In the words of Moz Blog:
“Off-page SEO is the act of optimizing your brand’s online and offline footprint through the use of content, relationships, and links to create an optimal experience for prospects and search engine crawl bots. It typically leads to gradual increases in positive brand mentions, search rankings, traffic to your site, and conversions.”
That means if you thought your SEO strategy started and ended with outsourcing to an SEO company to deal with the techie on-page stuff, you’re wrong.
Search engine optimisation is a holistic practice that takes into account every aspect of your online presence. That means your website, your social media, your content strategy and, of course, the calibre of your product or service.
To highlight what you need to be thinking about, I have listed five crucial off-page areas that you need to address if you want your overall SEO strategy to work.
- Be amazing
If your product or service is crap, even the world’s greatest SEO won’t be able to help you.
The development of your offering is paramount, and that means in all aspects of the product or service itself, to the sales process, customer care and even your complaints handling.
You have to strive to be the best in your niche; the product/service everyone wants because it’s the best money can buy.
Only then can you maximise your brand’s potential.
- Customer service
A big part of your off-page SEO is customer reviews. Loads of sites out there today encourage consumers to offer honest feedback on the service they’ve received from companies. These ‘real life’ examples carry lots of weight when it comes to choosing which company a prospect will deal with.
I’m sure you remember the United Airlines fiasco – that one went viral causing all sorts of damage to the company. That is something you don’t want to happen to you.
If you want great reviews and positive comments online, it’s essential you provide outstanding customer service. Even if things go wrong, how you react will have an enormous impact on your brand’s image.
- Be easy to find
Content marketing is going to be a big part of your online marketing strategy and is also a vital element of your off-page SEO.
Writing content that adds value to your customers and that helps others find you through the search results is only going to work it meets their expectations.
What does that mean?
It must contain the right keywords and phrases that match what your audience is looking for.
Before you go to town cramming multiple instances of your keywords in your content, remember today it’s all about high-quality writing. Place your keywords in prominent areas, such as H1 and H2 headings and use synonyms and related terms to enrich its SEO potential.
Remember, you’re not writing to attract links, you’re writing to attract readers.
- Be social
A huge aspect of off-page SEO is your use of social media.
It’s not enough just to automatically channel blog posts and mundane updates to your audience. Being social is all about being interactive.
Monitoring your social media for questions about your field will help you reach more people and spread the word about your brand. Chat and be human in your responses and don’t spend all your time randomly promoting your business.
Social media is also a great place to start building relationships with influencers within your industry. Well-constructed comments on influential blogs will raise your profile as will participation in forums.
- Vary your content
I’ve already mentioned making your content easy to find but’s it’s also important to use different formats.
Your audience wants information, but the way they like to consume it will differ from person to person.
Experiment with blog posts, infographics, video and podcast and monitor the response they get. This will help you develop a multifaceted content strategy that will hit the right note with your audience and maximise social sharing.
There’s a lot more to SEO than you realise
Your SEO strategy has to, simultaneously, maximise both your on-page and off-page elements.
Just doing one or the other isn’t going to work, so you will have to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in.
It all starts with a fantastic brand or service and then it’s up to you to manage it from there.
Think content, think social, think audience.