Off-Page SEO Techniques to Build Backlinks

Your SEO strategy is incomplete without Off-Page SEO. You can’t just focus on one aspect of SEO and ignore the other.

Most people think that off-page SEO is just about links.  But, several off-page SEO factors improve the visibility and trustworthiness of your website.

Off-page SEO is all about the factors that happen outside the website and can indirectly affect the rank of your website. On a strategic level, it is difficult to strategize off-page SEO.

If you want to improve brand awareness and drive tons of traffic to your website – you need to invest your time in off-page SEO factors.

Before we get into details, let’s understand a little more about off-page SEO.

Why do you need to focus on off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO will indirectly correlate with the domain authority score – which is one of the important ranking factors.

It includes social media strategy, gaining backlinks, influencer marketing, brand awareness and many more.

Now, the question is “How does it help your website rank high on search engines”?

Well, the more links and comments point back to your website – the more likely Google is to assume it a quality site and rank it higher.

Before you come up with an off-page SEO strategy, you need to ensure that your on-page SEO checklist is up-to-date. If you have ignored on-page SEO – refer to Chapter 6 – On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Gaining BACKLINK is the best way to show that your website is valuable, trustworthy and authoritative.

Search Engines like Google see the links to your site as an endorsement. Focus on gaining high-quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant content sites.

To gauge the authority of a website, check the Alexa Rank of that website. Lower is the rank on Alexa – higher is the influence.

Let’s check with an example – www.amazon.com!!

In laymen times, off-page SEO helps search engines understand what others think about your company, products, services or even website.

On-Page SEO Techniques

The most common ranking factors are link building, social media influence, social book marketing etc. It is essential to have all the off-page optimization techniques in place.

Let’s get started with the best off-page SEO techniques to build backlinks –

Guest blogging

Guest Blogging is one of the most important off-page SEO techniques that help with both brand reputation and link building.

When you write guests post for other websites, the site often links back to your website or webpage – either in the author bio or post. Guest blogging comes with the additional benefit of building a brand reputation – as your brand is being featured on other websites.

To get started with guest blogging, start finding high DA sites in your niche that accepts guest posts. Use Alexa’s Audience Overlap Tool to find the list of sites that accepts guest posts.

You can pick the guest blogging sites based on competitor analysis and receive a bunch of sites that target the same audience.

When it comes to guest blogging in the age of Penguin and Panda, the two strategies that marketers are guest blogging and blogger outreach.

The following are some of the best networks for guest blogging for increased exposure and backlinks.

MyBlogGuest

This is a community of bloggers that allows you to sign up for guest posts. Finding and publishing guest posts have never been easier with ByBlogGuest.com.

You can get connected with industry experts and increase your reach by guest posting on relevant niches.

Reach high-standard bloggers and share your brand with them.

Guestr

This platform helps blog owners to find new opportunities to place their content and build quality backlinks. Guestr is FREE for both the site owners and those looking for guest blogging opportunities.

Currently, there are nearly 804 listings for sites that accept content in multiple categories. You can find the estimated number of visits to each site and its current google rank.

PostJoint

This is a content marketing platform for bloggers and online marketers. This platform helps in connecting webmasters, bloggers and businesses with advertisers.

You can get quality backlinks and will also be paid to publish guest posts.

Influencer outreach

If you have created any content that is worth sharing, don’t hesitate to reach out to industry experts. You should make friends with reputed influencers and start interacting with them for advice and tips.

Start connecting with them and impress them to share your content. Stay in touch with them and ask for advice. You can even feature them in some of your posts.

This way, your content is bound to be shared across their channels.  You will have to build a relationship with influencers yourself – if you do not wish to use any platform.

If you are an active participant in your niche – you may already have an idea of popular influencers. If you are new to the influencer market – the below tools will help you in your quest.

Upfluence

This is an influencer platform offering a well-rounded set of features and plays an important role in influencer search.

With a massive database of 3 million profiles – you can find influencers using as many keywords. You can start with a few keywords in your niche using criteria like – number of followers, social platform, location etc.

The data is shown in real-time. It offers a DIY plugin on Chrome to analyze the influencer’s profile straight from the browser.

HypeAuditor

This is one of the free tools that help you determine the rank of top Instagram influencers. The AI analysis of HypeAuditor ranks the bloggers by their engagement on Instagram and the quality of followers they have.

Whether it is selecting the list of top 100 influencers or niche-based influencers – you can choose any. It provides influencer details like – current rank, Instagram username, audience country, authentic engagement rate, followers and influencer posts.

