Last Updated on July 17, 2022 by Subhash Jain

Many websites struggle to rank and draw visitors despite being designed professionally with all the advanced features and functionalities. In most cases, unfamiliarity with SMART off-page SEO practices is found the major cause behind the failure despite the intensive promotional efforts. 

Many SEO markets believe that off-page SEO means getting more backlinks for the website but off-page SEO is beyond this. 

In this up-to-date blog post on the off-page SEO checklist, I have compiled 30+ SMART practices that will add value to your off-the-page SEO strategy. 

This ultimate guide on off-page SEO will help SEO masters and businesses to understand off-page SEO techniques and to optimize all the key off-page SEO factors to improve the website ranking for getting high potential leads.   
If you are looking for an SEO agency to hire for quality and affordable Off Page SEO services, please contact us for the best SEO industry experience.

Off-Page SEO vs On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is focused on optimizing web page parameters to make the web pages search engines friendly. Off-page SEO is a practice of promoting a website in search results by earning a backlink for adding value to off-the-website ranking factors. 

Off-Page SEO: What it is and its Importance?

Off-page SEO builds and strengthens a website’s repute, authority, and recognition. Off-page SEO strategy includes many practices including social media optimization that influence search engines to consider your website valuable for the audience. 

Link-Related Off-Page Factors

The numbers of off-page factors add value to backlinks. The prominent link-related off-page factors are anchor text, freshness/age of backlink, number of backlinks for a web page, relevancy, trustworthiness of linking website, etc.    

Non-Link-Related Off-Page Factors

Non-link-related off-page factors also play a crucial role in deciding the success of off-page SEO. The key non-link-related off-page factors that every SEO expert should focus on are NAP citations, Brand mentions, reviews, social signals, endorsement, Google My Business, etc.  

Quality and Quantity of Backlinks Both Matter

Proper backlinks building strengthens domain authority. Backlinks quantity matters more than the quantity of the backlinks. If you succeed in getting a lot of high-quality backlinks that are reliable, foolproof, and trustworthy, your off-page SEO practices will be awarded because these backlinks practically strengthen your domain authority.

Link Relevance Matters in SEO

Links from topical and same niche related websites weigh higher in SEO. Link relevance, an important Google ranking factor, helps you to outreach opportunities. Google analyzes the quality and relevancy of websites that you are linking to your website. Backlink relevance helps you get passive traffic for a long time. 

Anchor Text Matching & Relevancy Matters for Target Keywords

Anchor text matching is the practice of hyperlinking your keyword along with other words. If you are using an anchor term containing the exact keyword for which the particular web page is created, it is considered an exact anchor match. Exact-match anchor text drives visitors to a page created for a keyword string used in the anchor. Relevancy to target keywords is a must to keep the visitors stayed and engaged on the website to avoid traffic bouncing possibilities for ranking benefits.  

Higher PageRank of a Linking Page Passess Higher Authority

The page rank of a page where your backlink is created is important as it adds value to your backlink. The repute of that page adds value to your backlink in terms of authority, trustworthiness, surety for relevant information, etc.       

Links from Home Page Has A Higher Authority

The presence of text links on the homepage makes navigation easy. People rely on links on the homepage; and, they tend to find the relevant link on the homepage. Homepage backlinks help bots to flow across your website and have a higher authority from the rest of the other web pages of the website. 

Natural & Organic Dofollow vs Nofollow Links Ratio

The key difference between a “dofollow” and “nofollow” links is the presence of the rel=”nofollow” tag in ‘nofollow’ links. The rel=”nofollow” attribute tells search engines about not passing the authority from the linking page to the destination page. The nofollow links don’t pass the link equity. The “dofollow link” passes the authority to the destination page. When a high ranking website has a dofollow link to a low ranking site, it improves the value of lower-ranked site for search engines; thus, the low ranking website gets a ranking SEO benefit. The ratio of  “dofollow” and “nofollow” links should look natural and organic. A higher volume of only dofollow links may give a wrong signal to search engines.

Contextual Links have Higher SEO Value

A “Contextual Link” is a text link on a web page that helps visitors to find relevant information at ease. There are three types of contextual links- external links, internal links, and reciprocal links. Contextual links have higher SEO value than the links placed at the header or sidebar. 

Linking Domains Higher Authority Strengthens Your Brand’s Credibility

Linking domains are the sites linked to your website. Domain authority is a metric that denotes the chances of a domain to rank. Linking domain authority becomes important for off-page SEO because high domain websites linked to your website strengthen your brand’s credibility for search engines. 

