We get it. It’s boring and incomprehensible to everyone but a small handful of online marketing geeks. But SEO makes all the difference between your website ranking well on Google or collecting dust in the search engine abyss, so you need to at least have a working knowledge of how it operates.
Offsite optimisation can give you the edge over your competition, leapfrogging your website higher in the search engine rankings. What have you got to lose?
Offsite (as opposed to onsite) optimisation involves SEO techniques that take place off your website, in other parts of the internet. The most commonly used methods are incoming links from other websites and social media marketing. The overall aim is to enhance the popularity and trustworthiness of your site in order to give it more authority.
(So, the internet is kind of like high school. Popularity can make or break you).
Google likes websites that are popular, and are much more likely to reward those sites with a better ranking when people are searching for answers to their queries. More than that, your website also needs to be popular with what Google sees as “reputable” places on the internet, because that vouches for the quality of your content.
(The internet is also like your school principal. It judges you by the company you keep).
So we’ve just learnt that Google will reward your website if it has good quality content that is linked to by a large number of reputable sources.
We’ve listed some of the most common offsite optimisation techniques below, so you can start using link building techniques to improve your search engine ranking.
Create useful, evergreen content that is unique and contains actionable information. You can also find a piece of content that is already doing well, and make a better version.
Once you’ve got great content, email bloggers or publishers who work in your niche to let them know that you have a resource that might be useful to them and their readers.
We’ve all googled ourselves, right? You can search for mentions of your business using tools like BuzzSumo or Mention.com, and ask for links back to your website.
Say for example you run a website that features Paleo recipes. Search for pages that list resources about that topic, and contact them asking for your link to be added to the list.
Your expertise is a valuable resource. Find blogs or industry publishers in your niche and pitch article ideas to them, so you can get a backlink to your website from the article.
You can offer a product or service to bloggers for free, and they may review it. Note: you can’t offer a freebie in direct exchange for a link, because it violates Google guidelines.
Find resources in your niche that are no longer live. You can create similar content and contact the web page owner, alerting them to the broken link and offering yours instead.
Getting involved in community or industry events by offering sponsorships is a win-win scenario because both parties can include links to each other on their websites.
YouTube offers the opportunity to generate backlinks to your site. “How to” and instructional videos can be very popular and are highly shareable online.
Do you host events, workshops or seminars? If you are hosting an event you can submit your listing to events websites, who will link back to your page.
Journalists often need expert sources to quote in their news stories. You can sign up to the Help a Reporter website, and pitch your expertise as a media source.
You can use online software to search for backlinks to your competitor. If the links are no longer live, you can contact the webmaster and ask them to link to your page instead.
Old-school PR outreach is still relevant in the digital age. If you have anything newsworthy to share it’s worth sending out press releases to online media in your field.
Feeling inspired? SEO is a hugely valuable tool to increase your Google ranking, but it can also be a big ask for time-poor business owners. If you’re keen to explore the benefits of offsite optimisation but need some help, we’re here to answer your questions.
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