The Only Off-Page SEO Checklist You’ll Need
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Off-page SEO cannot be neglected or ignored in an SEO strategy. It’s one of the three pillars required for a successful campaign, the other two being Technical SEO and Content. If you leave out Off-Page SEO, you’re missing an opportunity to deliver the best possible results for your website.
In this blog, I delve into the key components that should make up your Off-Page SEO strategy and why they’re important for success. The below checklist forms a key part of Embryo’s strategy for getting our clients to rank on page one for the terms and phrases that their audiences are searching for. For more on this strategy, why not get in touch with our team today? Call us on 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.
But first, what is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO is a catch-all term that refers to any and all activity you do away from your actual website that can contribute to a successful SEO campaign.
The strategic justification for Off-Page SEO is to build a positive reputation and improve credibility with Search Engines by demonstrating that other websites trust you. In essence, it’s the digital equivalent of “word of mouth” advertising, where reputation and trust are established through other people’s perceptions and experiences.
Metrics to Keep an Eye on
There are a number of metrics involved with Off-Page SEO, below are the main ones:
- Domain Rating/Authority: This is a measure of your entire website’s perceived authority in search engines based on the quality of the websites that link to you. This is measured on a scale of 1-100 (1 being the lowest, 100 being the highest)
- Page Rating/Authority: This measures authority in the same way as Domain Rating/Authority but at a page level as opposed to a domain level. Using this, you can measure the perceived authority of a specific category on your website. This uses the same scale of 1-100 (1 being the lowest, 100 being the highest)
Social Signals
Search Engines use “signals” from different corners of the internet to determine the perception of your brand, which factors into how kindly they’ll rank you in the search results.
Social Media platforms for your business are a key part of these signals and what they send to Search Engines are known as “social signals”. Not only do they help “legitimise” your brand, but they help build authority and reputation within your business’ niche.
To fully utilise your Social Media platforms, you should provide regular links to relevant content on your website from what you post, as well as ensure the content you post scores is engaging enough to be liked and shared more widely.
Digital PR
Digital PR specialises in creating high-quality and relevant links from high-authority publications across the internet to your business’ website.
This is achieved through creating interesting, relevant and engaging stories related to your brand and putting them in front of publicists who decide whether they’re worthy of featuring on their website. If they are, we ask for nothing else than a link to our website.
Links achieved through Digital PR can be incredibly valuable and effective in improving your Domain’s authority in search engines and subsequent web presence, not only encouraging Search Engines to trust (and therefore) rank you higher in the results, but to improving the overall reputation of your brand.
To give your story a fighting chance, make sure it’s topical, relevant and data-driven – these elements typically lead to very engaging and shareable content.
Traditional Outreach
This approach is similar to Digital PR but targeted at acquiring links from low-to-mid authority websites, typically through guest posting (where you write an article for the webmaster and they upload it to their website).
The key advantage of traditional outreach is that you can typically target the links you acquire to specific pages on your website, which helps improve the Page Rating/Authority for particular pages/categories on your website, and therefore improve the positions of specific keywords that are important to you.
Content Marketing
At Embryo, we’re big advocates for what we call the “joined up” approach to Off-Page SEO. This is where we utilise the Organic, Digital PR and Creative departments to create compelling content that can naturally acquire links on their own or be utilised in Digital PR’s seeding process to relevant websites, with a much stronger likelihood of achieving a placement.
The Organic department will lead from a Strategy perspective, ensuring the Content will help support our clients’ key propositions. The Digital PR team will then utilise our Data resources to create a compelling story and our Creative team will create assets, from static images to interactive tools, to make the content as helpful, engaging, and shareable as possible.
This approach not only ensures that we place highly relevant, top-quality links for our clients, but that we create resources that can be utilised in other Digital channels. I.e. an infographic that can be posted on Social Media or an Interactive Tool that can be pushed via Email Marketing. This diversifies the off-page signals being sent to Search Engines and can aid in improving your website’s visibility.
Off-Page Signals for Local SEO
Local SEO is the methodology of improving your website’s visibility for localised terms, i.e. “vegan bakery manchester”. An effective Local SEO strategy utilises all three pillars of an SEO campaign: Technical, Content and Authority. However, in this context, I’ll just be focusing on the Authority aspects.
There are a few key things you should be doing to take full advantage of the Off-Page SEO signals to help with your Local SEO, these include:
- Google My Business: Setting up and fully configuring a Google My Business account for your business. This gives your users key information about your business, such as opening hours, location and links to your website and social media
- Google Maps: Setting up a Google Maps location for your business that is connected to your Google My Business account. This ensures your customers can locate your physical premises and details key business information, including a link to your website.
- Local Citations: Placing links to your business’ website using websites that have a localised intent, such as local business directories, is important as it establishes your business’ presence and authority in specific geographic locations. You can normally place these links for free by creating a business profile on websites such as Yell, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Conclusion
Off-page SEO is crucial for overall SEO success and shouldn’t be neglected or ignored. You can get started today completely free or get in touch with Embryo if you want to take your Off-Page SEO presence to the next level! Call us on 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.
