Marketers increase website traffic to a website using search engine optimization (SEO) as a tried and tested digital marketing strategy. But an aspiring marker can increase a website’s search visibility by focusing on three distinct levels of SEO – technical, on-page, and off-page.
Unlike on-page and technical SEO techniques, off-page SEO activities are performed, outside of a website. But off-page SEO techniques make major search engines understand what the audience thinks about a product, service, brand, or website.
They increase a website’s search engine ranking by increasing its relevance, authority, and trustworthiness. Often aspiring marketers link off-page SEO to link-building activities. However, they can increase a website’s organic traffic only by implementing a slew of off-page SEO techniques.
13 Off-Page SEO Techniques for Aspiring Marketers to Increase Organic Website Traffic
1. Link Building
The creation of valuable backlinks is a tried and tested off-page SEO strategy. Marketers improve a website’s authority by getting links from websites with higher domain authority. While making link-building strategies, aspiring marketers should focus on creating both natural and promotional backlinks.
Also, they need to ensure that the SEO strategy is not creating harmful backlinks or violating search engine guidelines. They should focus on generating high-quality backlinks instead of increasing the number of backlinks. Here are important link-building strategies for your business.
2. Sharable Content Publication
The website visitors create natural backlinks by sharing and using the content. Aspiring marketers must focus on posting fresh, relevant, and sharable content that readers will share and bloggers will use. They must collaborate with content creators to produce digital content that keeps readers engaged and stands out from the competitors.
3. Guest Posting
This off-page SEO strategy requires aspiring marketers to create high-value backlinks by posting articles, and blogs on reputable websites. They can increase the number of backlinks by posting content on multiple websites.
They should shortlist the websites that allow writers to create guest posts for them. Also, they need to collaborate with content writers to create well-researched and insightful content for the website. But they should focus on doing guest posting correctly.
4. Forum Posting
Many people these days find answers and solutions using popular online forums like Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo Answers. The growing popularity of these online forums creates opportunities for aspiring marketers to create high-quality backlinks.
However, forums do not allow users to mention a brand or insert a link to a website directly. Aspiring marketers have to start the process by discussing relevant topics or answering brand-related questions. They can introduce the brand and create a backlink naturally as part of a discussion or conversation.
5. Social Media Marketing
Popular social networking platforms create opportunities for aspiring marketers to website content, generate backlinks, and leverage brand mentions. However, they can leverage this off-site SEO technique only by strengthening a brand’s presence and sharing content on the right social network.
Also, they must remain active and responsive on the social network by posting content regularly and replying to users’ comments proactively. The responsiveness will make the social media audience visit a website, share website content, and mention brands.
6. RSS Feed Subscription
In the digital age, many customers expect brands to share the latest news and up-to-date information regularly. Aspiring marketers can impress and engage such visitors by requesting them to become subscribers.
Also, they must make it easier for visitors to subscribe by embedding a Rich Site Summary (RSS) fox in web pages and blogs. The subscription box will make the interested visitors read and share website content by sharing their email addresses.
7. Article Submission
Many third-party websites allow aspiring marketers to post content related to a product, service, or brand. Aspiring marketers can generate high-quality backlinks by posting articles on such article submission sites. However, they can improve the backlink quality only by creating fresh and insightful content and posting the content on the right article submission site. Also, they should not post the same article on multiple sites.
8. Image Submission
There are many sites and social networks that create opportunities for aspiring marketers to generate backlinks by posting images. Aspiring marketers can share information and generate backlinks by posting images on free image submission sites. But they can leverage this off-page SEO technique only by posting HD images. Likewise, they must optimize the images while submitting by adding an appropriate title, description, and tags.
9. Video Submission
Netizens spend most of their digital media time on spending online videos. Aspiring marketers can use videos as a marketing tool to promote products/services as well as generate high-quality backlinks. They can post videos on multiple video submission sites including YouTube, Vimeo, and Vine. However, they can make the off-page SEO technique impactful only by optimizing the video by adding the right title, description, tags, and reference links.
