In the world of digital marketing, not many things are more beneficial to your continued business growth like your SEO strategy. When thinking about your business and developing your SEO strategy, many of the techniques that come to mind are likely examples off on page SEO. While On Page SEO is important, it is important to not forget about your Off-Page SEO efforts that play a crucial role in your overall strategy.
This article will discuss the two types of SEO and ways to optimize both to create a natural, yet effective marketing strategy.
Off Page SEO
The goal of your Off Page SEO strategy is to build authority with search engines by becoming a trusted resource in your industry. When developing a website, many digital marketers want to jump right in and begin working on your On Page SEO. While this is not bad, it is important to still prioritize your businesses Off Page SEO.
Many small businesses struggle to stand out ORGANICLLY from their competition primarily because their off page strategy is lacking. They have diverted all of their efforts towards on page SEO and still not seeing the results they would expect. Anyone with the financial means to do so can funnel money to ads and show up on paid search, but that will only last as long as the money does.
There are three main areas of Off Page SEO that should be continuously monitored to ensure your strategy is still working: social media, backlinks, and Google Business Profile.
Backlinks
Think about the last blog or topic you read about online. Did it include any links sending you to another blog, page, or entirely different website? If so, then you already are familiar with backlinks. In short, they are links within the text on a website that links back to another website, webpage, or blog.
Why Are Backlinks Beneficial
Backlinks provide many benefits to your online presence. Having high quality backlinks referring to your website helps validate the relevance and value your content provides to that industry or topic. The more authoritative the website linking to you is, the more link juice they pass along to your website.
Let’s image you are the owner of a small bakery in town your local town. The local news channel loves to highlight local businesses and stopped for a Q&A with you. This article was posted on the news channels’ website, and at the end featured a link referring back to your website for additional information. News channels typically have large audiences, and your business will likely receive an increase in web traffic due to the article and the live report.
Keep in mind that all backlinks are not created equal.
Bad Backlinks?
As your businesses online presence begins to grow, you will start to be viewed as a more authoritative and trustworthy source of information. What also comes with this is website looking to steal authority from you, even if they are completely irrelevant to your industry. Google recognizes these are unrelated and they could negatively affect your ranking. However, it has been reported that you are not required to disavow spam backlinks like once required a decade ago.
Despite the concern of possible negative effects of spammy backlinks, do not let that deter you from focusing on gaining backlinks from high quality, authoritative websites.
Google My Business
Something to always consider is using Google itself as an option to connect with your audience.