Content is all about on-page SEO, focused on optimizing individual pages for relevant keywords and topics. RankBrain is Google’s machine learning system that helps evaluate user experience signals like click-through rates and dwell time. Links from other authoritative websites, however, are a crucial off-page SEO factor that helps establish a site’s credibility and authority.
Off-page SEO is more challenging because you have less direct control over factors like earning high-quality backlinks from other websites. While you can update your on-site content and fix technical SEO issues at any time, successful off-page SEO requires consistent effort to build relationships, create valuable content, and market your brand effectively across the web.
Getting high-quality backlinks and brand mentions from authoritative websites, influencers, and publications is much more challenging. It requires strategic link building through tactics like guest posting, creating linkable assets, building relationships with publishers and bloggers, and promoting your content through digital PR and outreach campaigns.
However, with the right strategies and consistent effort, you can absolutely succeed with off-page SEO. Many leading ecommerce brands and marketers have built strong off-page presences through a mix of link building, content marketing, social media promotion, influencer collaborations, and other tactics to earn high-quality backlinks and visibility.
To provide a comprehensive guide, this article compiles insights from 98 SEO experts on the most effective off-page techniques they use. These include strategies to build domain authority through high-quality backlinks, increase brand visibility and credibility, drive referral traffic, and ultimately improve search rankings. The recommendations cover a diverse range of tactics suitable for ecommerce businesses of all sizes.
Here are the top 35 off-page SEO techniques recommended by experts, along with best practices for implementing an effective link building strategy:
What Is Off-Page SEO and Why Is It Important?
Off-page SEO refers to any tactics employed outside of your website to improve search engine visibility and rankings. It complements on-page SEO (optimizing individual pages) and technical SEO (ensuring crawlability and site performance). Off-page SEO is crucial because it helps build your website’s authority, credibility, and online presence – key factors that search engines use to determine rankings.
While link building is the most well-known off-page SEO tactic, it encompasses a broad range of activities. These include social media marketing, guest blogging, getting featured in publications, managing online listings and citations, influencer collaborations, and affiliate marketing programs. The common goal is to increase your brand’s visibility, build authority through high-quality backlinks, and earn referral traffic.
Comparing On-Page vs Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to optimization factors that are within your direct control on your website, such as:
- Targeting relevant keywords in page content
- Optimizing titles, meta descriptions, and headers
- Using descriptive alt text for images
- Improving content quality and comprehensiveness
- Implementing a logical site structure and internal linking
These tactics help search engines better understand and rank your pages for relevant queries.
You and your team can influence on-page SEO by optimizing for specific keywords, writing title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt text that leverages those keywords, etc.
In contrast, off-page SEO factors are largely outside of your direct control, as they depend on external signals like:
- Earning high-quality backlinks from other authoritative websites
- Generating positive brand mentions and citations across the web
- Building a strong social media presence and engagement
- Collaborating with influencers for added credibility and reach
- Getting featured in publications, podcasts, videos, etc.
While more challenging to influence, these off-page signals play a crucial role in how search engines evaluate a website’s authority and credibility.
- Keywords
- Meta Descriptions
- URL structure
- Title tags
- Site navigation
- Internal links
Both on-page and off-page optimization are essential for a well-rounded SEO strategy. On-page tactics help search engines understand your content, while off-page efforts build credibility signals that boost visibility and rankings. The most successful ecommerce brands focus on a healthy balance of both.
- Backlinks
- Guest blogging (for backlinks)
- Social shares
- Domain authority
While on-page factors are under your direct control, earning off-page signals like high-quality backlinks requires more strategic effort. You can’t simply acquire authoritative links as easily as updating on-site content. Off-page SEO involves consistent work to create value, build relationships with publishers and influencers, and promote your brand effectively across the web.
However, the experts featured in this guide have shared proven tactics for succeeding with off-page SEO. By implementing a mix of link building, content promotion, influencer marketing, and other recommended strategies, ecommerce brands can effectively build authority and improve search visibility.
Top Off-Page SEO Tactics Recommended by Experts
To identify the most impactful off-page tactics, the experts surveyed rated the effectiveness of several popular strategies. Link building emerged as the top recommendation, with a strong emphasis on acquiring high-quality backlinks:
“High-quality backlinks are among Google’s most important ranking factors,” says Best Company‘s Alice Stevens. “A strategic link-building approach, focused on earning links from authoritative and topically relevant websites, signals to Google that your site is a trusted authority deserving of higher rankings within your niche.”
Matt Diggity of Diggity Marketing agrees: “Link building is essential for getting ranked in Google in 2019.”
