Search Engine Optimization is important for any website owner, be it business website or blog. Rule is simple – more traffic, more money! SEO is of two types – On-page and Off Page. Here I am going to talk about Off-Page SEO techniques in detail.

Also Read: Comparing On-page and Off-page SEO

As I already mentioned, when it comes to on-page and off-page, on-page requires about 30-40% of work but major focus is required on the other end – off-page SEO.

Why Off-page SEO technique requires more time and focus?

This is for fact that both on-page and off-page are incomplete without each other but being said that, if you are giving more attention to writing great content on regular basis but doing less or equal time of time spending on off-page SEO techniques, I am sure you will take lot of time to grow, specially when you are just starting out having lesser traffic but if you do off-page SEO rightly, this time can be reduced significantly.

Just think this way – you are creating great content but there is no audience! Your great content is not being reached to many people and people are reading rather inferior content on other websites all the time. That great content is of no use. You need to build your audience, you need to tell people that you exist on the internet and Off-page SEO techniques help you in the same.

Not all the methods are difficult, not all are easy either but if you are just starting out in blogging, you need to focus on all of these at once, as much as possible. Below mentioned methods are for someone who is just starting out. Also, these are mentioned in the priority basis like first needs to be done more and second to be done a little lesser and so on. This is not the complete list of all the off-page SEO techniques but sure you can start from here:

1. Blog Commenting

Reading lot of content online is the best method to learn SEO. It keeps you updated with anything that is happening around you. The next thing you would want to do is to post a comment with your name and add a website link in the comment fields. You can use one below to give your opinion. Just make sure that your comment is relevant and adding to the conversation.

If you are commenting to gain a backlink, most probably, the website owner will not approve or delete your comment. Moreover, backlinks made through the comment section of the page are on nofollow type and will not get you any link juice. Do not do mistake of typing – “great post” or “thank you” kind of comments.

Again, make sure you read the post before you add any comment. Without reading, there is no way you will be able to add something valuable to the comment section.

2. Forum Posting

Forums are the best ways to indulge in discussions, ask people who are experts the questions and comment to help others out. Forums are like mini-social networking kind of sites which are often niche specific and hence you can find better targeted visitors. These people are going to stay on your site for longer and probably will keep visiting more often.

One thing you must keep in mind is that you don’t even try to spam the forums or else your membership will be discontinued. The backinks you get from your profile and from the signatures are all dofollow in most cases and hence will add link juice to little value. To avoid spam, few forums won’t allow you to have a signature until you have X number of posts. Just keep doing your homework and you will eventually see visitors coming from the forums.

3. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging comes third when it is about off-page SEO techniques. You are writing on your own blog with no or less audience is like a lecture given to the walls. You need audience and the best way would be to be a guest lecturer. Go and add few pages to those websites that accept guest blogs, of your niche and have decent traffic. Read carefully about what they want you to write about and once you are ready, just ask them if you can write for their great audience. Make your content great so that if anyone is reading on their blog, they want to get on your blog as well to check out about you – never compromise with the quality, that matters always!

4. Social Media

Today is the era of Social Media, be it Facebook, Twitter or anything else. These are not high PageRanked sites but have lot of traffic as well. Getting your business or website on social media won’t only help in getting you backlinks but actual visitors if the SMO (Social Media Optimization) is done correctly.

As per few SEO experts, you should not put much of efforts in SMO until you have good chunk of visitors. Be there but put more efforts on something else. Once you have good number of visitors, you can think of getting active on social media for off-page SEO optimization.

One important thing though – you can’t win on all the platforms, choose one or two which are best for you and stay active there, you will get much better results than staying active on everywhere. Again, quality is important than quantity.

5. Directory Submission

While doing everything above you are already doing, just keep submitting your website to few directories everyday. Directory submission is something I would give least priority to because for one, many have very low PR and second, they don’t accept your add request immediately.

In many cases, you have to either pay or put a reciprocal link on your own website – both are not good. Why would I want to put up a link of just anything on my website which might or might not be related to my website and well, if it is about paying, why not pay Facebook for running ads and getting more visitors from there. But if the directory has got very good reputation and you can spend some money out, go for it, it might worth a back link.

6. Ads Posting

Classified submission or Ads posting is another method to get backlinks – it is okay to post ads but if you ask me, I will again put it on least priority. No doubt you get a backlink but it is from a page that has got less PR. Good website won’t allow you to just post ads and many ads posting websites doesn’t allow you to post a website link – no website like, no backlink – no use.

Just google and you will find ample of classified sites’ list where you can try and have your website gets posted. Many classified sites have some expiry. Your ads might get expire in 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 3 months etc. This is one more cons of Ads posting but when starting out, you want more and more and this can help you. Again, I would have it at very low priority.

7. Article Submission

Some people say article submission to various sites doesn’t help anymore and some say it is not harmful either. What I feel is it is not worthy of your time unless your website is already doing fine, has reached PR of at least 2. Google already penalized several such websites and de-indexed or lowered many of the pages of such websites as hubpages, Squidoo, ezine etc.

These websites are trying hard to get back on track but it is not happening soon. After Google’s search algorithm updates, these got hit badly. I have seen many people spamming these websites to earn backlinks and if I have seen it, Google is the big boy.

Nevertheless, you can’t say it is completely of no value! If you want to write, write unique content. The content that has great value and gives reader some takeway points. If you write good content, you are surely gonna get advantage of it. Just make sure you are not throwing just copied content.

Conclusion

Off-page SEO techniques are not easy to take care of and you have to hop from one to other website, write lot of content, do a lot of homework to build relationships and network. You have to continuously stay active just everywhere possible and that is the way you can do your work.

Getting more and more of traffic is a big pain but if you do things right, you can actually win in the end. Don’t expect people to start coming overnight. It is a long process and you have to be steady and patient. It takes time but it is totally worth it.

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