Top 10 Off-Page SEO Tips for Your Strategy

It’s long been known that SEO is the backbone of any digital marketing strategy. Ranking on the most popular searches — and beating out up to millions of other search results in the process — easily catapults brands to visibility. This means connecting with customers at the very start of the shopping journey.

But often when we think of SEO, it’s on-page or on-site elements that come to mind, rather than an off-page SEO strategy. Most brands and marketers focus on quality content, keyword rankings, meta titles and descriptions, site navigation, mobile responsiveness, and the overall user experience. 

Off-page SEO tips and elements, on the other hand, like link building, tend to become an afterthought. But they shouldn’t be — and it ends here, now. Off-page SEO is a strategy for looking beyond your website, and considering the multitude of ways customers can encounter your brand to influence your search rankings.

Let’s dive into how you can leverage off-page SEO and increase your visibility in local markets like Toronto, with these Off-Page SEO tips.

What is off-page SEO? A quick recap

Off-page SEO refers to everything that happens outside your website — a strategy for boosting rankings outside standard on-page tactics, like content, keyword optimization, and internal linking, as in on-page SEO.

On the other hand, off-page SEO involves off-site optimizations, such as link building from external sources to your website, content marketing, social media marketing, and more. These tactics are designed to build your authority across the web, verified through third-party “endorsements” of your site. 

These signal to Google that your website is a trustworthy, authentic, and relevant authority in your industry, ultimately driving your rankings. Google’s PageRank algorithm prioritizes inbound links generated through off-page SEO, resulting in higher rankings with increased authority.

10 Off-Page SEO Tips Every Brand Needs

Have you been focused too long on on-page SEO alone? It’s time to integrate off-page SEO tips in your search engine marketing strategy. Check out these expert off-page SEO tips:

1. Link building is the #1 off-page SEO strategy

For many expert marketers, off-page SEO is largely synonymous with link building — and rightfully so. It’s been proven time and time again that building quality links increase your site’s authority and largely determines search engine rankings.

Link building aims to generate quality outbound links from another site to yours. This signals to Google’s PageRank algorithm that other sites recognize your brand and view it as an authority or noteworthy figure in an industry. But be careful with what off-page SEO tips you follow and do not fall into black-hat SEO tactics, like buying poor quality links — often irrelevant to your industry or straight up spam — to gather domains that point to your site.

Instead, focus on natural link building. This means publishing content worth sharing, linked directly to your site, such as a guest blog or influencer content. You can also reinforce this with self-created links through online directories relevant to your business and industry, press releases, and forums.

2. Write and invite guest blogs

As mentioned above, guest blogs are a goldmine for off-page SEO. When done right, it seamlessly creates outbound links to your site from a relevant, trustworthy domain, which verifies site authority and attracts referral traffic.

There are two ways to go about guest posting. First, you can submit a guest blog on an industry publication or authority blogs in your industry or niche. Take a look at their content and see where you can contribute relevant posts that seamlessly weave in brand content, like links to product or service pages. Then, publish and promote across your channels.

Another way to create guest blogs is to conduct influencer outreach and invite them as contributors. These could be industry experts, vendors, customers, and influencers in your niche to produce their own brand content that includes mentions of your business and links, where relevant, to your site.

3. Get social

Links on social media are known for their NoFollow attribute, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t power in getting social. While these links don’t directly count, Google still factors in engagement across social media platforms in determining your site’s authority. Likes, shares, and mentions are linked to your brand’s popularity and relevance, building your reputation and authority.

4. Send out newsletters

Despite countless shifts in digital marketing trends, email marketing is alive and well — a constant for targeted audience engagement but an under-used off-page SEO strategy. Customers who signed up for your newsletter have already invited you into their inboxes. Your job is to curate value-added content, like key offers, relevant articles, and targeted product recommendations — all linked to specific pages on your site where customers can complete conversion actions.

5. Engage audiences on Q&A forums

It’s common for users to ask questions directly, and it’s why Google ranks forum sites like Quora at the top of search results. Targeting these queries as keywords and key phrases isn’t the only way to drive rankings. You can also integrate engagement on these forums into your off-page SEO strategy. 

Start by browsing relevant topics and questions about your industry. Offer helpful answers that position you as an industry expert. Then, create outbound links in a more natural manner to relevant content on your site. 

Keep in mind that engaging on Q&A platforms is a delicate balance — and ultimately, you don’t want to come across as annoying spam to users looking for actual answers; otherwise, you risk getting your answers downvoted. When done right, you can raise your profile as an expert and organically attract referral traffic.

6. Reputation management

Every shopping decision comes down to trust. It begins on search, at the start of the customer journey. Off-page SEO is built on exactly this: links to your site that cement its authority in your industry.

On the user side, there are a few ways to build trust. A basic component is ensuring that your SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is up-to-date. This indicates that data transferred between servers and browsers are secure. This also gives customers the confidence to complete conversion actions, like making a purchase when they know that their financial information and login credentials are secure.

Elsewhere on the web, build your brand’s social proofs. The most important among these are customer reviews. From Google to Yelp, Facebook, and other rating and review sites, keep an eye on what customers share about their experiences.

7. Request image attribution

Are you publishing original images on your site? Through these little-known off-page SEO tips, you’ll be rewarded with quality links simply by sharing these graphics. Since it’s common for these to end up across the web, you can leverage them to acquire backlinks. Use a reverse-image search tool to find sites using your original images, then get in touch with them for image attribution.

8. Target competitors’ links through a broken link building campaign

Use tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs to see what types of links your competitors have, and increase your site’s authority by creating similar profiles or directory listings, resulting in valuable do-follow links. You can also find sites with broken outbound links to competitor websites and ask them to point these links to similar content on your site instead. Since search rankings are relative to the competition, a competitor’s loss is your gain.

9. Publish content on third-party platforms

Blogs are a core part of your content marketing strategy, with massive benefits for SEO and continuously driving search rankings. But your website isn’t the only place you can regularly publish content. 

Instead, try these off-page SEO tips: publish on third-party platforms like Medium and other Web 2.0 sites, and submit op-ed pieces to reputable media outlets and industry publications. Rather than simply publishing content on your site, you can generate quality backlinks by rethinking your content distribution strategy.

10. Comment on relevant blogs

Finally, there’s always the comments section. When done right — and not spam—these interactions can generate backlinks. Even if blog comments often result in no-follow links, the aggregate can still help with off-page SEO and contribute to overall site popularity and authority.

Craft an Off-Page SEO Strategy with Consultus Digital

Want more off-page SEO tips, or need to refresh your SEO strategy? Consultus Digital can help. 

Our SEO agency in Toronto is fully equipped to craft a complete search engine marketing strategy, one that includes the best tactics for off-page SEO. That’s all thanks to our marketing philosophy: a careful balance of on- and off-page tools for driving rankings and giving you a competitive edge. 

It’s time your SEO strategy shifted focus from on-page elements alone, like blogs and page optimizations. At Consultus, we’ll help you look into new, creative off-page SEO tips and strategies to build your site’s reputation and rankings.
Let’s talk about off-page SEO tips and a complete SEO strategy. Contact Consultus Digital in Toronto to start today.

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