The Number of Linking Domains and Pages

A “linking domain” is the address of a website whose page/s is linked to your website. If you get five backlinks from one domain, it will be counted as one linking domain. The numbers of linking pages denote how many pages are linked to your website. The number of links on one page should be under 100.

Long Blog Posts  (3K & more words) Generate More Backlinks Than Short Blog Posts

Blog posts of 3,000 and 10,000 words are more likely to generate more numbers of backlinks than short blog posts. Longer blog posts get higher organic traffic and more backlinks whereas shorter blog posts of around 1000 words tend to be more engaging at social media platforms.

Reviews as Off-Page Ranking Factor

Google considers reviews as a strong ranking factor. Word-of-mouth marketing is favored by Google to rank the website better. The websites consistently getting a large number of reviews and star-ratings are likely to get a better ranking. For more details, plz refer Google product review update dated Thursday, April 8, 2021 for eCommerce websites.  

Earn Positive Reviews

Positive reviews influence search engines to rank a business website better because positive reviews establish the credibility of the brand, services, support, and quality. Almost 80% of buyers trust online reviews like they trust personal endorsements and recommendations. Sharing positive reviews on your business website and social media profiles improves off-page SEO results.

Brand Signals As A Ranking Signal in Search Engines

Brand name anchor text, branded searches, brand’s social media presence, brand mentions, and co-citations are the important brand signals. Brand signals support businesses to build visibility in search results and strengthen the users’ trust in the products/services being offered. Brand signals act as an important ranking factor when determining the authority, relevancy, and utility of a website.   

Brand Tracking Set-up Scales Consumers’ Relationship With Your Brand

Brand tracking scales consumers’ relationship with your brand over time. Brand awareness, brand loyalty, and brand association are the key metrics measured during brand tracking. Setting Google Surveys 360 helps you get real-time consumer insights and feedback of market research based on user surveys to decide smarter and faster.

Building Relationships & Collaborating with Other Brands Introduces You to a New Set of Audience Extending Your Reach

Consumers’ relationship with a brand is very similar to a relationship with people. Brand awareness, authenticity, responsiveness, engagement, innovative measures for consistent improvement, and trust are the key factors that build and strengthen relationships between customers and brands.  

Getting backlinks from the partner websites is the prime goal of off-page SEO for collaborative marketing. Collaborating with other brands, also known as collaborative marketing is the practice of combining your assets, funds, and resources with other businesses to accomplish the marketing goals better. The partners in collaborative marketing have a common audience but they are not the direct competitors.  

Guest Blogging – Opportunity To Outreach a New Set Of Audience

Guest posting helps to get quality backlinks. These backlinks improve the results of off-page SEO by expanding the audience community of your business website. Guest blogging helps to outreach a new segment of an audience engaged with the website that is posting your blog posts. You get more authority to provide relevant information and your website is awarded ranking improvement.

Research On Your Competitors Where They Are Guest Posting 

Identify the recently shared content by competitors, analyze keywords targeted, monitor conversations, list the backlinks, and structure a roadmap for content sharing to leverage the benefits of off-page SEO by guest posting. The ‘competitive intelligence’ is the key to succeed in guest posting for backlinks and branding better than your competitors. 

Leverage Digital Press Release to Reach Large & New Audience Quickly and Shortly

Continually informing about the new developments in your business through digital press releases  helps you keep the target audience engaged, impressed, and influenced and reach large and new audiences as well in a short time. Digital press releases are found effective to draw the attention of the large and new audience and you get more traffic and leads.    

Create Valuable & Insightful Infographics Visuals to Share with Others to Benefit Them

Infographics can generate more numbers of backlinks in comparison to conventional link-building practices. Infographics are important for off-page SEO because they represent your business message in a visually pleasing way. Infographics simplify understanding even complex topics; therefore, brands get more engagement that supports off-page SEO results.  

Target Your Competitors’ Broken Backlinks and Claim them

A broken backlink claim is a competitive link-building strategy in off-page SEO that involves contacting publishers, and to convince them to fix a broken link of your competitor on their website by replacing it with your backlink. 

Setup and Optimize Google My Business (GMB) for Greater Exposure in Local Search

Google My Business is the free support by Google to help businesses to create and post their profiles for higher visibility in local search results. It allows publishers to respond to reviews and comments, post photos of the latest developments, and edit the information by themselves. The relevance, distance, and prominence found in GMB support your business visibility in organic search results also. 

