Smart bloggers and content marketers start with on-page optimization.
But, the most important Google ranking factor is not found on your site at all. It's actually backlinks from other websites that point to your website. On average, the top Google results have 3.8x more backlinks that those in positions 2-10.
O ffpage search engine optimization does not only involve building backlinks.
It goes much deeper than that. Brand mentions, which are your site URL and brand name that is mentioned on another website without a link, are an integral part of off-page SEO signals.
Offpage SEO tells Google what other people think about your website.
People will only share, cite, and reference content they love. If your product is useful and affordable, even if you have a brick-and mortar business, you will get many word-of-mouth referrals.
If you are ready, I will walk you through all you need to know regarding off-page SEO optimization.
What is Offpage SEO?
Off-page SEO refers to all activities you and others perform on your website in order to improve the page's ranking with search engines.
Although many people think of off-page SEO as link building, it is much more. Off-page optimization is important for many activities that don’t lead to a standard link from other sites.
Off-page SEO is done outside of the site. On-page search engine optimization occurs within the site. You are doing off-page promotion if you leave comments or write a guest blog post.
Preparing a Page/Site for Link Building
Google still values links. Google can't determine the value of a web page if it doesn't have links to it.
Site owners often feel tempted to skimp on initial preparations for linking building. It's tempting to skip the initial preparations for link building.
How can you make sure your web pages are ready to go for link building?
1. Lay out your internal pages
Optimized pages on internal pages can make all the difference to your overall rankings. Interlinking pages with random keywords is a great way to improve your overall rankings.
According Brian Dean's post “ Google’s 200 Ranking Factors “, t The number of links within a page is a measure of its importance in relation to other pages.
This is a dangerous practice. Semrush recently found 42.5 per cent of websites had broken internal links.
Silos pages should link to your category pages, supporting pages (posts) in order to optimize internal linking. This will ensure that your search engine performance is improved by allowing you to link to your homepage from silo pages.
SEO professionals who are smart don't just add links to a page. Instead, they arrange the pages so that each hyperlink will transfer SEO juice to interconnected pages.
Your internal pages shouldn't be isolated. Each page should be an integral part your site. This is crucial for your site visitors and search engines.
Pages that address the same topic or are related should be linked to each other in order for users to have a richer experience.
Internal pages are often neglected in search engine optimization. Many SEOs and site owners do not realize how important internal pages are to a site's “SEO Value”.
This is possible when there are links from pages of high value on the same website. If you want to build healthy link equity between your pages, it is important to properly organize them.
It's not about how many links you have. Your internal pages' structure is just as important as their quality links.
Sometimes, reducing the number links to internal pages can help with your SEO efforts.
CMS North America, for example, was a manufacturer of CNC machines with 5 axis. It had a website that was well-established and had 170 pages indexed. The site was not generating significant search traffic.
They discovered that there were 168 links linking to their homepage after auditing the site with the Internal Link Juice tool.
It was more than the best practices required. This is especially true when the SEO juice from these links doesn't flow into internal pages.
They created a new navigation structure, removed links to silo pages and retained links that support usability (such “contact us” or “support pages). All in all, 70 links were deleted.
After six weeks of restructuring the links to the homepage and internal pages, the majority of the new pages and links were re-crawled using Google's spider.
The company was able to improve its rankings for 18 out of 21 keywords it was targeting. The average ranking for keywords that are already on page 2 increased by 3.7 slots.
2. Do basic on-page SEO first
It is crucial to optimize your site for search engines. Google won't view your site as a neglected website.
You're probably familiar with keyword density and meta tags. There are many other on-page SEO factors that are important and often overlooked. This Backlinko on-page SEO infographic outlines many of them for you.
Many authority sites are losing their top ranking in the organic search results because they have neglected on-page SEO.
Link to internal pages with the keyword that best describes that page.
You should give more SEO juice from your most important pages to a landing page you want Google to rank high on.
You won't be able to improve your search engine rank if the search engine giant is seeing many pages on your website for a specific search term.
This is the essence of basic on-page SEO. There is no secret formula. Make sure your pages are properly structured and your keywords are correctly used. Also, ensure that signals to Google are sent in the correct way. This will help you rank higher in search engines.
Here's an example: Daily Mail Online failed to rank high for many keywords during the 2014 World Cup. Others took their spots.
This online magazine missed the opportunity to reach thousands, if certainly millions, of search users due to the overwhelming interest in the tournament.