“You should have a solid backlink strategy to get at least a few links from high authority websites a week,” says Daniela Andreevska of Mashvisor. “Search engines are paying more and more attention to how others interact with you, so you should put some effort into your backlink strategy.”
COFORGE’s Eric Melillo says there are three types of backlinks:
- “Natural links where people discover your content on their own and link to it within their content.”
- “Manual links where you collaborate with bloggers and influencers, and they link to your content.”
- “Self-created links created from a blog comment signature, Quora, Reddit, etc.”
Tom Mortimer of Adzooma says backlinks drive three significant benefits: improving your domain authority, providing more brand exposure, and getting the right site traffic.
Sam White of Truck Driver Academy expands on that last point in more detail:
“Getting backlinks from relevant pages gets your content in front of users who will find it helpful and reward it with high engagement. High engagement and quality backlinks send powerful signals to Google that your page and content are helpful and authoritative.”
“In my opinion,” Daniel Ashton of BrainSpin said, “earning backlinks is more beneficial than other tactics like PPC campaigns, influencer marketing, and referrals because the results are long-lasting and don’t end when the campaign does.”
The 35 Most Effective Ways to Improve Your Off-Page SEO Strategy
In addition to finding out what broad techniques our respondents have found the most helpful, we also wanted to know what specific tactics they use to earn backlinks, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to their sites from other sources.
So, we asked them to tell us more about the specific off-page SEO techniques they rely on the most. The result is 35 tactics you can adopt to create and refine your off-page SEO strategy.
1. Write Guest Posts for Other Websites’ Blogs
“Although it’s been around for a very long time, there’s no better off-page SEO tactic than guest posting,” says Beth Noll of Gift Observer. “It’s a simple trade of quality content for a quality link from a highly relevant website.”
“Guest posting has many advantages. Not only do you get a link from a relevant website, but it can also attract referral traffic to your site from the link. Combine this with the fact that millions of sites out there accept guest posts, and it’s a great strategy for any website,” Noll says.
So, how do you find ideal guest posting opportunities? Growth Hackers’ Jonathan Aufray explains:
- “Find authority blogs in your niche and industry.”
- “Analyze their content and find a few topic ideas they’re missing.”
- “Reach out to them via their online contact form, cold email, or even Twitter to check if they’re interested in receiving content from new contributors.”
- “Show them your previous work and propose a few topics.”
- “Write, publish, and promote.”
Ironpaper’s Brian Casey also recommends “seeing if the website has any formalized guest contribution program. Often, this will tell you what types of backlinks they allow in guest posts. Aim for those that allow you to include 1-2 links back to your site. This will ensure you’ll see an ROI on the time invested in writing the post.”
Flow SEO’s Angela Ash says to use the links you get to create contextual links: “Many writers make the mistake of only linking to the company’s main page. Instead, your links should point to data to support the statement used as the anchor text.”
“Consider linking to posts on your blog, infographics, or other bits of information that supply information related to the article itself,” Ash says.
And if a site you’re interested in contributing to doesn’t allow for in-post links, Rob Heywood of Audana NW LTD recommends “asking if they will allow a link to your website as part of an author bio. While it’s not as good as a contextual link, the opportunity should not be passed up.”
But ClearPivot’s Chantelle Stevenson says that even if you don’t get a link, guest posting still has value: “It’s time to quit guest blogging for the sole purpose of links. Guest blog because you are interested in nurturing a relationship with another company, influencer, or partner, and the links will come.”
“If you do it solely because you want links, it comes across as prioritizing a transactional relationship only. Add value for your influencers and guest blog about a true interest,” Stevenson says.
2. Engage in Social Media Marketing
“One effective off-page SEO tactic that every marketer should use is creating meaningful content and sharing it on all social media platforms,” says Lisamarie Monaco of PinnacleQuote Life Insurance Specialists. “You’ll be surprised at how many people look for your product. Find them by sharing!”
“Social media can link many off-page SEO tactics together,” says Emma Cavalier of RateYourSeats.com. “For example, if you write a guest post, the perfect way to let people know about it is by posting it on social media. The same goes for being mentioned in a Q&A, creating a new video, partnering with influencers, etc.”
Lisa Chu of Black N Bianco says, “Social media can create real relationships with influencers that will build your credibility, leading to connections with high-ranking websites that will further build your online presence.”
“Influencers also tend to be very connected with each other, so once you are in their circle, it becomes straightforward to gain more influencers to promote your website or brand,” Chu says.