10. Infographic Submission
Infographics present information in an engaging, quick, and clear way by combining images and data visualization techniques like graphs, charts, and minimal text. Many infographic submission sites allow content creators to publish a variety of infographics.
Aspiring information can leverage these infographic submission sites to generate high-quality backlinks to a website. While submitting infographics, they can generate backlinks simply by giving a reference link to a relevant blog or web page.
11. Document Sharing
Document-sharing websites provide information to visitors in the form of PDFs and PPTs. Aspiring marketers can create backlinks to a website by submitting documents in one of the formats supported by the website. But they must create documents with unique and insightful content. Also, they should check the document-sharing website’s DA to increase the backlink quality.
12. Press Release
Enterprises from various sectors make important announcements and share newsworthy information by publishing press releases. There are many websites that facilitate online press release distribution. Aspiring marketers can leverage these top press release submission sites as a source to generate backlinks. However, they have to convert content in press releases by adding important elements like headlines, announcement summaries, quotes, hyperlinks, and contact information.
13. Influencer Outreach
This off-site SEO technique requires aspiring marketers to generate backlinks by requesting influencers to share website content and blogs. They should start the process by publishing high-quality content on the website. After publishing the content, they will search for relevant influencers and request them to share the link. However, this technique will work only when the link is shared by influencers on relevant domains.
Conclusion
Aspiring marketers can use many off-page SEO techniques to drive organic traffic to a website by improving its credibility, authority, and relevance. However, they can make the off-page SEO methods effective only by using technical and on-page SEO techniques. Hence, aspiring marketers should combine on-page, off-page, and technical SEO techniques to increase organic website traffic consistently.
This blog was revamped and reposted in June 2024.
Backlinks are an essential part of any web marketing campaign. The more quality backlinks you have to your website, the higher your search rankings.
Creating high-quality backlinks is an essential SEO technique that you can use to accelerate your search engine rankings in Google for your high-value keywords. Building these links is possibly the most important thing you can do as an SEO practitioner.
So if you want to finally get your rankings moving in the right direction and start generating some traffic organically (free visitors who convert into sales), then it’s time to put this tip into action!
Why Should You Focus on Backlinks?
Backlinks are hyperlinks that take you from one page on a website to another. They are one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm, and they’re also a great way to boost your site’s SEO.
High-quality backlinks are links that send highly qualified web traffic to a target website, improving its position in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). That is why businesses must focus on link-building strategies that will help them acquire high-quality backlinks if they want their sites to be successful online.
A single high-quality backlink can have the same impact as hundreds of low-quality ones; therefore, it is worth investing time and resources into gaining these links rather than focusing on quantity over quality.
How Do I Create High-Quality Backlinks?
What you say matters; anyone who looks for it online can understand what you write. You need to know how to write online because that’s where everyone looks for information.
To get more traffic from search engines, you must follow the steps in this guide religiously. Most essential, ensure that ALL of your blog’s content is keyword-rich and correctly optimized for long-tail keywords (keywords used less frequently but have a higher chance of being discovered by Google).
You don’t want Google or Bing searching through a bunch of random garbage just because those websites’ names have “blog” in them. That would be boring.
Get Backlinks From Authority Sites
If you want to help people find your site, you can write articles on other sites. You can ask them if they will write an essay with a link back to your site. If they agree, you can write an article that they will post on their site.
Find appropriate websites to post your content for people who will read it. Include links to your work so that people can find out more about what you do; if you can see which sites are ranked high by search engines and put links from these sites to your websites so that both of them will improve their rankings. Here is your guide to guest posting in 2023.
You can get lots of free links from popular websites by sharing them on Twitter. To do this, find lots of blogs and other websites you like to read. Tell other people about your favorites by tweeting about them. You’ll meet many new friends and get free links from the places you talk about.
Which Backlink Is the Most Important?
A backlink from a relevant site is effective for building your authority. For example, if both sites are about pets and you receive a link on a relevant pet topic, Google considers you a trusted resource on that specific topic.