Link Bait As A Backlink Technique by Creating Controversial Stuff

Link bait is the off-page SEO practice of creating quality content to attract more numbers of backlinks at a faster pace. Creating controversial content, guides, data, sensational news, etc to post on the website for getting backlinks are just a few examples of link bait.

Link Your Website on Social Media Platform for 360 Degree Digital Profile

Since the presence of a business on social media influences the search ranking factors, therefore, linking a business website on a social media platform is widely practiced to get more traffic. Improved online visibility, increased shares & reviews, link building, extensive content distribution, improved brand reputation, etc are the key benefits of linking a website on social media.  

Identify Unlinked Brand Mentions and Turn Them into Links

Unlinked brand mentions, the online citations about your brand but without links to your website, are a great SEO asset for you. You can reach the authors to convince them to link those citations to your website to benefit brand users more. Is there a way to find ‘unlinked brand mentions’? Yes, there are a number of tools like Content Explorer or Google Search to find out unlinked brand mentions.  

Resource Page As A Link Building Technique

The resource page link building is an off-page SEO practice of building backlinks on the pages having a list of backlinks to external websites. Resource page has a variety of backlinks optimized for different keywords related to a topic. Using Google footprints is the best way to explore resource page off-page SEO opportunities. 

Roundup Posts Featuring Leading Names of Your Industry To Boost your credibility and authority

Roundup posts aggregate opinions and content from the experts in your niche. Roundup posts boost your credibility and authority. The collection of quotes and interviews of influential people make your posts more relevant and trustworthy; therefore, you get an SEO advantage. 

Get Interviewed and Be Interviewed to Get More & More of Your Brand Exposure

Getting interviewed on good-ranking websites or podcasts is an advanced off-page SEO strategy. By optimizing your on-page SEO, you increase the value of the page; it makes the page more desirable to link. It is the best way to establish your brand’s expertise on major news channels/platforms. Most brand mentions at new channels appeal with a backlink; and here comes the off-page SEO advantage.  

Setup YouTube Channel and Leverage YouTube 46B Monthly Traffic

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine. SEMrush YouTube Traffic Ranking, Analytics June 2022 reveals that YouTube has a huge digital footfall of 46.9B. WoW!. A positive YouTube user experience is a great way to promote your brand with enhanced engagement. Higher ranking, increased traffic, and strengthened brand awareness are the key benefits of setting up and optimizing your YouTube channel for improving off-page SEO results. 

Publish Insights-Providing Industry Reports and Eye-Opening Research Papers

Industry reports and research papers always make the top brands interested to know the latest. The more original content is more likely to be noticed and awarded by search engines. The best way is to create insights-providing reports and eye-opening research papers related to your business niche and optimize these for search engines. 

Accomplish Off-Page SEO with Help A Reporter Out (HARO) Technique

HARO is a passive off-page SEO technique of building high-quality backlinks, getting brand mentions, and increasing organic traffic. HARO off-page SEO technique drives in the benefits of positive PR and wider online exposure. “HARO is an online service dedicated to helping journalists and media members to get feedback and quotes in a particular niche to create new content. When your brand is mentioned there by reputed reporters, a larger audience comes to know about your brand benefits with wider visibility, more awareness, more brand mentions, and valuable backlink.    

Collaborate with Big Media Houses as a Content or Knowledge Partner To Generate Leads & Builds Loyal Fans

Collaboration with big media houses as a content or knowledge partner gives you a space to promote your brand on a prominent platform that is visited by the masses. Your presence on popular media channels makes your brand more credible and visible. The content circulated in popular media develops leads and builds loyal fans. 

Mention Influencers in Blog Posts To Attract Influencers’ Followers To Your Brand

The importance of word-of-mouth publicity is the same as it used to be decades back. People still trust brand mentions shared by users. When you mention influencers in your blog posts, it becomes more credible. Mentioning influencers in blog posts makes the would-be and existing customers trust your brand more. By mentioning the name of influencers in your blog posts, you attract their followers also to your brand.   

Positive Social Reputation Shares, Likes, and Links Improves customers’ Trust in Your Brand

A positive brand reputation inspires customer loyalty, drives growth, and improves customers’ trust in your brand. The highly visible and impressive brand advocacy convinces potential buyers to make a deal. Though social signals like shares, likes, and links are not the direct ranking factor but these impact SEO. The more the content gets shared, the more the SEO benefits your brand gets because of more links, likes, reviews, and comments.  

