All these signals give the \u2018green light\u2019 to search engines to rank a website higher in the results.<\/p>\n
Off-page SEO Benefits<\/h3>\n
A successful off-page SEO strategy will generate the following benefits to website owners:<\/p>\n
Increase in rankings<\/strong> – This is the most important advantage of off-page SEO. The website will rank higher in the SERPs and this also means more traffic.<\/p>\n Increase in PageRank<\/strong> – Page rank is a number between 0 and 10 which indicates the importance of a website in the eyes of Google.<\/p>\n It is the system invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders) and one of the reasons that Google became so successful in showing the most relevant results to the searcher.<\/p>\n Page rank today is only one out of the 250+ ranking factors that Google is using to rank websites.<\/p>\n Greater exposure<\/strong> – Higher rankings also mean greater exposure because when a website ranks in the top positions: it gets more links, more visits, and more social media mentions. It\u2019s like a never-ending sequence of events where one thing leads to another and then to another etc.<\/p>\n Establish Trustworthiness<\/strong> – In addition to the above, Google has recently introduced the concept of Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T), which plays an important role in rankings and is directly related to off-page SEO.<\/p>\n In simple terms, Google wants to rank websites that demonstrate expertise and authority on a subject, and one of the ways to ensure that the websites picked up by the algorithms can be trusted<\/em>, is through the number and type of incoming links.<\/p>\n To avoid any confusion for beginners, let\u2019s examine the relationship between off-page SEO and other SEO types<\/strong><\/a> like on-page SEO.<\/p>\n To understand the difference between the two, you first need to understand what is SEO.<\/p>\n SEO or Search engine optimization is the term used to describe a set of processes that aim in optimizing a website for search engines. SEO is important<\/strong><\/a> not only for getting high-quality visitors from search, but it’s also a way to improve the user-friendliness of your website and increase its credibility.<\/p>\n Search engines<\/strong><\/a> are using complex algorithms to determine which pages to include in their index and the order they show these pages in the search results. SEO is the way to \u2018speak\u2019 to search engines in a language they can understand and give them more information about your website.<\/p>\n SEO has two major components, On-Page and Off-Page SEO.<\/p>\n On-Page SEO<\/strong><\/a> refers to settings you can change on your website so that it is optimized for search engines.<\/p>\n The most important On-Page SEO elements are:<\/p>\n On the other hand, off-page SEO has to with techniques you can use outside the boundaries of your website, hence the name \u2018off-page\u2019.<\/p>\n On-page SEO has to do with activities you can fully control but with off-page SEO it\u2019s sometimes out of your reach. For example, it\u2019s easy to ensure that the quality of your content is good but you cannot force someone to link to your website unless they want to.<\/p>\n Resources to Learn More<\/strong><\/p>\n As mentioned above, Off-page SEO refers to activities you can perform outside the boundaries of your website. The most important off-page SEO techniques are:<\/p>\n Link building is the most popular and effective off-Page SEO technique.\u00a0 Basically, by building links to your website, you are trying to gather as many \u2018votes\u2019 as possible, so that you can bypass your competitors and rank higher.<\/p>\n For example, if someone likes this article and references it from his\/her website or blog, then this is like telling search engines that this page has good information.<\/p>\n During the ranking process, search engines will take that into account when deciding which pages to show on top of the results for the term \u2018Off-Page SEO\u2019.<\/p>\n Over the years webmasters have been trying to build links to their websites to get higher rankings and they \u2018invented\u2019 a number of ways to increase link count.<\/p>\n This \u2018forced\u2019 search engines to add more rules to their algorithms and start differentiating between good links and bad links.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see the difference between the two and why it\u2019s important.<\/p>\n A bad link is a link artificially generated by webmasters for the sole purpose of tricking search engine algorithms.<\/p>\n The most common examples of bad links are:<\/p>\n Blog Directories<\/strong> \u2013 something like yellow pages but each entry had a link pointing to a website.<\/p>\n Forum Signatures<\/strong> \u2013 Many people were commenting on forums for the sole purpose of getting a link back to their website (they included the links in their signature).<\/p>\n Comment link<\/strong> \u2013 The same concept as forum signatures where you would comment on some other website or blog in order to get a link back. Even worse, instead of using your real name, you could use keywords so instead of writing \u2018comment by Alex Chris\u2019,\u00a0 you wrote \u2018comment by SEO Rules\u2019.<\/p>\n Article Directories<\/strong> \u2013 By publishing your articles in article directories you could get a link (or 2) back to your website.<\/p>\n Some article directories accepted only unique content while other directories accepted anything from spin articles to already published articles.