Links from irrelevant websites have less SEO value. Consider the same scenario above but with an unrelated site like auto-repair. It may have some SEO value because it is still considered an external source pointing to your website, but the relevance factor is lacking, so Google will put less weight on this link than they would if it was coming from a relevant site.
An authoritative link has more value than either of these scenarios because it demonstrates credibility and trustworthiness across all topics. Receiving a link from a definitive site is the most valuable type of link you can acquire. It shows Google that you are trusted for specific topics and all information relating to your industry.
How Do I Know If I Have a Bad Backlink?
One of the best ways to understand if your site or a page on your site has a lousy backlink is by using Google Search Console.
By running a link report in Google Search Console, you can see which websites link to your site. You can run a manual check of each link to determine if it is harmful, low-quality, or irrelevant.
If you find that you have backlinks from spam sites, comment spam farms or other types of shady websites, then you must disavow these links immediately. A disavow tool will allow Google and other search engines to ignore these links when crawling your website and determine where to rank it in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Avoid Google Algorithm Penalties
If you want to add a backlink-building program to your SEO strategy, you must understand how Google determines the quality of backlinks.
Google can distinguish between natural and manipulative links, so if your backlinks are found to be part of a link scheme, your site could suffer ranking penalties or be removed from the search index entirely.
If you want to build high-quality backlinks without getting penalized, follow these seven rules:
- Focus on quality over quantity.
- Think about relevance.
- Don’t buy or sell links.
- Don’t copy content from other sites.
- Don’t keyword stuff anchor text.
- Don’t use hidden text or hidden links.
- Avoid cloaking.
Final Thoughts
High-quality, natural backlinks are vital to your website’s rankings. Considering how much time you spend on search sites like Google and Bing, it’s essential to ensure that your site will be highly ranked and won’t require users to dig through links to find yours. It can be an extremely frustrating experience.
To create quality content, it all starts with understanding who your audience is and how they think. If you don’t know your audience and their needs, it will be impossible for you to create content that speaks directly to them.
It will be interesting to see how the inbound marketing landscape continues to evolve in the years to come. While high-quality backlinks are still a major driving force behind search engine rankings, it’s clear that other methods will become even more critical moving forward. Whether or not you decide to invest in SEO, it pays to stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends and techniques.
The search engines use a wide variety of ranking signals to deliver relevant search results to searchers. As one of the key search engine ranking signals, backlinks, inbound links, or incoming hyperlinks make search engine algorithms understand if the content is relevant, credible, valuable, and useful. Both beginners and experienced digital marketers implement link building tactics to improve the ranking and visibility of a website on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
According to WPBeginner.com,
“Search engines like Google use backlink as a ranking signal because when one website links to another, it means they believe the content is noteworthy. High-quality backlinks can help to increase a site’s ranking position and visibility in search engine results (SEO).”
The research conducted by several websites has highlighted the impact of the number and quality of backlinks on a website’s position on organic search results.
According to Backlinko.com,
“The #1 result on Google search results has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than the results rankings #2-#10.” But the experienced digital marketers observe that the white hat link building efforts increase a website’s search engine ranking and visibility gradually over one month to three months.
While implementing link building tactics, you must keep in mind the differences between black hat link building and white hat link building. You need to avoid all black hat link building tactics that increase a website’s search engine ranking by gaming or violating search engine guidelines. They need to implement white hat link building tactics to boost a website’s search engine without violating the latest search engine guidelines.
10 White Hat Link Building Tactics to Boost a Website’s Search Engine Visibility
Guest Blogging
Many popular and reputable websites these days allow outsiders to write for them. The guest blogging options provided by popular websites make it easier for you to earn high-quality backlinks. You can use any search engine to find guest blogging opportunities and shortlist the relevant websites. But you must remember that Google has been changing guidelines related to guest blogging regularly. You must not create and publish guest blogs with the sole intention to build backlinks. You need to pick a relevant topic, identify the target readers, and provide benefits to the reader.
