Off-Page SEO Techniques: The Ultimate Guide for Better Rankings

The main purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to improve traffic to a website by gaining a high-rank placement in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). But sometimes we find SEO as a difficult task to perform, especially when we don’t know what steps to take next. If you have a website with quality content and your website is well optimized with On-Page SEO Techniques, then your next step is to apply Off-Page SEO Techniques for obtaining a better ranking in SERPs.

Off-Page SEO Techniques help your website become popular on the internet. Because these Off-Page SEO methods simply tell Google what others are thinking about your website. So, if your site got a lot of valuable links pointing to your pages, search engines will assume that the contents are great and give them a higher ranking in SERPs.

What is Off-Page SEO?         

Off-Page SEO refers to Techniques that you can apply directly away from your website to increase the authority of your domain, such as social networking, forum and blog marketing, article submission etc.

People think that link building is what you have to execute as Off-Page SEO Techniques. So they associate off-page SEO with link building only. But it’s a big mistake. Because Off-Page SEO is more than link building and you have to do a lot of activities that don’t create a link on other sites but are important for off-page optimization.

Importance of Off-Page SEO Techniques

Off-Page SEO plays a vital role in ranking a website higher in different search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Some importance of Off-Page SEO Techniques are:

• Off-Page SEO will help you to increase the external links to your site and by doing so your website will get higher ranking in SERPs.
• These techniques will increase the Domain Authority and Page Authority of your site. And they are very important SEO factors.
• A successful Off-Page SEO strategy will help you attract more traffic by taking your website’s ranking higher in SERPs.
• With the help of Off-Page SEO Techniques, your site will get a lot of exposures like more clicks, more visits, more links and more mentions on social media.

 15 Best Off-Page SEO Techniques

Have a look at the list of top 15 best Off-Page SEO Techniques as I am going to discuss these Off-Page SEO methods that will help you to get Backlinks to your website according to Google rules and improve your SERPs ranking. They are:

1. Blogging
2. Guest Blogging
3. Blog Commenting
4. Social Media Engagement
5. Social Bookmarking
6. Forum Submission / Marketing
7. Directory Submission
8. Article Submission
9. Question and Answer
10. Document Sharing
11. Link Baiting
12. Local Listings
13. Video Submission
14. Image Submission
15. Infographics Submission

Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to promote a website online and Google loves blogging. If you have a website with blog content then it will give a reason for visitors to keep returning to your website. Moreover, search engines will crawl your website more frequently as they have to update your latest blog post entries. This method will definitely help you rank higher in SERPs.

This Off-Page SEO Techniques may seem easy to you but believe me, it’s not. Because you need to produce lots of unique content for your blog, moreover you have to maintain the quality of the content. Otherwise, this method will backfire. So if you are not good at content writing then it is wiser to hire a guest blogger for your site.

Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging refers to a method used by bloggers to increase blog traffic for their site, by publishing posts on other bloggers’ blogs. Guest blogging can be done in one of two ways; either you write a post to appear on another person’s blog or another person writes a post to appear on your blog. Some of the benefits of guest blogging are:

• Your website will get Backlinks from authority sites.
• Writing Guest Posts on authority sites will make people think you as an expert.
• Your site will receive targeted referral traffic.

You can use Google and Search Strings to find the Guest Blogging sites relevant to your Keywords. Here are some search strings that you can use to find guest blogging sites with ease:

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is defined as a connection between blogs, bloggers and blog readers. It is a popular and a very easy Off-Page SEO Techniques to create backlinks. These links can be crawled by search engines leaving a point towards your site. Furthermore, this links will drive traffic to your website.

Creating backlinks with low authority sites will not help your website’s ranking. So while we are commenting in blogs we should keep this checklist in mind.

• Authority of the blog should be high
• Blog should be active
• It should have a good Page Rank.
• Keyword Luv Enabled
• Comment Luv Enabled
• Select “Do-Follow” blogs for comment

Finding blogs for commenting is not a tough task. We can use Google to search blogs to comment on. Simply use some of these phrases to find the best blog related to your niche.

• “High PR blogs to comment on”
• “High PR do-follow blogs to comment on”
• Keyword “leaves a comment”
• Keyword “post a comment”
• Keyword “add comment”
• Keyword “submit comment”

Social Media Engagement

Social Media Engagement has become one of the major Off-Page SEO Techniques in the recent years. It has become the fundamental step with which you can start advertising your brand and build your online reputation within your brand.

This off-page SEO method is another way of building links by engaging your website on social media platforms. Besides, it’s a great way to attract traffic. Although the links which are created through social media are generally no-follow links, this does not mean that they do not have any value. In fact revealing your brand on social media platforms will grow your reputation and show trustworthiness to Google. Some of the top social networking sites where you can share your website, blog post or business are:

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking refers to a centralized online service which allows users to add, make notes, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents. This is another very popular Off-Page SEO Techniques to promote and attract huge traffic to our website.

