All you need to know about Off-Page SEO: Link Building Guide

Bloggers and website owners are certainly familiar with the term Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are two types of SEO that are usually used to optimize the intended results: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. The main purpose of using SEO is to increase traffic and page ranking in search engines.

You certainly want your website to appear on the first page or the first five pages. Increasing your page rank in search engines can increase the visibility of your website. This helps increase traffic, brand awareness, page rank, and conversions from visitors to customers.

What is off-page SEO?

In SEO, the term off-page optimization refers to factors that are unrelated to your website’s pages. While on-page SEO deals with websites such as internal links, content, and keywords, off-page SEO deals with link building or backlinking.

To achieve the goal of using SEO, it is not enough just to care about your website and brand. You should also try to build a good reputation so that potential customers are willing to visit and learn more about your website and business.

What is the difference between off-page SEO and on-page SEO?

When evaluating a site, search engines will look at both on-page (things about your website) and off-page SEO (how popular your website is).

Simply put, your ranking category is determined by on-page factors, and how high you rank in search engines is determined by off-page factors.

In on-page SEO, the tips that are usually given are about page loading speed, content, content quality, external links, titles and descriptions, and others. Meanwhile, what is discussed in off-page SEO are tips on link building, social media marketing, and social bookmarking.

Also read: How to Create SEO Friendly Articles on Blogs & Websites

Why is off-page SEO important?

When someone is looking for information about a brand, they usually already have their own opinion based on reviews, comments from friends and family, or acquaintances in cyberspace, as well as any information they can get both online and offline.

Off-page SEO basically tells search engines like Google how visitors think about your website which can help your website become an authority website by increasing visibility. This technique also gets visitors to mention your brand and link it to your website content.

However, many think that off-page SEO is just link building. Even though there are several other ways to optimize the use of off-page SEO.

The ancient method of off-page SEO

Why is it called the ancient method? because this method is abandoned by many SEO practitioners, you could say it doesn’t work 100%, and is not recommended to be done, but if you want to try to increase the experience, it’s not a problem. Here’s a list of ancient off-page SEO methods:

#1. Promotion Through Forums

Although not harmful but this method takes a lot of time. You are asked to mention your brand in various forums that match the products or services you offer. You’re better off spending time improving other important things in your business.

#2. Putting Websites in Search Engines

This method has become a commonly used method to ensure that your website appears in Google and Bing searches. However, with the increasingly difficult search engine algorithms, this method is considered no longer giving results.

Also read: Top 15 Cheap, and Free SEO Tools to Analyze Your Website

#3. Article Directory

Creating content for article directories has also become one of the most common old ways of content marketing. But the fact is that most people don’t read this directory website because the articles are not of high quality and contain irrelevant things.

When Google Panda appeared, this directory website was the first website category to experience a significant decrease in traffic.

#4. Directory Website

This is a method that was once considered effective but is now considered useless. This website is rarely visited because Google has now replaced the use of directory websites with faster search times.

#5. Social Bookmarking

Following social media forums such as Reddit and StumbleUpon will give great results if your brand goes viral, but these opportunities are very hard to come by. This is because websites like this update quickly so if you upload something, your post may disappear the next day.

#6. Excessive Use of Social Media

Maybe you think the more social media you have, the more likely it is to increase traffic. Many social media are not related to your business. You need a related social network to help promote good.

Focus on some social media that fits your business so you can concentrate on your followers on those social media.

Also read: SEM and SEO: Differences in Benefits and Uses

Latest Off-page SEO Strategy

This new off-page method is arguably still very workable, here’s a list of the latest off-page SEO strategies:

#1. Link Building

This method is the most popular and effective off-page method. Basically, when you provide external links in your content, you are trying to collect as many votes as possible to increase your rankings and outperform your competitors.

Similar to content, make sure you get quality backlinks. A lot of backlinks but not quality is no better than a few backlinks but from quality links. There are several factors that determine the quality of a link:

• Trusted website
• Context relevant to your content
• Popularity of backlinks
• The text for the link must describe the content of the target link in a few words
• Natural links and not shaped like JavaScript

Then how to get this link? Natural links are links that are most liked by search engines. Natural links mean your website is liked by other website owners and provides a link to your website because it is in accordance with their content.

Getting natural links is not easy. The best way is to upload quality content that is worthy of a backlink on their website. If you use the old ways that only care about quantity, be prepared to be penalized by Google.

There is one other way of doing link building, namely guest posting where you write on other blogs or vice versa. However, it’s a good idea to do this not just to get links and don’t do it too often.

The rules for using link building change all the time and search engines try to avoid using the wrong way. However, if you apply a good strategy the purpose of using link building will be achieved.

#2. Social media

Almost everyone has social media. Apart from socializing and having fun, it can also be used for off-page SEO. This is a good way to increase traffic.

Even though the links you find on social media are usually no-follow links, that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. Promoting your brand on social networks can help increase traffic significantly.

