This week, we bring you a guest blog from Eliud Mambo. To find out more about contributing to our website, visit our guest blogging page.
There is more to off-page SEO than just link building. It is more subtle than that!
For example, smart marketers and bloggers know that well before people decide to interact with your business, they have preconceived views about your brand based on online reviews and recommendations from friends.
In fact, to a large extent, the things that help you convert traffic to sales often happen away from your site.
Having said that, here are three elements of a highly effective off-page SEO strategy.
Create and distribute valuable and relevant content in your niche
Content marketing essentially means generating content (e.g. comments, blog articles, videos and podcasts) that revolves around your services.
When done correctly, it can help you build a brand and gives consumers reasons to stick with your services. And as Tom Schmitz writes, “brand are important and get a boost in the rankings — not because you know them, but because people write about them and link to them.”
Informative content is an indispensable asset for attracting more traffic either through referrals or social shares.
Remember that the consumer decision journey is more complex today, since “there are so many online influences on purchase from search engines and social networks and from media sites to personal blogs and YouTuber vlogs.”
In other words, you must invest on killer-targeted content to even get noticed by prospective online clients.
Picture it this way:
- Primary influence of content on SEO: create digital-foot prints that fulfil consumer demands, multiply touch points and improve overall ranking on search engines.
- Benefits of content marketing: Backlinks, Brand mentions and improved user engagement, which ultimately helps marketers to understand user preferences and buying behaviour.
- Maintain an active and responsive social media profile.
Activity on multiple social media platforms increases your brand’s digital footprint, but the real trick is to ensure that your social media presence matches your brand.
If it doesn’t, then you’re probably sending confusing signals to users and missing out on valuable engagement opportunities.
To the best of our knowledge, Google still does not use social signals as a ranking factor.
However, constant activity on Social media is definitely beneficial from a marketing perspective, and the reason is extremely obvious: They deliver exposure and traffic.
Here is what the former head of Spam team at Google, Matt Cutts thinks;
“I’m not saying not to use Twitter or Facebook, I love to tweet, there’s a ton of people who get a ton of value from both Facebook and Twitter. I think both of those services represent a fantastic avenue, it’s a way to drive visitors and traffic to your site, it’s a way to let people know about news related to you or your company or website, so I think they’re great ways to build up your personal brand.”
Again, the idea here is branding and reputation management.
The important thing to note that different social platforms use unique algorithms to crawl and display content to users. So try to learn the specific guidelines and best practices for each before going on to publish your content.
Besides, the impact of social media marketing largely depends on the type of business and your marketing needs. For instance, Instagram will not have the greatest marketing impact for B2B websites that primarily publish written content. Try Facebook or Twitter.
Stop submitting blogs for the sake of backlinks
When we come to a link building opportunity like guest blogging, it is so rewarding and it is so powerful in increasing domain authority that sometimes bloggers want to take shortcuts and cash in quicker.
Of course, guest blogging obviously helps you get links from other sites in your industry and referral traffic, too.
But it’s necessary an effective long-term strategy, particularly if you submit guest posts that do not trigger conversation and influence action.
But, guest blogging done right will build your reputation and rapport with influential publishers longer and stronger, than trying to cut the corners and submit half-baked articles for transactional relationships.
And then the links will come naturally!
Wrapping up
The greatest benefit of off-page SEO is not ranking, but rather it’s the ability to build your online reputation and connect with prospects.
Read more: On-page SEO optimisation to improve your ranks.
As I have pointed out, when done correctly, off-page SEO strategies will also help tap into new and valuable linking opportunities, particularly when you focus not on acquiring backlinks, but building long lasting relations with influencers.
You know, the sort of people who know people (pun intended) and have connections with authoritative websites. More often than not, these people also have a huge online following.
About the Author
Eliud Mambo is a Website Optimization Strategist at Catford Digital Media. His specialities include Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Content creation and Conversion Optimization. Mambo loves to meet new people and make new connections, so send him me an invite on Linkedin or Facebook to get connected.