It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small start-up business or a huge multi-national company: every business owner wants to watch their business grow. And if your business has an online presence then one of the best ways you can help it to grow is with search engine optimization (SEO) and particularly with off-page SEO.
Where to Start
Off-page SEO is the practice of increasing your Google ranking organically by ensuring that you have backlinks (weblinks from other sites back to your website) from authority sites that are popular and trustworthy. The number of backlinks you have is the biggest factor in how high you will rank in Google searches, and being on the first page of this search engine is one of the best ways to increase the amount of traffic you drive to your website. In simple terms, because Google algorithms can’t think for themselves, the number of backlinks you have will tell it what to think about your website. When it comes to building backlinks, both quality and quantity are important. But it doesn’t have to be quite as complicated as it sounds!
Here’s everything you need to know about off-page SEO, and how it can help your business to grow:
How to Make Off-Page SEO Work for You
If you only have the time and energy to invest in one form of off-page SEO then you should make it link building and content marketing: these are the most valuable off-page SEO strategies, largely because they are the ones that are most highly prized by Google.
- Link Building can be achieved in a variety of different ways. You could approach well-known sites in your field, and offer to use your content to replace any of their broken links, and you could also promote any assets you have (such as links to high-quality content) via social media or in comments on other relevant blogs and websites. Any opportunity that you have to share your links with others online should be taken with relish! Link building is absolutely essential but it’s important that the link bonds that you make are with high quality websites or brands, and that they offer value to your reputation in the long term.
- Content Marketing is an even simpler strategy, and it also works as a more overt promotional strategy, which is very appealing to small and medium sized businesses looking to build their name and their reputation. Creating great content as guest blogs on larger or more influential websites will not only open you to a wider audience, it will also give you a valuable backlink back to your own side. Content is king, and finding places to share your high quality, optimised content is a great place to start your off-page SEO plan.
SEO can seem intimidating at first, and the Google algorithm only makes things seem even more complicated. But the best rule of thumb is to focus on building links and on creating great content: if you have a site people will want to visit, and can build the right links so that it’s easy to find, then you’re moving in the right direction.