In short, you can find every detail about the influencer.

Discover.ly

This chrome plugin helps you to connect with influencers on social media platforms such as – Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.

You can use discover.ly to see if any of your existing contacts have a connection with popular influencers in your niche. You could leverage your contacts to introduce you to the influencer.

Besides the above, several tools help you find top-rated influencers in your niche. Get started with any of these tools to start your journey on ‘Influencer Outreach’.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the best ways to promote your website across social platforms and gain huge online visibility. Social media shares and likes are one of the important off-page SEP factors that help you build reputation and brand authority.

With an effective social media marketing strategy, you can spread your content online and drive people back to your website. This kind of off-page SEO technique can increase your site traffic and views – which eventually improve SEO.

Make social media marketing an important part of your off-page SEO strategy by adding share buttons to the content and being active on social media platforms.  Here is a quick preview of the best social media tools for off-page SEO.

Extole

This is a referral marketing tool that helps you grow your user base. Using this tool, you can create, share and analyze referrals via social media.

You can even advocate for people to share content across multiple social channels. You can give them the flexibility to share your content whenever and wherever they want.

This is one of the best and effective tools to promote your content on social media.

HubSpot

Hubspot is a very powerful tool for inbound marketing. It helps you drive tons of traffic to your website and manage your leads. Several social features help you share your blog and website on social media.

You can share the content automatically and manually. As you share the content, you can keep track of how well the shares are doing.

For instance – if you see a drip in the engagement on Facebook – you can trigger a notification to your customer service team to engage with the followers.

Zapier

Zapier is a social media management tool that connects you with your audience and improves workflow. These are plenty of integrations to choose from to help you link with multiple apps.

With multiple integrations, it is easier to share content on social media with ease. All you have to do is connect your RSS feed with each one of the social media pages and create a ‘zap’ for each platform.

The posts are automatically shared to the followers, one you publish.

Remember that your customers don’t hand out in one place and they move from one social platform to the other. The right set of tools will help you expose your brand to more people and drive more traffic to your website.

Forum posting

Forums are the online discussion boards that allow users to have meaningful conversations on a particular niche in the form of messages and comments.

When done correctly, forum posting can bring plenty of benefits like – understanding the customers, gain new customers, retain existing customers, etc.

Forum posting is a long-term strategy to build trust – while engaging with potential customers online.

To get started with forum posting, you need to identify forum threads on topics relevant to your business that you can add value to. In such posts, you can add a link back to your website.

However, you need to make sure that the activity is carried out sparingly. The backlink to be added only if is highly relevant to the content. Some of the high DA forum posting sites include –

1. Forums.microsoft.com
2. Forums.cnet.com
3. Forum.skype.com
4. Forums.oracle.com

If you can get huge followers on these sites – you can promote your services with a link to your website.

Directory listing

Directory listing is also known as the local listing is another important off-page SEO technique. You can gain highly valuable backlinks to your website by submitting your business to local listings.

Local search results are the ones that fulfil location-driven queries. The searchers often refer to phrases such as ‘nearby’ or ‘near me’ when searching for any service, product or business.

Local listings can be extremely powerful – as it helps you in two ways i.e. 1) Build extremely valuable backlink from high DA sites 2) Tons of traffic and exposure.

You can either opt for FREE or PAID directory listing sites. Some of the best directory submission sites are – Somuch.com, Wensuqash.com, Highrankdirectory.com, Siteswebdirectory.com, Gainweb.org, Infotiger.com etc.

You can start submitting your website in the directory with the lowest Alexa rank.

Blog commenting

Blog commenting is an excellent off-page SEO strategy that can drive traffic to your website and at the same time improves the SERP ranking.

However, if not done properly – it can turn into a “Black hat SEO’ practice. There are several blog sites on the website where you can post comments.

While commenting on blogs –make sure that the brand is mentioned inside the body of relevant tips – so that it looks relevant.

Blog commenting can have a great impact on your website SEO. It improves visibility, improves credibility, traffic, business relationships, and brand recognition.

Some of the best blog commenting sites in the SEO niche with high DA are –

1. QuickSprout
2. Problogger
3. Copyblogger
4. ShoutmeLoud
5. Yoast SEO Blog

It’s time to get into action and start leveraging the above blog commenting sites to drive traffic to your website. 

Digital PR

Digital PR is an amazing tactic that can increase online presence by gaining high-quality DoFollow backlinks. When done through the right platform and channel, it can increase your website’s visibility and reach by driving toons of referral traffic.