Our respondents offered several tips for succeeding with off-page SEO on social media:
- “Focus on connecting with your social media audience by providing quality, shareable content and using a more humanized voice.” (Alayna Okerlund, Best Company)
- “Weave social media and SEO together, and make sure that the two are working in harmony.” (Katherine Rowland, YourParkingSpace)
- “Optimise your social channels, ensuring that all include relevant and consistent keywords in their bio sections.” (Katherine Rowland, YourParkingSpace)
- “Include imagery in your content. This will encourage people to click on your posts.” (Katherine Rowland, YourParkingSpace)
- “Consider following social listening trends to discover new keyword opportunities for SEO.” (Katherine Rowland, YourParkingSpace)
- “Don’t neglect any large social media sites: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It takes a lot of time, but with the help of a content calendar, you can scale your tasks and social media publishing.” (Muhammad Roohan, DME Of America Inc.)
- “By posting content on social media sites, it gets your content indexed by Google faster.” (Becky Beach, Mom Beach)
“There’s nothing worse than looking up a company on social media and seeing unloved channels that haven’t been updated in months,” says Holly Callender of Pro-Sapien Software. “Your audience is checking social media more often than your website, so go where they’re present.”
Editor’s note: Want a quick way to see how your social media efforts contribute to your site’s traffic? Grab this free Overarching Social Media Analytics dashboard to get a consolidated view of your most essential metrics from Google Analytics, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
3. Conduct Influencer Outreach
“The most effective off-page SEO tactic is influencer outreach,” says Anjana Wickramaratne of Inspirenix. “Influencer outreach is when you reach out to well-known businesses or individuals and ask them to share your content if they think it provides value to their audiences.”
“Influencers usually have a large following, so when they share your content, you will gain a lot of traffic. Additionally, the traffic will all be people who are interested in your niche and are more likely to engage with you,” Wickramaratne says.
As John Hinds of Lojix says, “Influencer sites tend to have high domain authority, so any backlink to your site will be seen as high-quality by search engines.”
Do you know how you’re doing influencer marketing? Ryan Underwood of YourParkingSpaceexplains: “Create killer content, reach out to well-established and authoritative influencers within your industry, and ask for a link.”
“Not only does this increase the visibility of your blog post,” says Jennilyn Adefuin of CanIRank, “but it also strengthens your website’s SEO.”
4. Participate in Video and Podcast Interviews
“My favorite tactic is to be a guest on other companies’ podcasts or video interview series,” says Nextiva’s Yaniv Masjedi.
Blake Stockton of Stockton Marketing Agency agrees: “Consider getting a company subject-matter expert interviewed on blogs, podcasts, and videos. This is similar to link building but provides more concrete value.”
5. Conduct PR Outreach
“The number-one off-page SEO tactic for us is PR outreach,” says John Donnachie of ClydeBank Media. “Google and other search engines rely on authority, and news sites often have high domain authority.”
“Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed in an interview that if a high-profile news outlet writes about you, then that’s a good thing,” says Luke Budka of TopLine Comms.
“Therefore, every marketer should engage in PR outreach: get brand mentions associated with what you do in authoritative and contextually relevant publications. PR-led SEO is the future,” Budka says.
Regarding PR outreach tactics, Alistair Dodds of Ever Increasing Circles recommends “building great relationships with journalists and publishers. Be the go-to reference point in your industry when journalists are looking for comments.”
“Those kinds of relationships are invaluable and will win you the high-quality backlinks that make all the difference,” Dodds says.
Tom Baker of FordeBaker says to “invest in digital PR to produce creative campaigns that journalists will be interested in. Don’t treat this as a one-off, either. Treat this as a consistent part of your marketing activity to ensure a regular flow of good links.”
And William Jepma of Market Veep recommends using good old press releases. “Whenever you release a new product, update an existing product or service, or have an exciting company development to share, then create a press release.”
“Not only are press releases more affordable than other forms of advertising, but when you optimize them with strong, industry-specific keywords, they will also produce the kind of backlinks and domain authority that expose new audiences to your brand and generate actionable leads.”
“By releasing press releases semi-regularly, you’ll be able to build interest in your brand, shine a spotlight on your industry expertise, and connect with the right audience at the right time,” Jepma says.
6. Respond to HARO Requests
“One of the best ways to get natural links from high-authority domains is to use HARO (Help A Reporter Out),” says Marc Andre of Vital Dollar. “You can subscribe to get three emails per day from HARO, and each email will list opportunities to offer quotes or feedback to reporters writing articles.”
“You can then respond to applicable inquiries, and most reporters will include a link to your site if they use your response in the final article,” Andre says.
Trickle’s Chris Davis agrees: “HARO is a great free resource that connects industry experts with reporters and columnists looking for insights on a certain topic.”