Despite several brands dominating Google's initial page rankings, Daily Mail Online was not able to capture the term “World Cup” because it overlapped with Daily Mail’s landing page (shown in pink).
The search engine giant is seeing a lot of pages from Daily Mail Online that match this search term and is not sure which one to rank highest.
This is a big deal with internal page linking, or the lack thereof.
Mail Online could have linked to the hub page on every page, especially those that are related to ‘Word Cup', to capitalize on the popular search term.
This would have sent a strong signal that this page was important to Google and possibly useful to users.
Daily Mail missed many opportunities to link back from hub pages and blog posts, however.
3. Choose thematic keywords, even for off-page SEO
Links are still the cherry on top, but the key to SEO is what keywords you choose.
Keywords are the foundation of your content campaign. The diagram below shows how on-page optimization looks. Primary keywords account for 40% and 7.5%, respectively.
Not all keywords are the same. You need to choose thematic keywords if you want to increase your chances of getting organic traffic to you site.
The term “thematic” means to have or relate to a specific subject.
When you are choosing keywords, make sure to focus on keywords that are relevant to a specific subject. It is not possible to afford to expand your reach too much. Here's an example.
Let's say your company offers WordPress theme customization services.
Simply type your keyword (WordPress theme customization), into the Ubersuggest search box. Click the “Search” button. Simply type your main keyword (WordPress theme customization), into the Ubersuggest search box. Click on the “Search” button. These are the key phrases that populate the search results:
Remember, you are in this business to help others. You can tailor your content more effectively to their search terms, by knowing the search terms, phrases, or words they use.
By switching to branded keywords, you can increase the effectiveness of your keywords. Instead of targeting SEO tips, you can target your brand or domain name (e.g. Moz SEO tips, Neil Patel SEO span).
Brand-oriented keywords or domains often bring up multiple results in Google search results.
You must create high-quality, useful content. It doesn't matter how high your pages rank in Google search results – any of these link building strategies can help you pass more link juice.
Thematic keywords branded will give you an advantage over your competitors and serve as a top SEO technique. You can drive motivated visitors to your website no matter what brand dominates the top 10 organic listings.
Don't keep repeating the primary keywords when you target keywords in on-page SEO.
You can instead use synonyms or latent meaning indexing (LSI), terms. LSI keywords serve one purpose: to aid search engine spiders extract meanings from normal keywords (especially ones with more than one meaning). Apple is the computer company and Apple is the fruit.
If you are writing content about Apple, Google expects that you use common terms and words.
Avoid repeating your primary keyword (e.g. cheap airline tickets) in your content. Google may penalize you for over-optimization.
Perhaps you are wondering how to find the synonym words. There are many tools available to search for LSI search terms. These are the steps to follow:
Step 1: Visit Ubersuggest. Type in your primary keyword (e.g. cheap airline tickets). Click on the “Search” button.
Step 2: Select “Keyword Ideas” from the left sidebar.
Step 3: Look at the Keyword Ideas
Step 4: Select Keywords
Look for keyword phrases that have high search volumes, low SEO difficulty scores, and high CPC.
This is the final step to get a better understanding of what you should do to be ahead of your page one competitors.
Summary:
All it takes to optimize your on-page keywords is to research, choose, and integrate keywords you are able rank for. It is not possible to compete with brands with stronger domain authority.
You should also concentrate on long-tail keywordsspan styling=”font-weight 400 ;”>. These keywords are easy to find and to use to increase your search ranking.
In January 2022, Google processed 12.1 million searches. Imagine how much traffic you could get if your website captured just a fraction of these searches. How?
Backlinks are a key off-page SEO factor, as bloggers, content marketers, SEOs and SEOs know.
This is because natural links to authoritative and relevant websites act independently as a “vote-of-confidence,” which makes search engines more trust your website.
Google's search engine spider crawls your website looking for new content. It may also look for existing pages, depending on the sitemap settings.
Google uses several algorithm elements to rank pages in search results for relevant queries.
These are the SEO's ranking factors span styling=”font-weight 400 ;”>. These are the main determinants of organic web page ranking. You don't need to know all the ranking factors. It's great news, as there are hundreds of them.
Links are the most important aspect of SEO. Not the links themselves, but their impact. Other factors that are not on the page include:
If I had 100 links to my page, and you only had 20, Google would consider my web page more authoritative and valuable.
At the time, link quality was not that important.
Today, however, links are viewed differently. Google may see a link linking to your website and ask many questions. Here are some examples:
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From where did the link originate?
