Off-Page SEO: Enhancing Your Online Presence
In the realm of search engine optimisation (SEO), off-page SEO plays a vital role in boosting your website's visibility and authority. Off-page SEO involves strategies and activities conducted outside your website to improve its online reputation, drive organic traffic, and ultimately rank higher in search engine results.
This comprehensive guide delves into various off-page SEO techniques, focusing on building quality backlinks and harnessing the power of social media marketing.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links that direct users from other websites to your site. Search engines view backlinks as votes of confidence and use them to determine your website's credibility and relevance. Quality backlinks from reputable websites can significantly enhance your website's authority and search rankings.
SEO Link Building strategy
To acquire high-quality backlinks, focus on creating valuable and shareable content that other websites will naturally want to link to. Engaging blog posts, insightful infographics, and authoritative research papers are excellent examples of content that can attract backlinks. Additionally, establishing meaningful relationships with industry influencers and collaborating on guest posting opportunities can help secure valuable backlinks.
Imagine you run a luxury clothing store in Singapore, and a reputable fashion magazine cites your blog post on "Top 10 Fashion Trends 2023" in one of their articles. This backlink not only drives referral traffic to your website but also signals to search engines that your content is valuable and worth promoting.
But before we dive into the different methods of acquiring backlinks, you need to familiarize yourself with several key terms under the spectrum of backlinks.
Anchor Text SEO
Anchor text essentially refers to the clickable words used from one link to the other. The best practice of SEO actually dictates that the anchor text you use should be relevant to the page you're linking to, rather than just generic text. Google will actually read the anchor text and determine if it is relevant to the outbound link.
For example, let's say I want to feature the designer shoes section of FarFetch, a luxury fashion platform, and I want to input an anchor text on blog, i should aim to input a type of anchor text that is relevant, such as Designer Shoes.
Types of anchor text
There are 5 key types of anchor text that you should know. Using the same example of featuring FarFetch, the variations are:
- Exact Match: Luxury Fashion Platform
- Partial Match: Luxury Fashion Platform empowering individuality
- Brand: FarFetch
- URL: www.farfetch.com
- Miscellaneous: Read more
There is no perfect ratio of anchor text types that you should utilise but ideally, you would want a good balance of all the different variations.
Do follow links
Another key term you should know are do-follow links and no-follow links. As the name suggests, the meaning for this term basically defines a backlink that you should keep and one that you should remove. You want to target acquiring do follow links as they help in terms of SEO by spreading the authority of the origin site to your site.
An SEO tool that we use to analyse our backlinks is SEMRush. Simply head to their Backlink Analytics section and run a scan on your URL. After the scan is completed, you can view all your backlinks and filter them as Follow or No Follow links only, which would display the results accordingly. From there, you should aim to identify all the no follow links that are being linked to your website, collate them and submit them to Google Disavow Tool to remove those links from your site.
Create high quality backlinks
A well-designed link building strategy is crucial for off-page SEO success. It involves identifying relevant and authoritative websites within your niche and building relationships with them to earn valuable backlinks. You should aim to target backlinks that have:
- Domain Authority of at least 30 and above
- Good amount of keyword rankings
- At least 200 monthly organic traffic
- Adequate number of referring domains (At least 50 referrals)
There are multiple ways to create high quality backlinks, of which includes:
Competitor Analysis
Start by conducting a thorough competitor analysis to identify websites linking to your competitors. Reach out to these websites, showcasing your unique value proposition and offer mutually beneficial partnerships. You can use the exact same method as do follow links using SEMRush, to run a scan on your competitor's site and identify the backlinks that they have.
Backlink Forums
Another method of acquiring backlinks are forums. You can find relevant forums and secure valuable links in them. This not only helps you to drive target traffic to your site but also establish a relationship with the community of that forum. For example, as a luxury fashion brand, you can find clothing enthusiasts' forums to share expert tips on dressing tips and styles. By providing valuable insights to these communities, you can gain exposure and attract traffic from there.
Of course, do not simply head to a forum and start promoting your brand and website. You should aim to provide valuable content while naturally fitting in your link into those threads.
Guest Posting
This method involves writing an article for an already established blog. It is a way to connect with readers and get your website out there while also securing a backlink to your site. However, this can be a pretty taxing process. You'll want to find a suitable site or blog with good metrics to write to and reach out to them to possibly feature an article that you wrote.
Some guest posting sites would have a form on the page itself that you could submit your article through, or alternatively, you can reach out to them directly through email. Do note that you should submit a unique piece of content for each individual website to prevent duplicated content.
While this is an effective method for link building, majority of these guest posting sites would charge a fee in exchange for "featuring" your article and website nowadays.
While there're are many other ways to acquire backlinks, these 3 covers the basics that you should master before moving on to more advanced link building techniques.
Inbound Social Media marketing
Social media platforms are powerful tools for amplifying your content, expanding your online reach, and engaging with your target audience. While many people think that Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media Marketing are completely different techniques, all of these marketing techniques are actually interlinked. By create a strong social media presence on platforms like Facebook or Instagram, you can actually drive constant traffic to your website.
Social Signals SEO
Social signals refers to the engagement that your content receives on a social media platform and Google can actually track these metrics. While Google does not use these social signals as a metric for ranking, the more engagement you have on your social media, the higher probability of driving traffic to your website. This in turn, can indirectly help with your SEO and and rankings.
For example, you can showcase your brand or product in a creative way through campaigns such as social media film marketing. In creating a visually creative video campaign, this content can captivate your audience and encourage them to share it with their networks, enhancing your brand's visibility and attracting relevant traffic and even potential backlinks to your website.
Check out a video campaign that we did up previously:
What is Local SEO?
For businesses targeting local audiences, local SEO and Google My Business (GMB) are essential components of off-page SEO. You can optimize your website for local SEO by including location-specific keywords in your content, meta tags, and URLs. Next, register your business on GMB to appear in local search results, provide essential information like operating hours, address, and contact details. Whenever you can, encourage your customers to leave positive reviews, as they can influence search rankings and enhance your online reputation.
Off page SEO
A well-executed off-page SEO strategy is indispensable for establishing your website's authority, driving organic traffic, and attracting potential customers. By focusing on building quality backlinks and leveraging the power of other techniques, you can enhance your online presence and gain a competitive edge. However, a successful SEO campaign would not just require off page optimisation, but also On-Page SEO and technical SEO implementations, to more effectively boost your site's rankings.
SEO Services
At Showman Digital, we are dedicated to providing top-tier SEO services tailored to your business needs. Our team of experts excels in crafting comprehensive off-page SEO strategies that will elevate your brand's online visibility and drive sustainable growth. Let us be your trusted partner in achieving SEO success. Let's have a chat and embark on a journey of heightened online prominence.