Some of the Digital PR strategies that can impact your SEO include – online press releases, online reputation management, blogger outreach etc.

If you don’t take the right approach to market, PR and advertise your website – you are likely to stay far behind your competitors. Some of the PR tools to manage the public relation process include –

JustReachOut

This is a robust PR software that helps you get media exposure to your brand or website. You can use the team of JRO to develop a comprehensive PR strategy and action plan.

Besides, the tool monitors daily press releases on various platforms to identify the most relevant ones to your website.

It has several features like – broken link finder, guest post, campaign outreach etc to supplement your current PR strategies.

Cision

This is another popular tool that connects journalists form top publications like – CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal etc.

The same platform can be used to distribute press releases, keep track of the competitors, latest industry news, broadcast, social media, print media, and more.

You will be able to analyze how your brand is performing in the online world.

Mention

This tool helps you monitor your brand campaign, target keywords, social media goals etc. You can keep track of every small activity on your website.

Besides, you will be able to compare your PR efforts with that of your competitors. From the key metrics to PR campaigns, you can compare everything.

Use this PR tool to improve your brand awareness and online visibility.

Questions & answers

Question & Answer websites are one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website. Join high PR question & answer sites – as they are a good source for link building.

Some of the popular Q & A sites are –

1. Quora
2. Reddit
3. eHow
4. yahoo

You need to go through the guidelines for posting on these sites. Most of these sites encourage you to post engaging and user-friendly content. Make sure to avoid negative answering on these sites – as it will negatively impact your profile.

Avoid adding spammy links or affiliate links in the answers. You need to ensure that the content is beneficial to the reader and is free from all kinds of grammatical errors.   

The Q & A sites will also allow you to interact with bloggers or similar industry person. Getting backlinks from high PR Q & A sites enable great awareness in the market.

Article submission

Article submission is an off-page SEO technique – where you write an article and publish it on a third-party site. This strategy helps you promote your website on other websites – eventually increasing the traffic of your website.

With article submission sites, one can gain direct traffic from other websites and well improve brand visibility. Various article submission directories help you market your website for free.

Some of the popular article submission sites are –

1. Ezinearticles
2. Github
3. Articlebiz
4. Myarticle
5. tumblr

Submitting an article on these sites is free. However, you need to follow some guidelines like – original content, SEO content, heading tags, informative, engaging and grammatically correct.

Infographic submission

Infographic submission sites are an effective way to convey messages in the form of visuals, diagrams and charts.

According to a study, visual content catches the attention of visitors in a few seconds. If you want to engage and retain existing users, you can create stunning infographics and boost your SEO.

The key benefits of infographic submissions are – attractive visual content, more engagement, live visual forms, the increased website traffic and better conversions.

There are plenty of tools like – Canva, Crello, and Sketch etc that can be used to create infographics. You can create infographics using any of these tools and start submitting them to sites that accept infographics.

Some of the high DA infographic submission sites are –

1. Visual.ly
2. Flicker
3. Slideshare
4. CoolInfographics
5. InfographicsArchive

Besides the above, there are hundreds of sites where you can submit infographics and gain high-quality backlinks to your website.

Video submission

Videos can be said as one of the easiest ways to engage customers. You can create a catchy presentation or short viral videos to get an immense amount of traffic to your website.

Video submission sites are a great way to promote your videos across the online world and gain tons of traffic in return.

You can submit multiple videos on a single site and get as many backlinks. Remember that one video can have only one backlink. Some of the video submission sites are –

1. YouTube
2. Dailymotion
3. Vimeo
4. Scoop.it

Before you start submitting your video on video submission sites, you need to understand the guidelines – keyword analysis, social bookmarking, relevant videos in articles etc.

Web 2.0 submission

When it comes to off-page SEO, there is another important activity known as web 2.0 submission. It is as important as article submission, directory listing, infographic submission etc.

The key benefits of web 2.0 submission include – more backlinks, huge traffic, keyword ranking, less cost and a free platform.

Some of the popular web 2.0 submission sites are –

1. WordPress
2. Weebly
3. Wix
4. Tumblr
5. Blogger

Besides the above, there are many areas in off-page SEO to explore. The higher is the authority of websites you are referring to – the more chance you have to rank high on SERPs.

Remember not to play with black-hat SEO techniques. You never know when you can turn your followers and search engines into enemies.

You will be penalized by Google, blacklisted by subscribers and even get blocked by plenty of sites.

Get started by finding out what is effective for your niche and start working on it!