Learn about Off-Page SEO techniques

Are you struggling to increase your rankings in Google despite spending a lot of time and dedication on the content? If the answer is yes, then SEO Off-Page technique can be the culprit.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-Page SEO represents any effort made outside the site to improve search engine rankings.

Link building is an important part of this process, but Off-Page SEO goes beyond that.

What is the difference between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO?

On-Page SEO is something you have complete control over, while this is not always possible with Off-Page SEO.

For example, if you approach and ask someone to link to you, it's SEO Off-Page. Why is that? Because you don't change anything with your site in the process. On the contrary, if you improve page speed by optimizing some images, that's SEO On-Page, because you made that change directly on your site.

If you've ever been confused as to which type your SEO tactics are falling into, ask yourself if it is completely under your control. If the answer is no, then it is most likely an Off-Page SEO tactic.

Why is SEO Off-Page important?

Google takes many off-page factors into account when deciding how to rank web pages. Linking is one of those factors, but there are many other factors that determine this.

For that reason, it is difficult to improve rankings based solely on content value. Here is a typical example that demonstrates this:

At the time of writing, this page from The Times ranked 1 in the UK for the keyword ' best places to live ':

Page ranking 1 with content at first glance looks pretty good

At first glance, this may seem like a very good piece of content. Therefore, it is not uncommon for a page to rank highly for that reason. However, as soon as you click on any location, you will come across a content gate (a barrier to overcome if you want to access an content).

However, there is a content gate when accessing the content

Because of that, this site has no real value to most visitors and it certainly doesn't deserve to be in the first place.

This is a more worthy site, which introduces the results of a poll of 1,000 people on the best places to live:

https://livability.com/best-places/top-100-best-places-to-live/2019

The page deserves to be in the top position

Putting this example back to Off-Page SEO, the reason that the previous page is superior to the next page is not because it has better content but most likely due to off-page factors.

What are the benefits of off-page SEO?

A successful Off-Page SEO strategy will create the following benefits for website owners:

1. Increase rankings - The website will rank higher in the search engine results page (this also means more traffic).
2. PageRank Increase - Page rank is a number between 0 and 10 that shows the importance of a website to Google.

It's a system invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the founder of Google) and this is one of the reasons why Google is so successful in displaying the most relevant results for searchers. Page rank today is just one of the 250 ranking factors that Google is using to rank web pages.

1. More known - Higher rankings also mean the website will become more popular, because when a website is in the top position, it gets more links, more visits and gets more mention more on social networks. This is like a series of consecutive events, one of which is related to the other.
2. Establishing credibility - In addition to the above, Google recently introduced the concept of ' Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness (EAT)' , which plays an important role in ranking and is directly related to Off-Page SEO.

Put simply, Google wants to rank websites that show expertise and authority on a topic and one of the ways to ensure that websites chosen by reliable algorithms is through number of links to.

For example, if you want to be considered an expert on a topic, it's not enough that you assert it. You also need the consent of other related websites and this is shown by the links pointing to your website.