What is off-page SEO and why should you care?

Search Engine Optimization is a vital component of your content marketing strategy and will help to get your internet marketing business ranked highly on the search engines for your chosen keywords and keyword phrases (KWP).

In our post about off-page SEO, you learned how to optimize a page or post using WordPress.

Off-page SEO

In this post about off-page search engine optimization, you will get an overview of off-page SEO and how to go about optimizing your pages and posts using off-page tactics.

There are only a few considerations you need to make when it comes to off-page SEO. They are noted in the bullet list below, and they all have to do with referrals.

(A brief note: Why referrals? The search engines long ago figured out something we all already knew: Other people’s referrals are testaments to our value. Think auto mechanics: If you have a broken transmission, you may ask your neighbor or co-worker if they’ve ever had the issue and, if so, who they used for the repair. Same thing goes for websites—if somebody links from their site back to yours—i.e., a backlink—the search engines give that a lot of weight, like a personal referral.)

1. Quality of the referral. All other things being equal, it’s better to get a referral from the CEO of GE than from your next door neighbor. I mean, your neighbor could be a swell guy and all but he doesn’t carry the authority of the head of a Fortune 500 company. Same goes for website referrals—a link from CNN is better than a link from BobsTacoShack.com.
2. Relevancy of the referral. If your website is about widgets, it’s better to get a link (referral) back from somebody related to widgets than it is from somebody who sells used cars.
3. Number of referrals. More is better. Simple as that.

Now, take all 3 and combine them into a mix that only the search engines know and understand. In a perfect world, you would get LOTS of quality backlinks from relevant websites.

Other things the search engines look at is the anchor text. If you’re trying to rank highly for “Off-Page SEO,” it’s beneficial to you to get links back to your site using links like this:

Off-Page SEO

versus this:

Click here

Both links point to the same web page. However, Google and Bing will give more weight to the first link than the second one for the KWP “Off-Page SEO.”

Bottom Line on Off-page SEO

You need to get links. Lots of links. Lots of links trump fewer links. Plus, it looks very natural, especially if there are loads of links coming from social media sites.

Don’t forget, too, that social media is playing an ever-expanding role in the search algorithms, which means that the more links you can get from social media sites, the better.

Of course, you should always diversify your link building by getting links for high- and low-quality websites as well as from a variety of sources like article marketing, directories, video, podcasts, slide sharing sites, and document-sharing sites like Scribd.

Do all of that (easy, right?) and you will rule the search engines and get a healthy number of new and repeat visitors to your site.