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Why did the site owner link to you?
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How is the quality of the link? Is it from an authority website? )
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How new is your link?
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How natural are your link profiles?
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and so on…
Focus on SEO-friendly, relevant links when building links to your website or internal pages. This is especially important in today's SEO.
How to Get Valueable Links To Improve Off-Page SEO
Backlinks can be obtained in many ways. These are the most popular and effective.
1. Broken Link Building
Although I have written tons of posts about broken link buildingspan styling=”font-weight 400 ;”>,, sadly not many people do it. According to Semrush, 40.5 per cent of websites have broken links. You can take advantage of this by asking other websites that have broken links to replace them with yours.
Broken Link Building is simple, quicker than guest blogging and could be a significant avenue to earn the right link.
I used broken links building strategies to launch my nutrition blog and I was able to generate a few natural links from trusted websites through that strategy.
There are endless opportunities when you take advantage of dead links. The internet is in fact broken. Literally.
Many links you see on authority blogs may be dead. Hosting expires and sites get hacked during file transfer, migration, or typo mistakes. Links are bound to go down. These pages lead to 404 error pages that are not appealing to users (more information on this later span>
These broken links can be used to your advantage.
Broken links are not something new or special. This link building strategy will not become obsolete or stop working, as there will always be broken links on the internet.
You don't need to be concerned if you have too many broken links on your blog. According to the Official Google Webmaster Central blog and confirmed by Semrush 2021, broken or 404 pages will not affect your site’s ranking.
404s are a normal part of the internet. The Internet is constantly changing and new content is created, old content is deleted, and it returns a 404 response code when it dies. This is something search engines know; you will find 404 errors all over the internet. We prefer that when you remove a page from your website, it returns a 404 or410 response code, rather than a “soft 404.”
Google loves a 404 error page. But do you think that it provides a positive user experience? No.
People click on your website from an organic search result page and they don't expect to see a 404 error page but they want to see exactly what they were looking for.
Imagine how frustrated people feel when they click on the first search result for “best digital watch”, only to see an error page.
Many of these users will mark the site address and swear never to return. The user experience was terrible. Poor user experiences are a sure sign of poor customer service.
This can lead to disaster. Sacramento Design Network says that “85%” of businesses could be destroyed by poor customer service.
Broken link building is essentially four steps. First, conduct a backlink assessment on the website of interest, then find broken links. Next, contact the owner and inform them about the dead links.
You might be able to help the site owner find non-functional links by including a link back to your website. If necessary, you should offer a substitute link.
If I found links to a specific web page on my Neil Patel blog dead, I could replace them with another high-value resource. You can use the valuable link to your high-value webpage as SEO juice.
You can do it right the first try and create the right links to your pages with this tactic. These resources will prove to be very useful:
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How to Create 100 Quality Links without Writing New Content
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13 Effective Link Building Strategies for Busy Marketers
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Broken Link Building
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Broken Link Strategy: How to Get Links
Create and distribute compelling infographics
It's clear that infographics work, and will continue to work, in spite of all the doubts.
Infographics was the fourth most popular form of content marketing media in 2020.
Although infographics can still produce impressive results, it is important to realize that not all infographics are created equal.
My infographics are high-quality, and you'll agree. For a single infographic, I can spend as much as $1,000.
You may not be able afford $1000 infographics if your budget is tight or you are just starting out.
Dribbble, a site that allows you to search for professional infographic designers at half the cost, is a great option. Visual.ly will give you a better design, but it will cost you more.
Infographics are used by many content marketers to attract the right audience and acquire authoritative links. They also help them grow their email lists.
Ken Lyons shared a WordStream Case Study in which they created an infographic that was very useful and helped many people. The infographic was linked by CNN, and drove a lot of traffic to its website.
Ann Smarty is a prolific content marketer who created an infographic that generated 10 strong links in 2 days.
Visual marketing can be used by any company, B2B or B2C. It will drive engagement with your target audience as well as earn editorial links from the appropriate sites.
I enjoy creating and sharing compelling infographics. An infographic can go viral if it is promoted well.
When people share your infographics, you'll continue to generate organic traffic to the blog .
I have found that infographics create 37.5% higher backlinks than the average blog postspan styling=”font-weight 400 ;”>. Infographics are a powerful link building strategy that you should try.
These resources will help you create and distribute infographics that can be used to enhance your off-page SEO efforts:
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How to Make and Promote Infographics to Drive 5K Visitors per Week
- The Complete Guide for Creating Visual Content (Even If You're Not a Graphic Designer).