<\/p>\n Shared Content Directories<\/strong> – Websites like ‘hub pages’ allowed you to publish content and in return, you could add a couple of links pointing to your websites.<\/p>\n Link exchange schemes<\/strong> \u2013 Instead of trying to publish content you could get in touch with other webmasters and exchange links. In other words, I could link your website from mine and you could do the same. In some cases you could even do more complicated exchanges by doing a 3-way link: I link to your website from my website but you link to my website from a different website.<\/p>\n Notice that I used the past tense to describe all the above methods because not only they do not work today, you should not even try them.<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n So, if the above links are not useful, what is a good link? Here is a summary of the main characteristics of good links:<\/p>\n Good links are coming from trusted websites – <\/strong>One of the basic concepts you need to understand about link building and links is that it\u2019s not only a matter of quantity<\/em> but it is a matter of quality<\/em> as well.<\/p>\n In other words, it no longer matters how many links are pointing to your website but it is more important from where these links are coming.<\/p>\n For example, a link from a normal blog does not have the same ‘value’ as a link from the New York Times<\/em> or from any other highly trusted website on the Internet.<\/p>\n Good links are coming from related websites<\/strong> – For a link to have value it has to be given by a related website. For example, if you blog about SEO and you get a link from a fashion blog, that does not have the same \u2018value\u2019 as a link coming from a related blog.<\/p>\n Good links have relevant anchor text – Anchor text<\/a><\/strong> is the text description of a link and it gives a big hint to search engines what the target page is about. Good links should have relevant anchor text.<\/p>\n For example, a link that points to this post with the text \u2018what is off-page SEO\u2019 is more important than a link with anchor \u2018click here\u2019.<\/p>\n Good links do NOT have the \u2018nofollow\u2019 tag attached – <\/strong>In their attempt to fight spammy links and in order to give webmasters a way to link to a website without passing any \u2018link juice\u2019 (for example in the case of ads), search engines introduced what is known as the “nofollow link<\/strong><\/a>”<\/p>\n This is a special tag you can add to a link that tells search engines not to count the particular link as a \u2018vote of trust\u2019 to the referenced website.<\/p>\n This was done so that you can link to other websites from yours without taking the risk of being caught for selling or exchanging links.<\/p>\n In terms of off-page SEO, links that carry the \u2018nofollow\u2019 tag are ignored by search engines and have no influence on your rankings.<\/p>\n If you ask Google they will tell you that any links pointing to your website has to be natural links.<\/p>\n Natural links<\/strong><\/a> are exactly what their name implies. A website owner or blogger likes another website or blog and naturally adds a link to his\/her blog.<\/p>\n Does this happen in reality or is it another myth? It certainly does but you have to try really hard to get to this point. Take for example this blog. It has many incoming links because other webmasters find the content interesting and I also link to other sites in my articles because I find their content interesting.<\/p>\n This is what natural link building is all about. A link has more value from the reader’s\u2019 point of view rather than the search engine’s point of view.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, there are ways to build links to your website that adhere to Google guidelines.<\/p>\n The most effective link building techniques are:<\/p>\n 1. Publish link-worthy content<\/strong> – This may sound cliche but it\u2019s extremely important for two reasons.<\/p>\n First is that great content will get you natural links if you promote your page correctly to the right people (using social media marketing – more on this below).<\/p>\n Second, if you don\u2019t have good content, even if you manage to secure links, your page won\u2019t rank. A ranking factor that is more important than links is to have content that satisfies the user intent. If these two are not present (good content and links), you won\u2019t be able to rank.<\/p>\n Examples of link-worthy content are case studies, original research, different opinions about a topic, and generally content that is unique and unbiased.<\/p>\n 2. Guest posting on other websites <\/strong>– Guest posting is a popular method of getting links to your website. The idea is simple:<\/p>\n The problem is that webmasters have over-abused this method over the years and Google added rules to their algorithms to detect and de-value guest posting links.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t completely ignore them, they still have value if they are coming from trusted websites that also have a lot of content on their own and not just guest posts.<\/p>\n In other words, if a website is only publishing posts from guest authors, then it is likely that a link will not have any value or positive effect on your rankings. But a link from a website that has good rankings and good content generated from their own authors and guest contributions, can positively impact your rankings.