“The platform takes the busy work out of finding quality resources to contribute to, thus leaving productive time to provide expert advice and opinions to writers needing great content,” says Danny Peavey of One Week Website.
As Nigel Wright Group’s Fiona Kay says, “respondents usually only have to write 100-200 words on a subject, and in return, journalists often link back to the respondent’s website to credit the contribution.”
Quincy Smith of ESL Authority says that the key to successfully building backlinks with HARO is to contribute regularly:
“Make it a part of your morning routine to check their emails, and try and submit one response per day. It takes five minutes to scan the emails and craft a response, which I’m more than happy to do if I land an awesome link one out of every 10 or 20 responses.”
“Last year, I generated approximately 90 mentions, primarily via HARO pitches,” says Kent Lewis of Anvil Media. “It’s led to press coverage and mentions in publications like Business News Daily, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Times, and Reader’s Digest.”
Our respondents also offered a few HARO alternatives. Quentin Aisbett of OnQ Marketing recommends SourceBottle, and Katie Eldred of Vistaprint recommends following the #journorequest hashtag on Twitter.
7. Reply to Questions on Q&A Websites
“Replying to questions on Q&A sites is one of the hottest trends in SEO right now because Google seems to love these websites,” says Daniela McVicker of Top Writers Review.
“They dominate most non-commercial SERPs and gain a lot of traffic for commercial queries. Plus, people tend to trust the information on the Q&A websites more than on a brand’s homepage or blog. Thus, you can grow your website traffic, improve your brand image, and gain audience loyalty,” McVicker says.
Austin Shong of Blip Billboards agrees: “Be active on Quora. It’s a great way to engage with customers in your industry and helps you become more of an authority.”
“I follow questions and topics relative to our company. I try to focus on the most relevant questions and topics in which we will likely become top-viewed writers. When there is a relevant question to answer, I’ll occasionally also promote the answer.”
“I try to include relevant links to content on our site in the answers. It has generated a good amount of traffic to our site. I’ve been active on Quora for a few months, and this last month, it was one of our top referrers,” Shong says.
“Q&A sites are a goldmine when someone is specifically asking a question related to or looking for the product/service you offer,” says Hamza Karim of The Artistic Designers. “Many marketers don’t value it, but you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to showcase your site in those situations.”
“It’s quick and easy to jump in and answer questions and establish yourself as knowledgeable,” says Ellen Sluder of RingBoost. “Keep it up, and you’ll eventually build enough of a profile to get requests for answers—and it becomes a reinforcing cycle.”
8. Participate in Forums
“One effective off-page SEO tactic that every marketer should leverage is contributing meaningfully in community discussions surrounding your topic/area of expertise,” says Lauren Petermeyer of Veg Kitchen.
“For example, if you run a vegetarian blog, join and participate actively in vegetarian community forums and discussions across the web and social media. But the goal is not to register for these sites and spam with backlinks. Rather, position yourself and your brand as a subject-matter expert.”
“Then, over time, find appropriate and relevant ways to integrate highly relevant content and backlinks into the conversation in a way that feels natural and respects the communities of which you’re a member/participant,” Petermeyer says.
Simon Rodgers of WebSitePulse agrees: “Be very active in high-quality, high-traffic, niche-specific forums. But don’t advertise there; be helpful to the community. In time, they will ask for recommendations when you mention your product/service.”
9. Address Unlinked Brand Mentions
“Instead of chasing cold backlink leads, find unlinked mentions already have your business or a client’s business mentioned on the website,” says 9Sail’s Kyle Kasharian. “The next step is to simply reach out to the point of contact at that site and ask that the mention include a link to your—or your client’s—website.”
“If your company/client has a presence in its industry, there’s a good chance someone creating content in that industry has mentioned your company without a link,” says Chris Steele of Knowmad Digital Marketing. “It’s simple and low-effort to reach out to the publisher and ask them to add a link to your site.”
So, how do you find unlinked mentions? Loud Digital’s Daniel Young recommends “setting up a Google Alert for your brand name, or do a Google search for your brand and exclude your website. Then, go through the links and find any unlinked brand mentions.”
In addition to searching for your brand name, Best Company’s McCall Robison also recommends “searching for other products/services/taglines that are related to your business.”
CoSchedule’s Ben Sailer recommends another approach: BuzzSumo. “BuzzSumo is much more effective than Google Alerts because it can provide you with email updates that specifically call out mentions that don’t include a link.”
“A simple email asking for a mention link is usually well-received and will help you build a healthy backlink profile,” says Paul Lovell of Always Evolving SEO.
