As the head of a successful copywriting company, I can also tell you that I see far more effort put into on-page optimization in the instructions and style guides of client orders than I do for off-page optimization. The simple truth is that both on- and off-page SEO matter. If the elements of the two are out of balance, it’s not likely that your content will perform as well as it could.
Today, I want to take a close look at off-page SEO strategies and possibly give you a few new things to think about when developing your content. It is far easier to build content with all the right elements in place than it is to go back, fix mistakes, add links, etc. It’s the content creation equivalent of “measure twice, cut once.” It will save you loads of time if you organize developing content around a solid off-page strategy from the start.
Why Off-Page SEO Matters
The criteria that determine the overall success of your site vary constantly. Keywords go stale, new ones emerge, and the market keeps creating new rules for how we market using written content. The structure of your marketing strategy can remain the same for years, but the presentation of the content – the words you use, the focus, and the sources for things like effective back-links – typically changes over time.
This is why off-page SEO matters. The methods of building off-page SEO don’t change much. All responsible marketers have to do is produce content that is relevant, current, authoritative, and trustworthy. That relevance, authority, and trustworthiness will always play key roles in the overall success of your content marketing strategy. All three elements should also be present in any content you produce. This helps improve the effectiveness of your backlinks and build the long-term organic rankings that all successful content marketing requires.
Using Links Strategically
Just as important as any backlink are the links you choose to outside sources. There are three types of links that you should be using in all your content:
Natural links – These are editorial links that you insert into your content without calls to action. If you need to understand better how this works, all you have to do is realize that the link in this paragraph is a prime example. This is easily the simplest way to increase off-page SEO using links to outside content.
Manually built links – These are links to your content that you intentionally use to send traffic to your site from other sources. Most of the time, this involves getting other bloggers and influencers to link to your content. How do you do that? Well… you can start by simply asking. If you decide to go that route, however, be sure that the quality is there. That means the content is already high-quality, well-presented, and SEO-audited for maximum optimization.
Self-created links – These links are generated by adding backlinks in online directories, forums, social media posts and comments, blog comments, email signatures, or press releases with anchor text that has been optimized to reach its target reader. Be sure that your use of links is relevant and organic to any conversation or piece of content to which they are associated. Gratuitous backlinking can get flagged by the major search engines and keep your site from ranking high.
Regardless of how you choose or obtain your links, the ones that help the most are the ones that best augment the content you create. Here are some of the criteria you should be considering when choosing links for off-page SEO:
- The popularity of the site to which you are linking (links to the CDC are better than a no-name blog about COVID, for example)
- How well the linked site’s content relates to yours
- The timeliness of the link
- The anchor text used by the linked site
- The trustworthiness of the linked site
- The number of links you use (don’t over-saturate)
- Authority of the linked domain and all content on the site
Crunching the Numbers – How Effective Are Your Efforts?
There are specific metrics you should be monitoring to determine the effectiveness of your off-page optimization efforts. Here are the ones that I consider to be most important:
Total number of backlinks – The more content sources that cite a specific page, the higher that page will rank.
Backlinks from related sites – Relevant links have a high value in building off-page SEO.
Anchor text – This is the text used in the hyperlink, and it matters. If you have to choose between highlighting a call to action like “tap here” or a key phrase (two to five words) that identifies the content on the other side of the link, always choose the latter.
Link freshness – Newer content will almost always be considered more relevant by the search engines. The older the page, the less seriously engines like Google will take them, no matter how good the content on the other side may be.
Link diversity – Don’t link out to six pages under the same domain. Find vettable sources that convey the same information and diversify your links.
Social Media – Getting people to share links to your content is a powerful way to generate hits from various organic sources.
Quality Optimized Content
Need help putting all of this together? BeezContent knows SEO, and our talented writing staff knows how to develop content that is set up for top rankings. Need a partner for your off-page SEO efforts? Contact us. We’re here to help you develop and deliver top-quality, optimized content on your schedule.