We can perform this off-page SEO method by promoting blogs on popular bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, etc. Google and other search engines like these kinds of sites because the content on these sites is updated very frequently. Some of the popular and high PR Bookmarking sites are:

Forum Submission / Marketing

Forum Submission is online discussion sites, also known as ‘message board’. It is a way of sharing knowledge with others and collecting backlinks for our website. Forum Marketing is one of the most powerful Off-Page SEO Techniques for creating do-follow backlinks and it can drive targeted traffic to a website.

To apply this off-page SEO method first you have to find some online forums that are related to your website’s niche. Then you have to make a connection with that community so that you can reply to threads, answer people’s questions and give your suggestions and advice. Make sure to use “Do-Follow” Forums so that you can include a link of your website within your signature, which helps search engines crawl your site. Here is a list of some Forum Submission sites:

Directory Submission

Directories are a kind of website which is used to store businesses and their information. And Directory Submission means listing your website in various business directories that best match your services. This off-page SEO method improves our website’s ranking, therefore, our site gets a lot of traffic.

In Off-Page SEO “Directory Submission” is one of the most important Techniques. But the result of this method depends on how effectively we are selecting the directories and how proficiently we are choosing the category for submission. One of the bad sides of this method is, it takes quite some time to deliver good results but the good side is these results stand out over a longer period of time. Some of the free directory submission website’s lists are:

Article Submission

Article submission refers to an Off-Page SEO Techniques that includes writing of articles that are relevant to your online business and then added them to the popular article submission directories. It is one of the popular and most effective off-page SEO strategies through which you can gain some links and visitors to your site.

Article submission directories only accept unique content while there are some other directories that accept articles which are published, reworded or spun. So before submitting an article, you have to consider these 5 key points:

• Articles should be original, relevant and informative.
• The article must contain the targeted keywords.
• The length of the article should be around 500 – 700 words.
• A title must be unique and it should contain the keyword.
• Submit articles in a high PR article submission directory and choose the correct category for your article.

Here is a list of some free Article Submission sites:

Question and Answer

This is a very interesting Off-Page SEO Techniques where you will get high traffic and links thorough question and answer websites (by helping people). First, join high PR question and answer sites then search for questions related to your business, keywords, blog or website. Give a clear, relevant and informative answer of those questions. You can place a link to your website in the answer section so that people can easily find your site. This off-page SEO method not only brings visitors to your site but also build up your reputation as an expert in your chosen field. Some of the Question and Answer website’s lists are:

Document Sharing

Document Sharing is an Off-Page SEO Techniques where documents in either PDF or PPT formats are shared in various document sharing or submission websites. This method has a great impact on rankings if the content of that document is unique, informative, downloadable and shareable.

Make sure your document is a text file, not an image. So that search engine bots can read the file and index it. Don’t forget to drop some links of your site in PDF file. Because they will be counted as backlinks to your website and they play a vital role in SERPs ranking. Here is a list of some Document Sharing sites:

Link Baiting

Link Baiting refers to a process of getting links from other content producers through a really popular unique post from your website. This might include content, online tools, striking images, info-graphics, educational material or anything else that another site owner might find influential enough for their website/post to link.

Link Baiting is a very popular Off-Page SEO Techniques for promoting your site. If you can produce a unique, informative and trustworthy content then other people may want to use it as a reference by linking to it. This will increase the number of backlinks to your content. And we all know how important the backlinks are for better ranking in SERPs; because every search engines use backlinks as a major ranking factor.

Local Listings

Local Listing refers to an online entry that contains your Business Name, Address, Phone Number and other details. Local Listing gives more visibility to your business and improves the reputation and rankings of your business.

If you are promoting a website regarding local business then listing in local directories will be very useful. Because; if you are going global then you have to face huge competition. On the other hand listing your website locally will make it easy for search engines to view your website and fetch the content. So if you have a local business then submit your website to sites like Google My Business, Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Yelp, Foursquare etc.

Video Submission

Multimedia plays a very important role in SEO and Video is one of the key elements. If you are using videos on your site then you can submit them to different video submission sites like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Before submitting your video makes sure that your video has proper title, tags, description and reference links. This is a very popular and easy Off-Page SEO Techniques to get quality backlinks as most of the video submission websites have high PR. Some video sharing sites are:

Image Submission

Same as video submission, Image submission plays a vital role in SEO. There are a lot of Image submission sites where you can share your images. But before sharing your images check that if your image has correct URL, proper title, description and tags. Here is a list of some Image Submission sites:

Infographics Submission

Using Infographics in content/post is a new trend and day by day it is becoming more popular on the internet. Creative Infographics brings a diversity on your content and believe me readers love it. So if you are using Infographics then you can submit them in Infographics submission websites. By doing so you can get quality backlinks. And we all know that backlinks matter a lot in SEO. Here is a list of some Infographics Submission sites:

The closure

There is no denying the fact that Off-Page SEO Techniques are as important as On-page SEO methods. They both complement each other. So for a successful SEO campaign, we have to apply both methods.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope the information I share with you is worthwhile and help you create quality backlinks for your site.

Feel free to share your opinion regarding this article. If I missed out any topics or techniques or you have any questions then please mention it in comments. I’ll be happy to take a look!

Should Read: 50 Important SEO Terms Every Internet Marketer Should Know