Off-Site

SEO

for

Small

Business

Owners

Off-Site SEO (also known as Off-Page SEO) includes all actions a website owner can take in order to increase the number of visitors to your website. The idea is to increase the flow of traffic to your website and thus generate more interest in the goods and services that you offer.

The Importance of Off-Site SEO

A carefully managed Off-Site SEO campaign leads to the increased visibility of the company’s website in the eyes of the almighty search engines. Many SEO specialists tend to think that Off-Site optimization is even more important than On-Site SEO. Here at Digital Renegades we uphold the idea that they are both equally important. The main difference between On-Site and Off-Site SEO is that the resources of Off-Site SEO are potentially endless. Your companies off-site SEO can increase year after year. This occurs especially when your websites reputation raises. Google actually has a variable for domain age, this is used for businesses that have been around longer and are likely be more established and reputable.

Off-Site SEO is very important because you want to be mentioned on other sites. The more your business is listed and linked to and from the better. The listings and links indicate that you are a reputable source of information. Search engines and potential customers take note of your site, especially when you are listed on a variety of websites as a source.

You ask “what are the important factors of Off-Site SEO?” Well, there’s almost an endless number, but here are two major specifics: Social Media Presence and Back Linking.

Social Media Presence

Since we live in the Social Media age of the Internet, a valid SEO strategy can hardly exist without dedicating a significant amount of time to this Internet-phenomenon. As it stands right now, the number of reposts, likes, re-tweets etc. heavily influences the website rating. The logic behind this is obvious – the more social activity the content provokes, the more interesting it must seem to the users. Search engines can see that content is interesting and relevant from this activity, and in return they increase the contents ranking. Launching your social media presence can be quite a handful, here are 5 social media trends you should know about before you get started.

Don’t have a social media presence? Digital Renegades Will Get You Noticed.

Back Linking

Creating and multiplying external links (back linking) is a key to obtaining and maintaining a good position in search results. As a business owner it is crucial that you understand how this works. Your beautiful and informative website is worthless if nobody sees it.

To put it simply, search engines view back links (external links) as a recommendation. The more powerful and popular the “donating” page – the better the recommendation. But it isn’t all about quality here, as the sheer number of back links is also very important. There are many ways that can help you improve your back linking strategy. Although not the focus of this article, here are a few quick ideas to help.

• Press-releases
• Active visitor discussion on your blog posts
• Guest blog posting – Here is a fantastic article with a list of sites that accept guest blog posts.
• Feature in different directories

There are thousands of various website-directories. However, listings in “blacklisted” directories will greatly damage your website’s reputation. So, it is always best practice to check for “blacklisted” listings of your websites domain. Back linking is extremely important, however we strongly discourage the act of “bulk buying” of backlinks. This strategy can often cause significant damage to a website’s reputation or even “manual action” from Google.

Generally speaking, any kind of activity on the “right” resources will increase the value of your company’s website. By extension this value will also increase your number of visitors and SEO ranking.

Digital Renegades’ Advice

The best advice we can give is to approach each aspect of Off-Site SEO with calmness, a steady pace and preparedness to dedicate a lengthy period of time to this undertaking. It’s also important to note, that not every element of Off-Page search engine optimization is equally important. Having active Social Media accounts and working on increasing the quality and volume of back links has proven to be the most important Off-Site SEO strategy. Confused about Off-Site SEO’s counterpart, On-Site SEO? Learn some quick tips to get you moving in the right direction in our article What the Heck is On-Site SEO?.