Optimizing your content marketing strategy can bring a wave of traffic through search engine results pages (SERPs) on your website. While on-page SEO techniques are very effective to increase visibility on SERPs, off-page SEO doesn’t fall far behind too!
In this article, we will discuss the tried and tested off-page SEO methods that worked for many successful brands and will work for you as well.
About Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEOs are effective promotional elements that take place outside your website and are partially responsible for your ranking in SERPs. A well-known method of off-page SEO that you may have heard of is link building. This is one of the most effective off-page SEO methods to use to increase your ranking.
On-page SEO determines how you see your product and where you stand in comparison to the competition. On the other hand, off-page SEO lets the search engines determine how the internet and other websites perceive your content.
The fundamentals of off-page SEO are quite simple. If your website is informational, there would be many others who’d cite you as their source of information. The more authority websites point to your content, the better your content will appear in the eyes of search engines. Therefore, your website will be more favored when it comes to SERP.
Why Does SERP Visibility Matter?
No one keeps a journal of their favorite websites. While it may be true for some of the popular ones like Amazon and YouTube, your landing page traffic relies on SERP visibility.
SERPs are the gateway of website traffic. If your content is prominent on SERPs, your probability of getting better prospects increases rapidly. For that to happen, you need to take account of both on-page and off-page SEO link building strategies.
Whenever you are looking for something, you search for it on Google. If the first few links don’t seem useful, you don’t usually bother to go to the second page. Instead, you change your search query for better results.
Your audience psychology works the same. If your website doesn’t rank in the first three results in SERPs, which eat up more than 73% of the incoming traffic, your chances of getting enough leads to sustain your business plummets
That being said, let’s look at some white hat link building strategies which act like hacks to improve your page’s visibility.
Off-page SEO Techniques You Can Use to Improve Online Visibility
1. Build Quality Links
Suppose you have a website that sells gadget solutions that are efficient and cost-effective and there are several other direct competitors in the field. How does Google determine which one to rank higher?
The answer is backlinks. If your website has more backlinks than your competitor’s, you have a better chance of getting leads.
For white hat link building, generate high-quality content through guest posting, which is an off-page link building strategy. You can build effective backlinks by strategically implementing your links into the blogs of authentic and powerful websites.
But that can be tricky. Why would other websites let your guest post appear on their website? Well, you need to be generating content for them and include your links with keyword-specific anchor text. Mention your product naturally without sounding promotional.
You can also hire link building services for the same. But it is of utmost importance that the website you are guest posting for is trustworthy and authoritative. If not, the effort can be futile or even counterproductive.
2. Off-Page Content Marketing
Create shareable content and market it. Post to social media, provide solutions in forums, comment on other blogs, and let your friends in the industry know that you have a product that piques their interest.
Visual content is quite effective to catch attention. Using Instagram and generating content for Pinterest can be the key to your content marketing campaign. You can also visually promote your video content to offer your audience limited discounts and coupon codes that can drive customers to your website.
3. Public Relation Strategies
Getting media attention and publicizing your brand is the best way to rank higher on search engines. A great example is Tesla, a company that sells electric vehicles (EVs).
Their marketing strategy revolves around the value of their product – how they have pioneered the segment and how their customers get the best value out of their investment. Since they are the pioneers, people talk about them in their blog posts. That’s a public relations strategy that helps improve visibility.
If you search for EVs today, you ought to see Tesla ranking the keyword.
Whenever you indulge yourself in talks about your brand or even be humorous about it, you create a relationship with your audience. They start to think as you do. And by pairing that with engaging on-site content, you can climb the SERP ladder fast.
4. Social Media Ads
Improving SERP visibility by relying only on content quality and link building is a slow strategy and expecting to rank with one or two articles is a pipe dream. But, you can reach your audience faster with targeted social media ads.
Although search engines do have comprehensive information about us, social media platforms today know more about us than ourselves. They have information about our financial situation, emotions, and even our insecurities, which make them a great platform to run ads.
While search engines can’t push ads where your leads aren’t intending to see them, Facebook and Instagram can push ads to your audience deliberately without them needing to search for your product.
With enough engagements from social media ads and other off-page SEO techniques, SERPs will start treating you as an authentic source soon and rank you higher.
To run an effective social media campaign, you must first decide your objective. If you want to sell your products through lead generation, define that. If you are looking for more audience engagement, customize your ad to suit that. Without a defined objective, your ad is as futile as keyword stuffing.
Keep an eye on the analytics and metrics. Once a campaign has ended, analyze where it performed well and where it didn’t. Design the next one surrounding the data.
4. Influencer Outreach
The difference between a celebrity and an influencer is that the latter are often limited to specific online mediums like YouTube, TikTok, or even particular niches like food or fashion. Influencer marketing is getting traction nowadays due to the accessibility and outreach of social media and technology. As celebrities often play the role of influencers in online mediums, the line between them is being diminished.
You need influencers whose content is relevant to your product. If their content doesn’t speak truly of your product or brand, their audience will not pay much interest or get influenced.
For example, suppose your brand sells wireless headsets, if you collaborate with an influencer whose content is based on chemistry experiments, their audience might not find your brand relevant. But, if the same product was promoted by someone who is involved with gaming or music, it would hold value.
Carefully consider your approach and sign the contract with the right influencer for your content.
The Bottom Line
After reading this article, you should have a clear idea of how to use off-page SEO strategies and white hat link building techniques to grow your site. The most important component of off-page SEO is building links, followed by public relations and paid ads.
If your budget permits, you can also take the help of influencers whose content relates to your product. You can also hire link building services to take care of building quality links while you focus on the other tips mentioned above. Despite the importance off-page SEO holds, don’t neglect content quality while designing the next campaign.
All the best.
