Why does off-site SEO matter?

Posted August 17, 2020 by Lee

Off-page SEO or off-site SEO gives Google and other search engines the heads up on what people are looking at and finding useful. That means that the more people link back to your site or who cite your information in their blogs or on other sites the more kudos you have and the higher your site will rank.

The off-site SEO helps the search engines to understand what the page is about and to determine what it is relevant for. To score highly in the algorithms your website pages want to be considered relevant and authoritative within the field.

Those websites that rank most highly are those that are talked about, written about and blogged about the most. So, I know what you’re thinking, it’s a catch-22 situation unless my website is talked about, written about and blogged about I cannot get high SEO ratings and first-page ranking. But without a high ranking people won’t find me to give me those.

Well yes and no! By using carefully placed and relevant on-page SEO some people will find your site, especially if you have authoritative information on what they are looking for. That is where adding blogs to your website can really help. Keep it relevant, keep it lean and don’t add SEO for the sake of it. Any SEO used should flow and the blogs should be engaging.

If you don’t have time to write blogs or someone on your team who can do that, then you can outsource this to freelance copywriters who can usually write posts for a reasonable fee.

Other ways that you can earn and gain:

Reviews
Influencers
Networking
Forums
Social Media
Blogs on other sites
Blogs on your own website as we have already discussed above

Whatever you do to drive the off-site SEO it must be via trustworthy and relevant means.

Reviews of your products can be a good way to increase off-page SEO. A marketing plan that includes asking customers to post honest reviews can build good reviews.

There is no point in getting a teenage influencer to promote mobility aids for the elderly. Or, an octogenarian lady to big-up your teen fashion business. The influencer you team up with must be relevant to your products and target market.

Network with those who sell products or services that complement yours. By adding links to each other’s websites you can help each other with sales and off-page SEO.

Forums in connection with your products, area of expertise or hobby that can refer back to your website can be a fun way of building off-page SEO.

Never underestimate the power of social media! Post on a regular basis and follow people who are your target group.

Blogs on other sites are when a blog writer promotes your website, product or business. This can and does happen automatically, but is something you could look into kick-starting as a way of improving the SEO. This can also go hand-in-hand with the outreach plan to scratch each other’s backs!

Google uses off-page SEO by as much as 70% in the algorithms and certainly 40-70%. Even at 40%, it is obvious that you need to plan for good off-site SEO from the start as a factor to improve page rankings.

Have fun with it – but never underestimate it!

…and yes if you spotted, I have interchanged off-site and off-page because they mean the same thing.

Categories: SEO