It's not enough to create fantastic content and hope that visitors will arrive. What is happening away from your company website also has a huge effect on how many leads you generate and how well your sites perform in search engine rankings.
Off-page SEO involves a range of techniques including, but far from restricted to link building. And it's something that every successful digital marketer will be thinking about when shaping their campaigns.
At greatcontent, we've encountered plenty of clients who can't understand why their sites are not registering with search engine users. Often, these failings can be traced back to a weak or incomplete SEO [i]off-page[/i] strategy. So, we've put together a brief introduction to off-site tactics explaining how you can position your content to attract maximum attention.
1. Effective Link-Building Tactics
The number of links to your content (from external sites) matters a lot. In fact, according to the marketing agency Backlinko, it's the number one factor that contributes to rising up the search rankings. So how do you generate a steady stream of inbound links?
Aside from anything else, this requires creating quality content that people want to include in their blogs or social media posts. Content that delivers a useful information and which solves real-world problems is likely to attract plenty of links as people share it with contacts -- so backlinks are very much something you have to earn.
Creating appealing content that presents information in an easy-to-digest format is vital. Graphs, infographics, and videos can all break up the text. And it's important to get that content out there as widely as possible, through as many channels as you can, whether that's via Twitter, eBooks, or guest blogs on popular sites.
2. Invest Some Time in Social Media Activities
Establishing a social media presence is a crucial aspect of off-site SEO. Without a large following, you'll find it hard to propagate viral content, no matter how well-written and professional it may be.
Ways to enhance your presence could include running regular contests for Facebook and Twitter users (which can never hurt). But more generally, it means using social media to engage with users on a one-to-one basis. Play the role of expert, offer solutions, and grow your brand as a result.
3. Exploit the Value of Reviews From Influencers
Some of the best off-page work can be done with social media influencers: ?power users? within your niche field who have wide networks and are willing to mention and review your products. So, get in touch and harness their appeal.
This doesn't mean paying for good reviews. Sometimes, a little honest criticism among praise can actually make brands seem more authentic. Anyway, if your product is strong, influencers will respond positively. So have a strategy to search for relevant Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook users, and approach them with an offer.
4. Establishing a Solid Brand
This is always a major consideration, no matter what you do -- it's definitely worth spending some time specifically working on your brand. This means investing in ways to track how people are engaging with and discussing your brand; this is where techniques like sentiment analysis can come in handy. That way, you can assess which areas of your marketing need refinement.
It also means assessing your content to ensure that you maintain brand consistency. It's essential to project a consistent image, across all channels, and to link everything back to your main content. Auditing this on a monthly basis can really pay off.
5. Use Email Marketing
If you have a substantial list of email subscribers, it's essential to extract as much value as possible from those contacts. Broadly speaking, this means a few things. It means offering valuable content (not spam) in every email, including information about new products and promotions. It means getting creative about subject lines that will entice users to open the mail in the first place, and it also entails finding ways to personalize your emails to avoid seeming like just another generic business.
Check this guide for more email marketing tips and tricks from the greatcontent team. There's sure to be something that applies to your next campaign.
6. Invest in Digital Advertising
You probably do this already, but there's always scope to fine-tune the way you approach digital advertising. By this, we mean going beyond AdWords or targeted Facebook ads, and even beyond using influencers effectively.
Strong off-site SEO strategies look at advertising in broader terms. They include guest blogs on influential sites and assess their ROI just like normal ads. They might try to use Q&A sites like Quora, where expert answers can generate heaps of traffic. And they will usually pay a lot of attention to Amazon reviews or tools like Google maps.
All of these tools and websites offer a means of generating organic traffic which builds your SEO presence and promotes your brand.
And Finally? Find the Right Content Partner for Your SEO Off-Page Strategy
As you might have guessed, greatcontent regularly helps clients to come up with effective off-page SEO campaigns. We know how quality content interacts with link building and brand promotion, resulting in the kind of attention that companies need.
If you're unsure about using a content partner, don't worry. Many companies outsource content marketing seamlessly, and the best agencies can work with any marketing team and strategies. So, get in touch and we'll help to make off-site SEO work in your favor.