Email Outreach to Communicate on a Topic Without Any Sales Pitch to Earn a Backlink

Email outreach is an effective off-page SEO tactic used to build backlinks through a targeted email campaign. It is the practice of finding some relevant and influential prospects and persuading them to link your website with their websites or blogs. It is like convincing an influencer to give you a backlink. The best way for effective email outreach is to add value for recipients and to communicate your request without any sales pitch.

Be Podcast Guest to Connect with New Podcast Listeners Related to Your Niche

Being a podcast guest allows you to connect with new podcast listeners in the target audience. You get a chance to speak about your brand. The increasing popularity of podcasts improves your brand awareness. Choose the podcast relevant to your business niche. The key advantage of being a podcast guest is that your brand message gets published on the host’s blog with a valuable organic link. 

Reclaim Links – Finding removed or broken backlinks to your website and fixing these bad backlinks with updated URLs

Link reclamation is the practice of finding removed or broken backlinks to your website and fixing these bad backlinks with updated URLs. The link reclamation is vital to keep your link profile impressive that contributes to rankings. Under this important off-page SEO practice, you fix the four key reasons responsible for link loss- 404 error, 301 redirect, no longer indexed, and author removed the link. 

Submit Website on Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is an effective way to get additional web traffic. Search engines consider bookmarked pages at bookmarking sites as credible backlinks. If users bookmark a post and vote for it, it is shown in search results; and, you get more traffic to your site. Adding social bookmarking buttons to your posts is a time-tested way to increase readability. 

Join Forums and Interact with Communities To Establish Yourself As An Expert in Your Niche 

Joining discussion forums is an excellent way to communicate with the target communities. Regular postings and answering people’s queries  at different forums relevant to a specific topic helps you to get diverse backlinks and target web traffic. This process helps you to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. The relevant backlinks from different authoritative forums improve off-page SEO results. 

Submit Articles to Top-ranking Article Directories

Article submission is an important off-page SEO practice commenced to attract traffic by submitting keywords optimized articles at top-ranking article directories. This long-term SEO activity helps you increase the numbers of backlinks that boost the website rank. The brand reputation, awareness, strengthening, and expertise are the key advantages of strategic article submission.   

Submit Blogs to Web 2.0 Sites to Add Diversity to a website’s Backlink Profile

The key advantage of submitting blogs to Web 2.0 sites is that Web 2.0 backlinks add diversity to a website’s backlink profile. Web 2.0 backlinks are effective to improve the ranking of keywords at low to medium competition levels. Web 2.0 sites allow digital marketers for content sharing, networking, and grouping to keep the target audience well informed about the latest developments in their business trade.   

Participate in Question Answer (QA) Platforms to Answer People Queries to Help Them

People Google questions more than the generic keywords. The popularity of QA sites is increasing because more and more people trust these for being the best source to get the answer of their queries from experts or experienced products/services users. Q&A pages rank high in organic search results because the content of these sites is updated faster. When you participate in QA sites, you get the opportunity of backlinks creation. The success mantra is- ‘develop your Q&A asset to create natural links with patience following ethical practices’.

Submit Video Content to Video Submission Sites

Web pages designed with videos have better user engagement than pages without videos. Google shows a video thumbnail along with a search result, and users tend to click the video. Many studies confirm that Google prioritizes search results with video over search results without video. Time spent on a web page is a ranking signal; pages with video keep the visitors stayed for longer. URLs placed in the channel or video descriptions help you get qualified referral traffic.  

Submit Images to High-Quality Image Submission Sites

Image submission sites help you boost the online visibility of your business and brand especially if your website is not performing well in organic search results. The websites having less content but high-quality images get ranking support when submitted to image submission sites. The opportunity to create valuable backlinks with higher domain authority is a great off-page SEO advantage. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, Google +, etc are the top image submission sites used by smart off-page SEOs to submit quality images. 

Informative & Educative Doc Submission on Document Sharing Sites

Document sharing to generate traffic and create backlinks is an effective off-page SEO tactic. Off-page SEO experts submit a document in PDF or DOC to another website accepting document submission and making it public. Slideshare, Issuu, Wattpad, AuthorStream, Scribd, Zoho, etc are the top sites you can rely on for Document sharing. The best advantage is that your content is indexed faster. One document can be shared to multiple document-sharing sites for wider visibility.   

Wrap-up

Keep exploring this ultimate guide on off-page SEO as I will keep adding new aspects of off-page SEO periodically to keep you updated about the latest and top-trending off-page practices that will help you keep your business websites perform competitively better.  

About Author:

Subhash Jain is the Founder of Samyak Online.  We offer Off Page SEO services that fit every budget with measurable and quantifiable monthly SEO reports. Contact us now!.

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