What Is Meant By ‘Off-Page’ SEO? How Does It Factor Into Your Broader SEO Strategy?

Contents show

There are few businesses around today that doubt the importance of SEO, and yet so many still struggle to create the right kind of SEO strategy to give their website the best position. Your ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is determined by a great many factors, both on and off-page. Optimising these is the best way to boost your site up the rankings so they appear higher.

Of these two types of SEO, off-page is the lesser known and most misunderstood. Read on to discover more about off-page SEO and where it should fit into your SEO strategy…

What is ‘off-page’ SEO?

Off-page SEO quite simply refers to the optimisation of any factors that impact your ranking in the SERPs that aren’t found on your website itself. For example, your webpage content, headings, page loading speed, and your internal links are all on-page SEO. Meanwhile external links, external blog posts, and social media are examples of off-page.

Any action that you take outside of your website is counted as off-page, and these actions can have just as much weight as what you do on your website.

How to do off-page SEO

When approaching your off-page SEO, the first area that most people focus on is their backlinks. Links from reputable sites are one of the best ways to prove to search engine algorithms that you are reputable as well. You can generate links in a number of ways, including:

Sharing on social media
Reaching out to blog owners, journalists and other sources to try and build a relationship
Join an association
Create unique and high-quality content

This last one can be your top choice for gaining links as you should be creating high-quality content for your SEO in general. Writing a comprehensive guide on a topic, for example, is likely to generate links as people use you as a resource.

Other tactics for off-page SEO involve creating that oh-so-important quality content for guest blogging, growing a strong social media presence, and utilising customer reviews and influencer marketing.

Why is ‘off-page’ SEO so important?

So, why is off-page SEO important? Google takes into account many ranking factors when determining your page’s ranking in response to any given search. The quality and architecture of your website may be critical, but so too are factors like backlinks. Indeed, backlinks are among the most important indicators that Google uses when deciding your rank.

High-quality and authoritative backlinks help search engines to see that you are a website of worth, an authority yourself on the subject or area in question. Your SEO company in Dubai can help you to optimise your backlinks, building only the best links to improve your ranking. Google sees your backlinks as proof that others see you as valuable, a recommendation of sorts to prove your worth.

Posting content on other sites and platforms is another example of going off-page, and the right SEO here is hugely important. Social media content can gain you more engagement, likes and shares, all of which will again help speak to your reputation. Mentions in places outside of your webpages prove that your brand is of interest, and this shows your value to Google’s algorithms.

Essentially, off-page SEO is so important because it can show what other people say and think about you, rather than simply what you say about yourself. Google’s ranking factors include many off-page examples, and optimising these can have an impressive impact on your overall ranking.

How should you incorporate ‘off-page’ SEO into your broader SEO strategy?

Now that you can see how important off-page SEO is, it is time to consider how it should be incorporated into your SEO strategy. The crucial fact to remember is that just because off-page SEO is important, that doesn’t take away from how critical on-page SEO is. Both must be at the highest levels of optimisation in order to truly achieve your maximum ranking.

The best SEO strategy will include optimising both on and off-page factors so that both your website and all other mentions, content, and links appeal to search engines. And to your current and prospective customers. If you are looking to improve your off-page SEO, consider hiring an SEO company to get to work boosting you up the rankings in the future.