SEO Off-Page Techniques: 7 Important Facts You Need To Know

SEO off-page techniques are activities that create ‘off-site’ signals about the authority of your website. The most important of these is link-building.

On-page SEO refers to the SEO signals coming from the web page itself. This includes the quality of the web page content, the structure of the content, the meta tags, the formatting, and the load time of the web page.

Off-page SEO refers to SEO signals coming from outside the web page. This includes:

Backlinks (i.e. inbound external links)
E-A-T signals (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness)
Domain Authority
Brand Recognition
Social Media Presence
Forum Commenting
YouTube Channel
Internal Linking
Online Reputation Signals

When people say ‘Off-Page SEO’, they usually mean ‘Off-Site SEO’: signals that are generated on other websites.

And indeed, most of the items on the list above are ‘Off-Site’. But one of the items – internal linking – is ‘Off-Page’ but not ‘Off-Site’: it involves signals generated on your site.

That’s an important distinction to keep in mind – you don’t have much control over Off-Site factors, but you do control internal linking.

#1. Inbound External Links (or Backlinks)

Of all these Off-Page SEO techniques, the most important by far is backlinks, or inbound external links.

Google treats links from other websites to your website as a vote of confidence, especially if the backlinks are ‘do follow’ links from relevant websites within your niche.

Links from authoritative websites will boost your domain authority (DA). And the higher your domain authority, the easier it is to rank on Google for your chosen keywords.

SIDENOTE

Domain Authority is not a Google metric – it’s a metric created by Moz that predicts the likelihood that a website will rank high in the search results.

The activity of acquiring external links to your website is called link-building and it’s a whole field in itself.

While there are dozens of link-building techniques, the only one that Google really approves of is natural, unsolicited link building. This is where another website links to your site without you asking for the link. They link to you simply because of the quality, usefulness, or relevance of your content.

That being said, many online marketers engage in active link building. Here are some popular link-building techniques:

Guest posting: writing content for other websites
Broken link building: finding pages on the web with links to resources that no longer exist and asking to have the missing resource replaced with your own content
Resource page link-building: asking to have your page included in someone else’s list of useful resources
Creating infographics that other website use to illustrate their content
Podcast link building: being a guest on a podcast and getting a link in the podcast description

#2. Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)

Another Off-Page SEO factor is the authority of you and your website in the niche or industry that your website focuses on.

For some niches, such as health and financial advice, you need to have credentials in that field, in order for Google to recognize your website as having Authority, Expertise, and Trustworthiness or E-A-T.

According to Google’s Danny Sullivan, the E-A-T of your website is determined not by the Google algorithm but by Google’s quality raters. These are humans who are tasked by Google with assessing individual websites using the E-A-T Guidelines.

The E-A-T of a website is based on various different signals, including:

age of your website
quality of your content
your expertise in the topic that you write about
number of times other websites mention you or refer to your content
your off-site activity as an expert (e.g. answering questions on Q&A platforms)

You can improve the E-A-T of your website by:

Developing a topical focus for your website: for example, a website that has content about pets in general will tend to have less E-A-T than a website that focuses on guinea pigs.
Make sure your content is of high quality, well-researched, and fresh (i.e. up-to-date).
Clearly identify the author or authors of the content.
Ensure that your website identifies who you are (i.e. who the website owner is) and has your contact details.
Add to the trustworthiness of your website by making sure your website has an SSL certificate
Include links to your ‘privacy policy’, ‘cookies policy’, and ‘terms of use in the footer of your website.

#3. Domain Authority and Off-Page SEO Techniques

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric created by Moz that predicts the likelihood that a website will rank on Page #1 of the search results.

It’s based mainly on the number and quality of inbound links from other websites. DA is one of the most important Off-Page SEO factors. And that’s why many bloggers and digital marketers spend more time building links than creating content.

Of all SEO off-page techniques, the most important for building domain authority is link building: acquiring relevant backlinks from high authority websites within your niche or industry.

#4. Building Brand Recognition

Brand recognition is the ability of searchers to recognize your brand from the results on the SERPs page. Those are the results that people click on. And that’s why brand recognition is another key Off-Page SEO factor.

The more brand recognition you have, the better your site performs in SEO. That’s why building bran recognition is one of the key SEO off-page techniques.

One way to build brand recognition is to answer questions in forums.When you answer questions on ‘Question and Answer’ websites you’ll develop brand recognition within your target audience.

Here are some good Q&A sites:

Quora
Answers.com
Yahoo Answers
LinkedIn Answers
The Stack Overflow family of sites
Answerbag
Blurt it
Askville
AskDeb

An active presence on social media platforms is another Off-Page SEO factor.

If the search engines detect that you have a large and highly-engaged audience on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter, that will send Off-Page SEO signals that will help your site rank better in the search results.

#6. Forum Commenting

Leaving comments on forums can also help build your Off-Page SEO, as long as those comments show your expertise and produce engagement from forum readers.

#7. YouTube Channel

An active YouTube channel with a large and engaged audience is another way of sending Off-Page SEO signals that will bolster your site’s performance in organic search.

Online Reputation Signals

Managing online reputation signals is another of the key SEO off-page techniques. This is because online reputation can have a major impact on the SEO of your website. The main signal here is online reviews.

If your website occupies a business-to-consumer (or B2C) niche (e.g. restaurants, plumbers and other trades, wedding photography, etc.) it’s likely that you’ll get customer reviews.

Can these reviews affect your SEO?

Absolutely! Online customer reviews (and Google Reviews, in particular) can be a strong signal to search engines that communicates trustworthiness and authority.

And that’s why Online Reputation Management has become a whole field in itself.

Some key tips for online reputation management are:

create accounts on all the relevant social media platforms
monitor those accounts
be transparent
accept constructive criticism
respond to negative reviews (politely)

For more tips on how to build and protect your online reputation, see these resources:

Conclusion

Of all these examples of SEO off-page techniques, there’s one that will have more impact on how your website performs in the search results than any other.

You’ve probably guessed it – backlinks.

Links from other websites whose content is related to the content on your website is the most powerful of all Off-Page SEO factors. Search engines see those links as a vote of confidence in your website.

If the websites linking to you are not only relevant but also have high domain authority (i.e. DA greater than 75), then you’ll be getting some powerful Off-Page SEO signals that will help you rank higher in the search results.