In using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) you are able to utilise your resources to be fully optimising the potential that you could be running at. After fully completing your site to make sure each title, page, tags and content is linked to keywords (on-site SEO); to aim higher for yourself, you must focus on off-site SEO to be able to optimise your website outside the actual website (Kloostra, 2015).

How does off-site SEO help you?

Firstly what is off-site SEO? Off-site optimisation, also called off-page optimisation, refers to all measures that can be taken outside the actual website in order to enhance its rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). This involves using other pages and sites to create as many high-quality backlinks (incoming links) as possible. However, off-site optimisation needs to work alongside on-site optimisation as you need the content to be unique to the customer as this will aid you in more links to your site; People only cite, reference and share content they like (Matosevic, 2015). Without strong on-site optimisation you have no chance in succeeding in off-site optimisation.

Benefits of Off-Site Optimisation

  • Increase your SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
  • Increase in domain authority
  • Better search engine ranking
  • Increase your website’s exposure

Disadvantages of Off-site Optimisation

  • Requires a wide range of knowledge
  • Time consuming
  • There is no guarantees

Off-Page Optimization

Backlinks

Building backlinks is at the heart of off-site SEO. Backlinks are links from outside domains that point to pages on your domain; essentially linking back from their domain to yours (Searchmetrics, 2018). In order to successfully implement off-site SEO, you should be interested in building links to drive referral traffic and increase your site’s authority. Search engines use backlinks as indications of the linked-to content’s quality, so a site with many high value backlinks will usually rank better than an otherwise equal site with fewer backlinks. The links are set in several sites, mostly in sites that are relevant to the information and keywords that are optimised. There are three main types of links, defined by how they were earned:

  • Natural links: These are exactly what the name suggests i.e. links created naturally over time without any action on the part of the page owner to generate them through guest posting and other forms of link building methods
  • Manually built links: These are links that are acquired through the owner of the site engaging in link-building activities. This includes things like manually contacting website owners and bloggers, asking them to link their websites/blogs to your website. This is probably the most common type of link building
  • Self-created links: These are links created by adding a backlink in forums, online directory and blog comments. These links are genially frowned upon

In order to successfully build backlinks to your page, you need a lot of back links. These backlinks need to be from relevant sites and those sites need to be authoritative sites with high domain authority.

How to build backlinks

  • Content Creation & Promotion – In order for people to naturally want to reference and link your site, your content needs to be of high-quality, unique and compelling. You also need to tell people about your site before you can expect anyone to find your content and link to it
  • Reviews & Mentions – Put your site in front of influencers in your industry, such as popular bloggers or people with a large social media following. This will allow your website to gain exposure quickly and easily to a large amount of people on social media
  • Links from Friends & Partners – Ask people you know and people you work with to link to your site. But remember that relevance matters; links from sites that are in the same general industry as your site will have more value than links from random, unrelated sites

To conclude, in order to implement a successful Search Engine Optimisation your Off-Site optimisation needs to be executed well. Using the steps outlined in this blog on how to backlink you will successfully be able to use backlinks in order to drive referral traffic to your site. Backlinks remain the single largest factor in determining search rankings. Backlinks also have a multidimensional impact. For example, the strength of a site’s inbound links determines how frequently and how deeply that site is crawled (The art of SEO, 2012). However, don’t expect results straight away as this process is time consuming and may take months, maybe years, for you to build natural links.

References

  1. Kloostra, S. (2015) Off-site SEO. In Joomla! 3 SEO and Performance (pp. 117-126). Apress.
  1. Matošević, G. 2015, “Measuring the Utilization of On-Page Search Engine Optimization in Selected Domain”, Journal of Information and Organizational Sciences, 39, no. 2.
  1. (2018). Backlinks Definition – SEO Glossary | Searchmetrics. [online] Available at: https://www.searchmetrics.com/glossary/backlinks/ [Accessed 3 Apr. 2018].
  1. The art of SEO. (2012). 2nd ed. [ebook] Beijing: O’Reilly, p.287. Available at: http://libguides.brighton.ac.uk/business [Accessed 7 Apr. 2018].