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Originally Posted On: What Is Off-Site SEO? | Rounded Digital (wearerounded.com)

 

Your company’s website is more than a vanity project — it’s the hardest-working salesperson on your team! But optimal performance requires investment in off-site SEO. When done correctly, the ROI is incredible and directly leads to significantly more clients and customers.

What is Off-Site SEO and Why Is it Important?

Off-site SEO — sometimes called off-page SEO —is any action taken outside of your own website to increase your rankings in search engine results pages. Here are some of the primary aspects of off-site SEO:

• Creating inbound links with appropriate anchor text that point to the correct service page or blog
• Creating a diverse set of backlinks with the appropriate volume and velocity
• Getting reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp
• Check-ins from social media for brick & mortar businesses
• Optimizing your directories, maps, and portals

In short, when off-page SEO is done well, it has the power to boost search engine rankings. Essentially, it works like compound interest: efforts yield exponential results. Websites that ignore off-page marketing tend to flounder. They don’t perform well in the SERPs and rarely make it to the first page of Google.

Six Off-Site SEO Tips

What techniques are used in off-page marketing? Every SEO expert has their secret sauce, but most campaigns are built around six foundational pillars.

#1: Analytics Tools: Ahrefs and Semrush

Off-page SEO has a lot to do with acquiring backlinks. But not all links are created equal. To wit, one from a website with a high authority score that uses proper anchor text is much more desirable than one from a junky platform. So the question becomes: which websites have a high domain rating?

That’s where tools like Ahrefs and Semrush come in. They’re analytics services that provide an under-the-hood snapshot of competitors’ websites and potential link partners. Ahrefs and Semrush reports have everything you need to know about the digital landscape for your niche, including URL rating, authority score, and link variety.

The information is invaluable, and businesses with access to these platforms perform infinitely better in search engines.

#2: Blogging

Anybody can throw together a blog, but it’s important to blog with a purpose. It’s equally as important to make sure those blogs include relevant internal links that point to the appropriate supporting service/product page.

Generally, a best practice is to identify a specific service or product you are trying to rank higher for. Let’s use “wasp removal Denver” as an example. The first step is to identify a handful of blog articles that are relevant to wasp removal. Here are a few blog article ideas:

• Is It Safe To Remove A Wasp Nest Myself?
• How Do You Get Rid Of A Wasp Nest?
• Will A Wasp Nest Come Back After Being Removed?

So, you write 5 – 10 blogs about wasp removal and then link those blogs to the wasp removal page within the website using appropriate anchor text. Now what? Now, it’s time to syndicate the articles that have performed the best.

#3: Blog Article Syndications

Article syndication is when your blog is distributed to different news websites across the country and published.

The benefit to article syndication is getting backlinks from high authority websites that boost your domain rating and URL rating. A Blog Article Syndication does add SEO benefits, but it shouldn’t be your primary source of backlinks. Keeping a diverse profile of inbound links is important.

#4: Guest Posts

Acquiring guest posts on other websites and blogs is a powerful off-site SEO technique. Often, you’ll get to choose the topic, and most sites are more than willing to post fresh, quality content! After all, it’s good for their on-page SEO. However, when scouting guest blogging opportunities, choose platforms with an equal or higher URL rating.

Keep in mind that anchor text is very important. An overabundance of spammy-looking backlinks can raise some red flags. Make sure to do some research on the diversity of anchor text you may need in your industry.

#5: Videos

Videos are another great way to increase buzz about your website and business. Keeping an active YouTube channel is a great way to enhance your SEO. We plan on implementing videos that discuss individual blog posts later this year or early 2022.

There are many ways to optimize your videos so that they show up in search results. Here are a few tricks to optimizing your video content:

• Add a Video Transcript – transcripts work just like page copy. That text is indexable and bots will recognize it so that you can rank for more search queries.
• Make Sure Your Thumbnail Image Is Compelling – a strong thumbnail image should have an amazing impact on your click-through rates. Your thumbnail image is as important or more important than your video title.
• Don’t Embed The Same Video On Other Pages Within Your Site – If your video is engaging and you embed it on the appropriate page within your website, that is all you need. Don’t go competing against yourself and adding it to blog pages as well.

#6: Foundational Backlinks

Foundational backlinks are acquired by creating mini-authority properties on blogging platforms that link back to your site. You have complete control over your anchor text, and you can even log into these properties. This allows you to have complete control over your backlinks. They usually aren’t from high domain rating sites, but they still have an impact.

What Are Some Other Ways To Build Backlinks?

• Write helpful content for your website that people will reference and link.
• Do interviews with media outlets and request that a link to your website be included in the piece.
• Invest in press releases when your business has big news to share.
• Join associations and directories that provide members with quality backlinks.

Whenever possible, links pointing back to your site should have descriptive anchor text, meaning the linked words should describe the end-point. An example of “good anchor text” for a chiropractor in Denver may be “Colorado chiropractic care” or “chiropractor near Salida.”

However, it’s vital to remember that bad backlinks can banish you to the search engine shadowlands — where human eyeballs never lurk. So avoid backlinks from spammy websites. If your platform has swarms of low-quality links pointing at it, disavowing them may be the best option.

Let’s Get Your Off-Site SEO on Track

Rounded Digital is a full-service online marketing team that’s helped countless businesses with off-site SEO efforts. We have the skills and connections needed to drive traffic your way. Our team members understand the ins and outs of everything from authority scores to foundational links, plus we have access to the best content writers and guest blogging opportunities.

If your business needs a marketing boost, let’s talk. We have the skills to get you where you want to be.