Off Site SEO

Off-site SEO or Off Page SEO as it is also known, plays a large part in the overall success of your wider organic search strategy. Off Page SEO includes implementing various different techniques and in todays blog entry we are going to take a closer look at some of the popular white hat techniques that we use here at Herd marketing. These techniques we use daily to help our clients websites achieve better organic ranking.

At the heart of off site SEO is link building and it has been this way for some time now and in all honesty this doesn’t look like changing, at least anytime soon. When it comes to building backlinks, there are a couple different types of backlinks and these are characterised, generally by how they are created. These include:

Natural Links: These links are created without any action of the original page holder. An example might be a fashion blogger writing a piece of content and then linking to their favourite designers website within their blog.

Manually Built Links: This is where links are actively sought and essentially asked for. This could including asking customers to link towards your website or asking industry bloggers to insert links in their blog posts or on their websites.

Self Created Links: You can create these types of links by commenting in blog posts, submitting links to online directories or an online press release with an optimised anchor text. A word of caution however, some of these techniques can be viewed as black hat SEO and this is not something we advise – spammy link building is not what you want or need so approach this type of link building with caution.

However the back links are created, the main aim is gather as much equity from them as possible. There are a number of factors that contribute towards this equity being passed on and this includes:

The linking sites popularity – how popular is the site your new link comes from?

Relatable – Ideally, the link will come from a relatable source/similar field of interest or business.

The number of other links on the linking page – Too many external links on a webpage can imply its a spammy website.

Authority of the linking domain and page – The domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA) will have a big influence over the quality of the back link.

Although link building is the core activity in off page SEO there are still a number of other actives that can be done. This can include social media marketing – examples include getting your website customers to share articles, content or products on their own social media pages or by you sharing recent blog posts on your social media business pages. Any activity that occurs away from your own website that will help with your websites organic ranking can be classed as off page SEO.

Guest Blogging: This is a good way to generate relevant backlinks to your website if you work with or alongside a guest blogger. As mentioned earlier, do ensure that the content and topic of the blog is relevant to you and your industry.

To summarise, it is vitally important to generate good quality back links as part of your off site SEO and this can sometimes take a bit of time and effort. It is always advisable to to use white hat SEO techniques and avoid any spammy, so called quick fix solutions. Getting good quality, relevant links from websites with good DA and PA is worth the time and effort. In the long run your website will benefit from it. Social media sharing and advertising is another great way of sharing content that builds backlinks. Ultimately this will help to generate interest and as a result will increase website visits. In principle, it is also free so be sure to make the most out of this. Make it easy for your website for customers to share your content, products or services by using social share buttons/plugins on your website.

If you have enjoyed what you have read here today or if you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions then please do leave a comment in the box below. It is always interesting to hear other peoples views and perspectives on SEO.

We have recently just posted an in-depth article on how to improve your SEO. This article covers a number of search engine optimisation topics, including long tail keywords, short tail keywords, off site SEO and on site SEO.