There are many other ways to get quality links to your website pages. You can use blogger outreach to establish better relationships and then use social media outreach for unlinked brand names on relevant blogs.
How to Avoid Google Penalties For Unnatural Links
It is crucial to have backlinks if your site wants to remain in the top search results. Off-page SEO must be mentioned, as well as Google penalties and unnatural linking.
Links can have a significant impact on search performance, for better or worse.
Pro bloggers will often answer the question “links” when asked which factor has the greatest impact on search ranking.
Link building is a popular activity for bloggers, small businesses and top brands. MarketingSherpa's 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report revealed that 59% have engaged in external link building.
Google's penalty should be avoided as much as possible. It can be very daunting and difficult to recover from a penalty.
Google is no longer interested in many things, including links from sites with high PR.
Google now cares more about user optimization, user intention, and valuable content. Google is now more concerned about the purpose of each search phrase than what keywords they are using.
An extensive backlink analysis will help you determine which links are beneficial or harmful to your site and how to avoid being penalized by Google.
SEO professionals have not yet been given any instructions by the search engine giant on how to stay safe. There are steps you can take to make sure your site doesn't get penalized.
These best practices helped me to generate more 700,000.00 blog visitors to QuickSprout , without any penalties due to over-optimized anchor texts and unnatural links.
1. First, create content and optimize for users
This is probably something you already know. You probably already know what this means. Are you putting your users first or are you not?
For users to truly be put first, you should not mention your keywords multiple times in a post, especially if the content doesn't flow naturally.
It goes beyond keyword usage to put users first. Even though you might not directly target any keywords, your content may still look too promotional.
People don't want to be sold. Instead, create valuable content to help users. Integrate data as much as possible into your blog posts and use visuals to communicate your message better.
They will be more interested in you if you provide great content.
2. Diversify Anchor Texts
Next, diversify your anchor text by conducting a backlink analysis.
Diversifying anchor texts means that you use different keywords, brand names and generic terms to make your links appear natural and not manipulative.
This is because if you did not do anything illegal to obtain the links, your anchor text should not contain exact match keywords.
Relevance is the most important factor when diversifying your anchor text. Google will evaluate your link based upon the topic and thematic consistency of the referring site.
It's not possible to control the source of your links. Anybody can link to your content and share it.
You can't control the anchor texts and links that you receive, so you need to use your brand name more often as an anchor text.
When you are a social media expert, and you are interviewed by a blog about cars, your brand name should be used as the anchor text.
This is because the topics of cars and social media are not thematic or closely related. Google uses the anchor text from external links to the page as a way to evaluate the quality, relevance, and usefulness for any link it receives.
Make sure you only get links from high quality sites . Avoid low-quality links that are not natural.
Off Page SEO Conclusion
What is Off-Page SEO?
Any signals that Google and other search engines see as indicating that your website is valuable to their audience are called off-page SEO. One example is inbound links.
What are some elements of off-page SEO?
Reviews, links, company information, video and social media profiles.
What does off-page SEO have to do with on-page SEO?
Optimizing your SEO on the page will increase the page's value, making it more attractive to link to.
What does off-page SEO link linking look like?
Many factors influence the value of keywords in offpage SEO links. These include user experience and the depth and value of content around related keywords and subjects.
Off-Page SEO Conclusion
If you want to improve your search engine ranking, it's time to get off your website and network with industry bloggers and site owners.
Google Penguin and other algorithm updates were not intended to target search results without a lot of incoming links.
To improve your off-page optimization, you should only use white-hat linking strategies.
You must prepare your website for authority link juice. This is important as you strive to earn and build links. Your site should be easy to navigate.
It all comes down to answering users' questions when creating better content experiences. Begin by looking for the most common questions that your ideal customers ask. These questions can be found on Quora and Twitter. It is an important SEO technique that can't be stressed enough: creating high-quality content.
Search engine optimization is more than a marketing strategy that works. It is important to approach search engine optimization with the understanding that your efforts today will pay off later, eventually increasing your search engine rank and leading to the success you seek.
Be consistent and patient, and you will gradually rise to the top of Google's search results.
What other SEO best practices are you aware of that can help improve organic search rankings? What do you think about the relationship between SEO and social media?
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By: Neil Patel
Title: Off-page Seo: What Is It & How Can You Take Advantage of It
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-off-page-seo/
Published Date: Tue, 03 May 2022 20:11:54 +0000