Off-site SEO

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Off-site SEO
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Off-Site SEO is Essential for Search Engine Ranking Success

You know that search engine optimization is essential for your website, but how important is off-site SEO to your website's ranking success? Here is everything that you need to know about off-page SEO techniques and why they matter for your business.

Do You Need Off-Site SEO?

You've done everything that you need to do to optimize results for search engines for your website, so do you even need to worry about off-site SEO? The answer is a firm and resounding “Yes.” Off-page SEO is critical to establishing the authority of your website with Google, which boosts your search results much further than on-site SEO could ever do. Here are some critical components of off-site SEO.

  1. Google Business Listing
  2. Google Reviews
  3. Google Analytics
  4. Google Search Console
  5. Keyword Research
  6. Competitive Research
  7. Ranking Reports
  8. Citations
  9. Backlinks
  10. Social Media
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Google Business Listing & Google Reviews

Google searches are the way that most clients find your business, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it is important to have a good Google Business listing and reviews. Reviews can give confidence to potential clients that previous customers have been happy with your business, but they also show Google that real people are using your business, which enhances your credibility. Here is how you can increase your success in business listing and Google reviews.

  • Verify your business. In order for your business to appear on Google Maps, searches, and other services from Google, you need to verify your business with Google. This is the first step to obtaining a Google Business listing and reviews.
  • Ask your customers to leave reviews. Many of your customers may be happy to leave reviews simply because you asked them, but it doesn't hurt to add an incentive. Advertise a discounted rate or another reward for customers who leave reviews for your business.
  • Reply to reviews. Your customers will feel that their input is valued, potential clients will see that you are engaged with your customer base, and more customers are likely to leave reviews if you reply to reviews. Be sure not to just reply to the negative stuff, but thank customers for leaving positive reviews as well.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an invaluable, and free, tool that helps you maximize your SEO efforts. When set up correctly, it monitors data throughout your site and gives you valuable information about who is visiting your website and what they're doing there.

You can set alerts that warn you when something is going wrong with your website or SEO campaign so that you can always be confident that your website is performing at its best. Here are just a few of the valuable data points that can be gathered by Google Analytics.

  • Learn information about your audience such as demographics, location, and how they are viewing your site.
  • Gain information about how audiences arrived at your website. Learn which websites are referring to them so that you know where to concentrate your marketing efforts in the future.
  • Discover how much organic SEO traffic your website is getting
  • Find out which specific keywords are driving the most traffic to your site

Keyword Research

Keywords are at the heart of all SEO, so choosing good ones is essential. It doesn't matter how wonderful your webpage or business is if the keywords that your potential customers or readers are searching for don't bring up your pages. Keyword research requires not only understanding the topic that your website covers, but what potential readers are searching for:

  • Understanding intent. It is essential to understand a reader’s goals in searching for a particular keyword. It will do no good offering a new product to readers who are looking for information on how to fix an old one, or providing a page on Venus the Greek god when people are searching for the planet.
  • Discover keywords that readers are searching for. When you describe the topics that your website covers, you may think that you have a good sense of which keywords are applicable. However, during keyword research, it is very common to discover that readers actually search for very different keywords when trying to discover the content that you have created
  • Balance specificity with number of hits. Choosing very specific keywords means that you have an excellent chance of ranking for them, but if almost nobody searches for those keywords, this won't do you much good. Keyword research finds the words that many people are searching for that do not have excessively high competition

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is similar to Google Analytics in that it gives you valuable information about how effective your SEO campaign is and which keywords are ranking the highest for your site. However, this is a separate tool from Google Analytics and offers additional tools:

  • Queries can show you which keywords your website shows up for in search results. They can also tell you which keywords individual pages are ranking for.
  • See how readers are interacting with your pages, from the total clicks per page to the total number of times your site came up in a search in a given time frame.
  • Search for keywords you want to rank for and see how well your website is doing for those specific keywords
  • Find out how many of your pages Google has indexed. This can be valuable for determining whether your site is easy for Google to index as well as offering insight as to why a particular page may not be doing as well as expected. If you find pages that haven’t been indexed you can also submit them using Google Search Console.
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Citations

Citations are one of the most overlooked aspects of off-site SEO. Citations are references made online to your business. They should include your business name, address, and phone number, otherwise known as NAP.

Google relies on citations as well as links to your site to determine how valid your business is. Citations, unlike links, do not need to be linked directly to your site. Just having your NAP listed is sufficient. Partial citations may contain only part of your contact information, such as just the name and phone number or just a name and address. While having a partial citation is better than no citation, full citations are superior.

It is essential that the NAP is consistent every time. This can be especially challenging for businesses that may have variations in how their name is spelled, such as those that have an & symbol or “and” in the name or those that have numbers that may either be spelled out or listed numerically.

Backlinks

Backlinks are a simple concept that is invaluable to SEO, but they can be very challenging to obtain. Backlinks are links on other websites that direct to your website. They may also be known as inbound links.

Large amounts of backlinks tell Google that your site is an authority on a subject that is relevant enough that other websites refer readers to them. This dramatically increases your search rankings in Google. Quality counts as well. Google will judge the value of backlinks by the authority of the website linking to you.

Backlinks are most valuable when they come from sites that cover similar subject matter to your own. The more relevant the backlink, the better your ratings will be. The best way to obtain backlinks is to create extremely high-quality content that prompts other websites to link to it organically.

Another great way to obtain backlinks is by guest posting on relevant sites including a link to your site. You can even pay other websites to link to your site, but this generally is the least desirable way to obtain backlinks, not only because it costs you money, but because the chances of having a backlink included in highly relevant content on the other site are much less.

Off-Site SEO with Perfectly Optimized

If all of this seems like a lot to manage, you're not wrong. Effectively creating an off-site SEO strategy, implementing it, and tracking progress can be a full-time job. Even if you are comfortable creating content for your site, it can be very challenging to handle this side of marketing. Consider using excellent professional off-page SEO services like Perfectly Optimized to manage your off-site SEO and take your business's rankings to the first page of Google searches.

Contact us today to start working on your off-site SEO and taking it to the next level!