The Basics of Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO factors are those that are outside if your webpage. These factors are important because they let search engines get an idea of how others perceive your website. A useful website that should be ranked higher is more likely to have a lot of link referenced, shares on social media, etc. There are hundreds of different factors in off-page SEO, but three of the most important ones are link building, social media, and social bookmarking.
Link building is the most popular factor of off-page SEO. Link building is getting someone to link to your website from their blog, social media page, or other website. the more external links your website has, the more useful your website seems and this makes it rank higher on search engine result pages. there are many ways people used to go about link building. Some popular ones were commenting on a blog or forum with a link to your webpage, publishing your article in an article directory, or simply agreeing with another webpage to share each other’s links. However, Google has gotten extremely good at recognizing these type of “black hat SEO” techniques so, now it is more likely that if you do this you will get a penalty rather than higher rankings. Google now only accepts natural links, which are simply links to your site that someone shares because they like your content and want to let people know. To get these links the only trick is to create quality content that people truly find interesting and want to share with others.
Social media is also a very important part of off-page SEO. Social media could be considered a part of link building, however most of social media links are “no follow” which is a tag in a link that tells search engines not to count the link as a “vote” for your website. Social media is still an important ranking factor. Getting likes and shares naturally from people who love your business or product is great for getting the word out.
In order to have overall successful SEO, having a good off-page SEO strategy is just as important as having a good on-page strategy.
