Off-page Search Engine Optimization is not just about links.
It goes deeper than that. For example, brand mentions (your site URL or brand name mentioned on another site without a hyperlink) are an integral aspect of off-page search signals.
As smart bloggers and content marketers, we usually start with on-page SEO.
But we don’t stop there. Because, to a large extent, the things that matter to Google often happen away from your web site.
Depending on your marketing goals, the time you spend on off-page search engine optimization will vary. Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz observed that many web site owners spend about 30% of their time on off-page factors, and 70% on on-page factors. For other web site owners, those percentages are reversed.
Off-page SEO simply tells Google what others think about your site. For example, if you’ve got a lot of valuable links pointing to your pages, search engines will assume that you’ve got great content – the type that provides value for users.
Otherwise, why would people waste time linking to it?
People only cite, reference and share content they like. Even in a brick-and-mortar business, if your product is helpful and affordable, you’ll get a lot of word of mouth referrals from your current customers.
Search engine optimization can be scary, especially when you don’t know what steps to take to rank your fresh content pages in Google top 10. But, if you can develop a basic understanding of on-page and off-page optimization, you’ll be way ahead of your competition.

What is Off-Page SEO?

“Off-Page SEO” refers to all of the activities that you and others do away from your website to raise the ranking of a page with search engines.
Though many people associate off-page SEO with link building, it goes beyond that. Many activities that don’t result in a standard link on other sites are important for off-page optimization.
On-page search engine optimization happens within the site, while off-page SEO happens outside the site. If you write a guest post for another blog or leave a comment, you’re doing off-page site promotion.

Preparing a Site/Page for Link Building
Links are still very important to Google. In fact, it’s almost impossible for Google to determine the value of any web page if there are no links pointing to it — no matter how useful, fresh, or in-depth the page content might be.

Site owners are often tempted to skip initial preparations for link building. But it’s important that you give this top priority, because preparing a site will ensure that you’re mindful of the links you sent to them.
Dr. Peter J. Meyers reviewed some of the brands that won (and lost) at Google search in 2015. Sites that lost ground in organic search rankings didn’t have a strong foundation.

Sure, the majority of these sites have strong domains that have been around awhile, but the basic elements that boost a page’s power aren’t there.
So how do you ensure that your web pages are ready for link building?

i). Laying out your internal pages

Optimized internal pages can make a huge difference in your overall rankings. This includes interlinking your pages using random keywords (with more emphasis on your brand name).
According to Brian Dean’s famous post, “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors,”
The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site.
More specifically, you should have silo pages that connect to your category pages and supporting pages (posts). That way, when you send a link to the homepage, the juice flows through your category and supporting pages, thus boosting your search performance.

Smart search engine optimization  professionals don’t just throw links at a page. Instead, they lay out the pages so that each link will pass SEO juice to other interconnected pages.
None of your internal pages should stand alone. Make each page an integral part of your site and include seamless navigation. This is essential to your site users and your appeal to search engines.
Ideally, pages addressing the same or related topics should be linked together in order to provide a rich experience for the users.

In search engine optimization, internal pages are often overlooked. Most SEOs and site owners don’t realize that much of a site’s “SEO value” flows from how the internal pages are structured.
This is usually made possible when you have links from high-value pages on the same site. Silo your pages properly if you want a healthy link equity between your internal pages.
Ken Lyons shared 3 ways to ensure that your internal pages are well-structured and your links evenly distributed, before going out to get inbound links from external sources:

Remember that it’s no longer only about the quantity of links you have. The quality of links to your internal pages is as important as the structure of the pages themselves.
In fact, sometimes reducing the number of links pointing to your internal pages could help your SEO efforts.
For example, CMS North America, a manufacturer of 5 axis CNC machines, had an established website with 170 indexed pages. Yet, the site wasn’t generating substantial search traffic.
By auditing their site using the Internal Link Juice Tool, they discovered that the site had 168 links pointing to the homepage.
This was more than best practices called for, which is especially a problem when the SEO juice from those links doesn’t flow to internal pages.
They initiated a new navigation structure and removed some of the links pointing to silo pages, while retaining the links that supported usability (such as “contact us” and support pages). In all, 70 links were removed.
After 6 weeks of re-structuring the internal pages’ links and the homepage, most of the fresh pages and links had been re-crawled by Google’s spider.
The company saw improved rankings for 18 of the 21 keyword phrases the site was targeting. Keywords that were already ranking on page 2 improved an average of 3.7 ranking slots.

ii). Do the basic on-page SEO:

On-page search engine optimization is important. After all, you don’t want Google to view your site as a neglected portal.
I’m sure you’ve heard enough about meta tags and keyword density. Yet, there are other important on-page SEO factors that matter and that are often overlooked. This on-page SEO infographic from Backlinko lays many of them out for you:

One of the reasons why many authority sites no longer dominate the top organic listings is because they’ve neglected basic on-page SEO.
You want to link to your internal pages using the keyword that best defines that page.
When you create a landing page that you would like Google to rank highly, you should pass more SEO juice to that page from your important pages.
If the search engine giant is seeing a lot of pages on your site for a particular search term and is unsure of which one to rank higher than the others, you’ll struggle to increase your search engine rank no matter how much value you provide.

And that’s what the basic on-page search engine optimization process is all about. There’s no magic secret formula. Just ensure that your pages are well structured, your keywords specified, and signals are being sent to Google in the right manner. This will work towards improving your search engine ranking.
Here’s an example: Daily Mail Online, a popular online magazine that ranks highly for several keywords, failed to dominate the top listings during the 2014 World Cup.

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