Off-page SEO, also known as off-site SEO, describes optimization techniques that can improve your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). These techniques, however, happen outside of your site and involve attracting links from other websites, shares on social media, and mentions across the web.
Off-page SEO is tremendously valuable because it tells search engines that your website is important to others on the web. ... This lets external sources act as tie-breakers for websites that have the same quality of on-page SEO so search engines know the best to rank websites on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Off-page SEO is an effort (such as through social media marketing or influencer marketing) to generate links and ratings, so your site rises in credibility and rank. Off-page SEO is out of your control.
Links are a critical component to off-page SEO. Before you start building or earning backlinks, it’s essential to understand the different types of links, as well as the factors that influence the equity of a link to your website.
The three types of links include:
The most popular technique of off-page SEO is backlinking, which aims to generate natural links to your page
Brands with a strong presence on social media feel open and approachable, which is something that is becoming increasingly important today for businesses.
The real goal of off-page SEO, however, is to boost ranking so that people can find, contact, and purchase from you. Off-page SEO will create positive engagement with your brand, whether that be through links, reviews, social media, or brand mentions.
A natural link comes to your website naturally. Your team doesn’t take any action or conduct any outreach to earn the link. The person writing that content decided to link to your content, whether because they follow your brand or discovered your content via search. Either way, they found your content valuable and worth highlighting.
A built link comes to your website from outreach. Your team worked to earn this link, whether by reaching out to webmasters, publishers, or journalists. You may have even promoted the content with an ad campaign, providing it with the exposure that helped people uncover the content. Even though you built this link, you still created valuable content for users.
A created link comes to your website from self-submissions on directories, forums, or press releases. Your team created this link intentionally and without conducting any outreach. This off-page SEO tactic for link building tends to register as a black-hat SEO practice because search engines look down on this kind of link building tactic. When building links, focus on natural or built links.