As the owner of a website, you need to keep track of several factors to maintain or improve your rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). A few are under your control, while others require special attention. This includes off-page search engine optimization (SEO).
This article will walk you through an off-page optimization checklist to follow for the best results.
Top 10 Off-Page SEO Checklist items
1) Check out the backlink profile
If you own an older website, the chances that your website will acquire a good volume of links are high. But would all of the acquired links be beneficial to you? Maybe not. Over time, websites receive links from both authoritative and spam sites. If obtained from the latter, your website will face a number of negative consequences, including a search engine penalty.
In such cases, a site audit should be performed regularly. It will help you identify links from spam sites, unwanted links, and so on. Begin this step by compiling a list of links pointing back to your website. Examine the anchor text and the origins of those links. Once you have completed these tasks, identify which links are beneficial and which are detrimental to your rankings.
2) Evaluate competitor backlink profiles
What is the most crucial step in developing an off-page SEO strategy? It all starts with analyzing your competitors’ profiles. What if you don’t have information about what your competitors are doing? Begin by analyzing your competitors’ link profiles. Identify the sources of their links. Examine how these links assist them in gaining clicks. Determine how many of these are from sites in the same industry, how many are from sites with higher domain scores, and how many are from spam sites.
You can accomplish this by using one of the numerous tools available in the market. Simply paste any URL in the tool and run it to get the report. The generated report will show you the authority and quality of the link.
3) Link intersect analysis
If you are facing trouble finding sites that link to your competitor’s sites, the link intersect analysis method can help. It is an excellent approach for locating opportunities to gain a link. Link intersect analysis allows you to compare links across multiple domains and identify unique link donors for each site under consideration.
The process also assists you in determining how many links your competitors’ sites receive from authoritative domains and spam sites respectively. You will also be able to track the number of clicks they receive from these links.
To accomplish this off-page checklist item, you will find various link intersect tools. You only need to paste the domain into such tools to obtain a detailed report on the above items. Manual link analysis may not yield the desired results.
4) Link-building strategy
A link-building strategy is critical for increasing your site’s domain authority score. It gives Google and other search engines the impression that your site contains useful information that assists in answering customer queries. Under this approach, you can put effort into these things:
- Creating well-researched content backed by data; such content naturally compels bloggers to link to your site.
- Gaining reviews and mentions; the best way to accomplish this is to put your brand in front of industry influencers.
- Requesting links from blogger friends.
To obtain links from third-party sites, you can take the help of several paid or free tools. These tools tell you how trustworthy those sites are and how much traffic they can generate in a given time frame.
5) Steal competitors’ links
If your competitor is at the top of SERPs, it indicates that they have a strong backlink profile. You can’t beat them with just keyword placement; you need other strategies too. This is where link stealing can help. You can steal the link from a competitor at either the page or domain level or both. Here is how you can steal links:
- Searching the home pages of competitors’ websites might reveal numerous links that could benefit your site.
- Creating guest posts for websites your competitors are writing for and understanding the kind of responses they are getting in terms of traffic would help too.
- Looking for sites that link to multiple industry-specific sites and contacting them for replicable link opportunities.
6) Bloggers outreach
This one is perhaps the best way to promote your brand if you are a start-up. Blogger outreach is a marketing practice in which you approach and communicate with industry influencers. You do so to persuade them to promote your brand in various ways. Blogger outreach is effective for promoting new content, acquiring new links, facilitating influencer marketing, creating press releases (PR), and promoting products. When opting for strategy, keep these steps in mind.
- Define your objectives clearly and understand whether you are doing this to increase sales, build brand awareness, or acquire links.
- Evaluate the influencer’s audience engagement, such as whether they receive enough comments and social media shares.
- Analyze your target website’s organic and inorganic traffic.
- Review the targeted site’s domain score, page authority, and spam score.
7) Optimize Google Business Profile
Optimizing your Google Business profile can help you gain more traffic and better prospects. Users who search for terms related to your industry and find you on SERPs will click to learn more about your location. A Google Business Profile can also help you get reviews. Here’s the most effective way to do it.
- Create a Google My Business account. Make sure to include all pertinent information when creating the profile. These include addresses, products, owner-generated queries, and reviews.
- Ensure there is no discrepancy in the online store name and offline store name.
- Always mention and optimize the category section.
- Mention your product or business attributes. For example, if you run a restaurant and provide home delivery, highlight the same.
- Add images and videos only where necessary. Unnecessary stuffing of content results in poor user experience.
8) Paid promotion
You might be overly reliant on SEO to generate organic traffic. But did you know that, according to a WordStream research report, paid marketing with commercial intent gets you twice as many taps as organic SEO? Setting aside a budget for paid promotion is not worthless. It is one of the best ways to rank higher on SERPs.
Imagine a scenario where you are competing against tens of thousands of websites. You are a start-up with no physical location and a limited budget. Do you have eight to nine months to devote to organic SEO practice in order to have your site appear on the first or second page of SERPs? Perhaps not. In such cases, you would want to get quality leads as soon as possible. This is why we advise you to use paid promotion to gain immediate visibility.
9) Guest posts
Guest posting refers to an SEO practice in which you write content for another website in the same field. This is one of the most effective strategies for increasing traffic, building brand awareness, and developing relationships with peers. Guest posting is advantageous to both you and the site for which you are writing content.
When you write guest posts for any site, your brand is regarded as an industry expert. It helps improve your site’s domain authority score. However, be cautious about what you write when creating such posts. If readers detect promotional material in the content, they will form a negative opinion of your website. Also, ensure that the post contains some valuable information for the readers. Irrelevant content will take your brand nowhere.
10) Unlinked mentions
Unlinked mentions are when another website or brand is mentioned without being hyperlinked. For example, if you mention Google and include a link to its home page, the user will be redirected to Google simply by clicking on that mention. However, unlink mentions are those in which you do not give the user the option of redirecting to a new page from your website.
The linkless mentions are regarded as a powerful link-building strategy. However, there are some situations in which you should not opt for this strategy. These include:
- When dealing with sites that are negative about your brand
- When targeting sites that request money in exchange for links
- When using black hat SEO
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q.1) What are some items to include on off-page SEO checklists?
A basic off-page SEO checklist includes multiple things that impact rankings. Here are a few of them:
- Analyzing your competitors’ link profile
- Performing link intersect analysis to find link-building opportunities
- Putting effort into converting unlinked mentions into quality links
- Creating well-researched guest posts
Q.2) How do you do off-page SEO?
You can begin off-page SEO by first defining your goals. After that, examine your competitors’ backlink profiles and make a list of the sources for their links. Contact those sites for links and guest posting opportunities. In addition, use social media or affiliate and influencer marketing as part of your link-building strategy.
Q.3) How important is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO assists you in gaining market recognition. The primary goal of off-page SEO is to obtain links. Implementing this strategy correctly gives users the impression that your site contains valuable information and has things that can address customers’ pain points. Approaches such as guest posting project you as an industry expert.
Q.4) What is the difference between on-page SEO and off-page SEO?
On-page SEO concentrates on factors that are directly related to your website. It consists of detecting and fixing duplicate content, optimizing title tags, adding alt tags to images, and so on. On the other hand, off-page SEO is more about a link-building strategy. It includes guest posting, link intersection analysis, affiliate and influencer marketing, and so on.
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