Off-Page SEO: Is it Important?

By jack123 | SEO | 0 Comments

Off-Page SEO: Is it Important?

Well, it is! I’ll explain later why but first, I’d like to clarify what it is exactly Off-Page SEO and how relates to Off-Page SEO.

Maybe these terms are unfamiliar to you but I’ll explain it correctly, which one is directly responsible for your rankings within the search engine results. Both are playing an important role in this task, but how? Why Off-Page SEO: Is important?

Let’s do the basics

What is SEO

SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimisation, which directly means that it is a method or act of work that optimizes your website for the search engines, and not only for them but also to those users you want to visit your website. It is a way of marketing your website in both online and offline environments.

SEO stands for the best practice of optimizing your website, to be clear and user-friendly, so you can attract your target audience directly to your website.

Search engines use robots to crawl the web, and your SEO directly relates to them how well organized your site is, how meaningful and authority your content has. Quality content means better ranking on the search engines poll, the search engine result page, but this feature is only one piece of your ranking formula. So many aspects you have to take care of if you want to get a good ranking.

Search engines look after two major aspects of your SEO when evaluating your site related to the competitors. These two aspects are the ON page SEO and Off-Page SEO facets of your website. 

They go hand in hand, the ON page SEO is your foundation upon you can build-up Off-Page SEO. If your site is not optimized well enough both for users and search engine robots, it will affect your ranking and visibility. This alone stands for the ON page SEO facet, but what precisely means?

On-Page SEO

Or on-site SEO describes optimizing different parts and assets of your website to gain a better user experience and a clear format of understanding for the search engines algorithms. A well-structured site can boost up your visibility in your niche. If you use a good internal linking strategy, your site can rank up higher than you expect. Some main features of the ON page SEO are organized more around the technical parts of your site structure. These main features that we have to remember when building and maintaining a website SEO-wise:

• Optimized Title Tags – a good short descriptive title. Put your targeted keyword in the front part of the title for better ranking
• Good URL structure with SEO friendly Permalinks – avoid using ugly links stuffed with non-ASCII characters, unique session ID numbers, and other non-interpretive pieces. Users ideally can read from the link what is it about with that page.
• H1 headings – include your targeted keyword into the first heading of the page
• Breadcrumbs and user – friendly sitemaps – enhances the user experience thus the ranking position
• Optimized 404 pages – they have to be user friendly, ideally, you can be able to redirect you on main category pages or to the homepage
• Optimized Images – your images have to be in a proper format that helps to shorten the site loading time. Also, the ALT text attribute is important. If the image not loading properly, the alternative text will be visible, and it helps blind users understand better your page, search engine robots can also see these texts.
• Page Speed – the loading time of your page can contribute to a better ranking. User experience is important for search engines, and probably also for you.
• Mobile-friendly pages – by recent research more people access websites through their mobile phones than the regular desktop versions. I need not tell you why is important to have a mobile-friendly website.
• Page Content – it is one of the most important SEO factors when you want to get a good position in the search engine rankings. Your content has to be valuable and relevant to your keywords. If your website presents a solution to a query written in the search box, it is more likely to be considered valuable information, and search engine robots will index your site to a relevant position.
• Internal Links – are generally underrated by most of the site owners, but are important to understand by search engine robots your site structure. Better understanding, better ranking position. There are some methods on how to structure your internal linking profile, it is worth taking the time analyzing the solutions and applying good practice. Internal links also help users to easily navigate through your pages and reach for valuable information presented on another page of your website.

On-page practices are used for better understanding your website, both by users and search engine robots. A well structured, clear site with fresh and valuable content always will be ranked better, This your SEO foundation, so better take time and optimize and you can, it is important!

But let’s see the other factor.

Off-Page SEO

It means all of those practices outside of your website limits. More exactly Off-Page SEO is a method used to market your website indirectly through link related “backlinks”, and non-link related social media marketing, brand mentions. influencer marketing and guest blogging. These aspects help to determine search engines, which site is more valuable for the user. 

How is this working, and why Off-Page SEO is important?

If a website has a real value, it is more likely to have mentioned on other places on the web. This is expressed through links that refer back to your site – backlinks. In social media posts, blog posts, or comments, your site gets mentions in all kinds of ways. This tells the search engines that your site is trustworthy and has authority in your niche. This formula recently had become more appealing for the google algorithm. It can help to get a better ranking position for the websites. Consider these three factors of Expertise, Trustworthiness, and Authority when you think about an off-site SEO campaign. These new players had a great role in improving your ranking position.

Parts of Off-Page SEO

You can see that Off-Page SEO is not a negligible part if you think about the marketing of your website. Off-Page SEO has many benefits to your site resulting in higher rankings, greater exposure, and building trustworthiness and authority in your domain. There are three main ways on how to do that. 

• Link building – over the years this method has changed a lot. In the beginning, time to get a link referring to your website was easy. There were a lot of link directories, article directories, you used your link as a signature in forums, many link schemes were resulting in link exchange and bought links. This was the era of black hat SEO. Google realized that this spammy way of telling about your site is a wrong approach. Anybody can do this, but this tells nothing about your site. Relevant content is paramount important for Google. Link building and referral links have to be natural and somewhat interconnected, to give the user certain trustworthiness. Black hat SEO still exists, but Google penalizes these methods, so not worth trying with these concepts. But how to get a good link? Can it be done? Yes, but it is difficult. Through guest posts, you can write articles to blogs, that you consider relevant to your domain, and your article has to be a quality one. If you have quality content, it is more likely that others who value your site will share it. 
• Social media marketing – Social media can easily boost up your visibility. Nowadays everybody and anybody can share content that is important or relevant to them. If your content has value is more likely that it would be shared. Social media is a growing ranking factor in search engine algorithms. 
• Brand Mentions – If your business has a well-plan Brand, that tells about your domain of expertise, it is more likely to be mentioned in those fields on the web. These brand mentions don’t have to be in links. Google can easily depict your brand if it is mentioned in a relevant context. Brand mentions also have a role in the ranking formula, so good to look at this side too.

Conclusion

Off-Page SEO and On-page SEO are two sides of the same coin. Address both aspects of your SEO campaigns. On-page SEO is the basis of all of your efforts. Approach first to build a quality, valuable website both for the users and for the search engines. Thus you have real value if the content represents that accordingly. Now you can address the Off-Page SEO side of your campaign which can be harder at first sight but there lies the beauty of online marketing, and your efforts return in better rankings.