quantity of the inbound links your content creates from other sources as a way of establishing how valuable your content is for the engine's users. This means it’s critical to create content that’s useful and authoritative. Find out what your target audience wants to hear, and then produce well researched content that provides actionable information and promotes your products.

On-site SEO is the best way to establish yourself as a player in your market initially; create a user-friendly web platform with fast loading times and landing pages that promote conversions.

Once you've established your site, however, off-page SEO strategies can make your site and your business stand out from the rest by using tried and true tactics to garner a high ranking in searches for keywords relevant to your target audience.