<\/p>\n 3. Asking for links <\/strong>– Another popular technique for building links is asking for links. I\u2019m not a big fan of this method but I do get tens of emails per day asking for links.<\/p>\n The idea is that you find related websites, email them, and ask to link to your content.<\/p>\n The chances of getting positive replies are limited but not zero so for this method to work, you\u2019ll have to send a lot of emails.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t like this method for a number of reasons but other people are using it and it works if you\u2019re willing to do it on a scale.<\/p>\n 4. Linking to other websites from your content <\/strong>– A better version of the above method is to link to other websites from your content and email them to let them know about it. Webmasters will be happy to receive the link and return the favor.<\/p>\n This is different than a link exchange (which is against Google guidelines) because it\u2019s up to them to return the link and it\u2019s not part of a deal or a paid agreement.<\/p>\n 5. Publishing link-worthy visuals <\/strong>– This is an old technique that still works well. The idea is to publish great visuals on your website (infographics, statistics, graphs, illustrations, charts) that people might find useful to add to their content with a link to the original source.<\/p>\n Resources to Learn More<\/strong><\/p>\n Off-page SEO and black hat SEO<\/strong><\/p>\n Link building was an easy way to manipulate the search engine algorithms and many spammers tried to take advantage of this by building link networks which gradually lead to the creation of what is generally known as black hat SEO.Google has become very intelligent in recognizing black hat techniques and with the release of several algorithmic updates, they managed to control the problem and protect their search results from spammers.<\/p>\n The most important are:<\/p>\n Social media marketing is part of \u2018off-site SEO\u2019 and if you think about it, it\u2019s also a form of link building.<\/p>\n A few things to know about social media marketing and off-page SEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n Google officially states that social signals (like likes, comments, shares) do not directly impact rankings. The main reason is that they can easily be manipulated or paid for and they don\u2019t represent an accurate picture of how popular a social posting is.<\/p>\n It should also be noted that almost all of the links you get from social media sites are \u201cnofollow\u201d, which means that they are ignored by search engines.<\/p>\n So, artificially getting thousands of likes for your post, will not help your website at all. But, if a post gets real attention on social media or even goes viral, this will have an indirect impact on your rankings.<\/p>\n Popular posts are seen by thousands of people and it is more likely for webmasters to actually link to your post from their blogs.<\/p>\n Another way to think about how to use social media for link building purposes is this:<\/strong><\/p>\n When you publish a post, it will only be seen by your followers and unless it starts ranking high in the results, no one else will read it or find it on the Internet. It will get lost in the billions of published pages.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if you promote each of your posts on social media and reach a larger audience, it is more likely that more people will read it and it is possible that some people will link to it.<\/p>\n If you want to take it a step further, you can optimize your social media campaigns to target people that are more likely to link to your post, rather than showing your posts to a general audience.<\/p>\n To sum up, social media can indirectly help off-page SEO if used correctly.<\/p>\n Google loves brands and prefers to rank branded websites on top of the results. The reason is the same as explained above about Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. Brands are more reliable and likely to be trusted by users and this translates to a better user experience and happier Google users.<\/p>\n The difference between brand mentions, link building, and social media marketing is that brand mentions do not necessarily have a link pointing to your website. It can be mentions of your brand in forums, articles, reviews, or social media networks.<\/p>\n As part of your off-page SEO strategy, you should pursue any positive mentions of your website, products, or authors and make sure that you respond to negative or misleading comments.<\/p>\n If a brand mention is linked, that\u2019s even better but even if it\u2019s not, it still has some value.<\/p>\nOff-Page SEO Vs On-Page SEO<\/h2>\n
![\"Off-Page](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/off-page-seo-vs-on-page-seo.png\")
On-Page SEO<\/h4>\n
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Off-Page SEO<\/h4>\n
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Off-Page SEO Techniques<\/h2>\n
![\"Off-Page](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/off-page-seo.png\")
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Link Building<\/h3>\n
What is a bad link?<\/h4>\n
What is a good link?<\/h4>\n
![\"Anchor](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/anchor-text-example.png\")
![\"nofollow](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/what-is-a-nofollow-link.jpg\")
How to get high-quality links for your website?<\/h4>\n
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Social Media Marketing<\/h3>\n
Brand Mentions<\/h3>\n
Customer Reviews<\/h3>\n