The more people find your profile; the better chance they have of visiting your website. Social media can be an extra link that directs potential visitors to your website through your profile.

#3. Local SEO

With the increasing use of smartphones and better internet connections, Local SEO methods are also increasingly popular.

Although they look similar to traditional SEO, these two SEOs are very different in that Local SEO focuses on providing relevant results based on the user’s current location.

To use Local SEO, use Google Places for Business Page and complete all required information, and sync with your Google+ account.

Google recently stated that 87% of people use their phones on the go. In addition, 95% of mobile users search for local information through their mobile phones.

Off-page SEO factor

Here are some important factors that help off-page SEO methods and increase your page rank:

#1. Inbound Links

Increasing the ranking of your website in search engines is usually by looking at the number of links directed to your website.

The use of hyperlinks directed to your website counts as a vote of support for your website. The more links to your website, the more votes you have in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

It’s also good if the link comes from a variety of different domains.

#2. Anchor Text

Anchor text is text that is used as a hyperlink. In applying off-page SEO, it’s a good idea to provide appropriate keywords for these links that help search engines identify your website and know which keywords to rank for.

Make sure the anchor text used describes the content of the link provided. Also, use varied anchor text which is preferred by the latest algorithm from Google.

#3. Link Quality

Not all links have the same value. Links from popular blogs will not be of the same value as links from beginner blogs.

Websites that are usually categorized as trusted websites are usually:

• Websites with .edu or .gov domains
• Authority website which is a large website that always appears based on your keywords
• A website that has been around for a long time
• Websites that match the topic of your content

Using multiple high-quality links from sites that fall into the above categories is preferable to having 100 low-quality links.

#4. Link Building Speed

Link-building speed is also an important factor in off-page SEO. However, link-building that is too fast will also be considered unfair by search engines and can result in penalties (especially if your website is still relatively new).

Search engines can tell you the speed of good link building, so getting 1,000 low-quality links in one day when your website is less than a month old doesn’t seem reasonable.

As long as you’re not using automated tools that promise thousands of links at a time, you shouldn’t worry too much.

Also read: What Are Canonical URLs and their Effects on SEO?

Off-page SEO tools

To make things easier for you, there are now many tools that help optimize your off-page SEO methods. Here are some tools you can use:

#1. Google Ads

Many people think that Google Ads is the most useful tool for off-page SEO. The features offered include: increasing the number of subscribers, getting results that are fast and easy to understand, increasing quality traffic, providing market information, and keyword searching.

Google Ads is a marketing tool that provides the opportunity to convert visitors into customers and into leads for your business. It’s also easy to use, affordable and has maximum relevance.

#2. Ahrefs

This tool is useful for many things because Ahrefs has a large backlink database and helps you to know everything about your website and competitors.

You will be able to find out how to outrank your competitors. Features offered such as: tracking your backlinks, finding the most relevant keywords, knowing your competitors’ information, and analyzing their strategies.

#3. Majestic

Majestic is also one of the best tools for SEO. This tool is also known as the most advanced backlink tool. Its database is considered to have the most detailed search engine information. Features offered include: SEO for professionals, media analytics, entrepreneur tools, comparison with competitors, explore domains in detail.

#4. Moz

The services provided by Moz are very complete and offer unique traffic data. By using Moz, you will be able to focus on the strategies you have that will allow you to be easily found among the billions of searches performed every day.

The features offered by Moz include open site explorer, tracking your marketing campaigns, researching keyword opportunities, and tracking browsing errors.

Balance the use of off-page and on-page SEO

Usually, SEO experts spend more time on off-page SEO than on-page SEO.

However, no matter how much effort you make for off-page SEO, without good on-page SEO, your efforts will not be optimal.

A website that looks untrustworthy from the first time you open it will certainly not make you want to provide backlinks to that website.

A website with a simple but attractive design, free from writing errors will be more likely to get backlinks from large and trusted websites like Forbes.

Even if you have a lot of links, it will be useless if visitors who are initially interested in your website review see your website that looks unprofessional and trustworthy. The more people read or view your content, the more potential you will get a link or citation.

The more citations and links you get, the better your off-page SEO will be.

Therefore, maximize your on-page SEO methods before you start using off-page SEO methods.

Conclusion

In the world of SEO, there are two important methods that must be done in balance to get optimal results; on-page and off-page SEO.

Off-page is indeed very important in increasing the popularity and reputation of your website, but the method is not only with link building.

While getting links is a major factor (both now and in the future), keep in mind that this is only one factor among the 200+ factors in Google’s algorithm.

In addition, link building is no longer a linear process where you continuously build links. You should also use strategies to get links naturally. This is where on-page SEO plays an important role where quality content that contains detailed descriptions will attract more readers and turn your content into content worthy of backlinks.

Although these two things are related, many people still believe that only doing one of these two ways will give them optimal results.

Hope this off-page SEO guide will help your website to perform better!