Digital PR Campaigns
As a popular online marketing strategy, digital PR helps you to boost your online presence and its website’s search engine ranking by networking with bloggers, journalists, and influencers. The digital PR agencies will earn high-quality backlinks for your website by sending online press releases. They can also help in increasing social media mentions. However, you can leverage the link building tactic successfully only creating unique stories and back the stories with real-time data. The digital PR campaigns will help you to earn high-quality inbound links from several websites and publications in a short amount of time.
Resource Pages
The resource pages are designed specifically to provide useful resources and links related to a specific topic. For instance, some resource pages make it easier for beginners to learn digital marketing by providing specific information. You can use any search engine to find resources pages providing links related to a wide range of topics. You can even perform a competitor analysis to identify the resource pages containing links to your competitors. But you must create a web page that must add value to the links displayed on the resource page. After creating a relevant page, you can earn backlinks by including the URL as one of the resources.
Testimonials and Reviews
Most businesses these days promote their products and services through user-generated content. They provide customers and users with options to share their experience, review the product/service, and post testimonials. You can leverage the option to earn high-quality backlinks to your website by writing and posting short reviews and testimonials. Also, you can approach the website to feature you in various ad campaigns to boost the sale of the product through genuine user-generated content.
Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
As a hugely popular online service, Help A Reporter Out (HARO) makes journalists and bloggers connect with relevant and expert sources.
According to HelpAReporter.com,
“HARO distributes more than 50,000 journalist queries from highly respected media outlets each year. Its straight-forward pitching process allows sources to find topics related to their expertise, industry or experience, while allowing journalists and bloggers to spend more time writing and less time sourcing.”
You can easily earn a backlink to your website by responding to the requests sent by the website through emails. However, you cannot earn more backlinks by responding to the requests frequently. While responding to a request, you must check if you can provide expert comment on the specific topic, concept, or issue. When you provide relevant and expert comment, your website will get an authoritative backlink without putting extra time and effort.
The Skyscraper Technique
The popular link building technique was developed by the SEO blogger Brian Dean. Brian Dean has used the skyscraper technique successfully to increase his website’s search engine ranking and organic traffic. The skyscraper technique emphasizes earning high-quality backlinks by creating content that is more engaging and impactful than an existing piece of content which is popular and has more backlinks. You should approach the webmasters to add more value to the content by linking the web page to the superior content created by you.
Original Research and Studies
While creating fresh content, bloggers and content writers collect information, data, statistics, and trends from many reliable sources. You can get backlinks from many articles or blogs by creating content that writers will refer and link to. You can easily get many backlinks by conducting market research, gathering industry statistics, or conducting original research. The unique content will make your website stand out in the crowd. Also, many bloggers and writers will connect their content by quoting from the unique content.
Broken Links
The broken links directly impact a website’s search engine visibility and user experience. But many webmasters do not audit their website’s link profile regularly. Hence, they often do not remove the web pages that visitors can find or access. You can easily identify the broken links in a website using many online tools and plugins. After identifying the broken links, you should approach the webmaster to get the broken link repaired. Also, you can use the broken links as a link building tactic to request the webmaster to replace the broken link with a similar and superior web page on your website.
Content Roundups
Many websites these days helps visitors and subscribers to access great content about a location, industry, or topic by performing weekly or monthly roundups. They collect great content from multiple sources and make the content accessible to users by creating a single page. You can easily get backlinks from a popular website by getting your article or blog feature in the list of curated content. But the link building tactic requires you to create and post great content before approaching the webmaster to include your web page in the list.
Competitor Mentions
The new-age tools make it easier for you to track a specific brand, keyword, or hashtag being mentioned on popular social networking platforms. You can use the tools to track the monitor the websites and online resources mentioning your competitors. Also, you can approach webmasters to mention your brand or content on the same web page. You can even persuade the webmaster to replace the competitor by writing superior and better articles or blogs. But you must approach the webmaster in the most appropriate way to get a high-quality backlink to your website.
While comparing and implementing link building tactics, you must remember that high-quality link building or link acquisition is an ongoing process. You must keep in mind the latest search engine guidelines to identify and avoid the black hat link building tactics. Also, you must assess and audit the backlinks from time to time to ensure that you have built high-quality backlinks.