10. Request Attribution from Sites Using Your Original Images
“One underrated off-page SEO tactic is acquiring backlinks via image attribution,” says Joe Flanagan of Tacuna Systems.
“Use a reverse-image search tool such as TinEye or Google Reverse Image Search to find any other websites that are using images from your website, and then reach out to them to request a backlink as attribution.”
11. Run a Broken Link Building Campaign
“Use Ahrefs to identify broken links that point to competitor websites,” says Kristine Thorndyke of Test Prep Nerds. “If you currently have similar content, you can ask the websites pointing to the broken link to link to your content instead.”
“It is in every website’s best interest to not have broken links on their pages, so they should be more than willing to make this change.”
12. Target Competitors’ Links
“The most impactful off-page SEO strategy is hunting for competitors’ links that you can acquire for yourself,” says Jacob Landis-Eigsti of Jacob LE Video Production.
“You can use a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to see all the backlinks your competitors are getting. Look to find their do-follow backlinks. Often, there are various directories or profiles that you can create for your business.”
“I created more than 20 follow links by building profiles on sites where my competitors had profiles. Using this tactic, I increased my website’s authority. As a result, my website visitors have more than doubled,” Landis-Eigsti says.
Ronald D’souza of Angel Jackets recommends another tool for this activity—Backlink Watch—to “contact the sites that are linking to your competitors and show them what you’re offering they’re most likely to link to.”
Editor’s note: SEMrush users who want a quick way to view how their link-building efforts are paying off can get a big-picture view of their total number of inbound links using this free Link Analysis Dashboard.
13. Create Content on YouTube
“One major off-page SEO tactic every digital marketer should employ is to create a YouTube channel and upload some informative videos about your products and services,” says David Hepplewhite of Hepplewhite Markedsføring.
“YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, running on the Google-backbone. This is, without a doubt, the fastest and most efficient way to get a linked website on the map with free, high-quality backlinks and a steady flow of fresh traffic,” Hepplewhite says.
Brooke Logan of Sagefrog Marketing Group agrees: “Having YouTube videos that pertain to your business—services, products, testimonials, etc.—are beneficial as these can be optimized with keywords and tags to perform in the SERPs.”
“YouTube is one of the biggest platforms; with rich content, you can drive traffic to your site and influence sales,” says Rex Pereira of Shrex Design.
14. Post High-Quality Images on Pinterest
“We help people create ebooks from their blog and video-to-text transcriptions,” says Paul Bannister of Designrr. “So focusing on creating beautiful, catchy featured images helps us promote our blog on Pinterest. The better your design, the better your traffic gets.”
15. Publish Content on Medium
“We create our content using Medium—versus publishing it on our site—to do more of our outreach,” says Ilya Polokhin of Hubneo Virtual Reality Lab NYC. “The blog on our site is more for our brand story, versus our Medium site where we write about topics like ‘top 10 cool things to do in Manhattan NY.’”
“We generate referral traffic from our Medium site, but we’ve seen a significant increase in our domain authority by referencing our site on Medium.”
16. Write Content on Web 2.0 Sites
“This a gem that some know about—and some don’t—but every marketer should be using,” says Rio Rocket of Rio Rocket Digital Marketing. “Creating accounts on Web 2.0 sites that allow for content creation and posting content on those sites is invaluable.”
“It’s a simple—but powerful—method to create hundreds of articles about your topic on other websites with links back to your website.”
17. Trade Custom Images for Links
“I have a lot of local, small business clients that benefit the most from locally relevant links from other local businesses,” says David Kranker of David Kranker Creative.
“Many local nonprofits and businesses don’t have the resources they’d like to produce good design assets. I use an unlimited design service called Design Pickle, and I offer nonprofit and small business design services in exchange for a partnership link to my client’s site. The business is ecstatic, and I get a link.”
“The work on my end is minimal because Design Pickle handles the creation of the business’ design assets—whether that’s infographics, powerpoints, flyers, etc.—and it’s scalable because Design Pickle has the bandwidth to tackle a lot of design jobs in a month,” Kranker says.
18. Try Multimedia Distribution
“One link-building strategy that I don’t see being implemented or talked about enough is the power of media distribution,” says Paul Teitelman of Paul Teitelman SEO Consulting.
“Take a long-form blog post into a video, infographic, PowerPoint presentation, and a quick podcast. Then, build out profiles on the top sites for videos/infographics, and start distributing your different types of content on each platform.”
“It’s a great way to amplify your reach and build tons of high-quality links at scale without spending too much extra money.”
19. Write and Submit Op-Ed Content
“Generating media coverage about your company in reputable media outlets and contributing op-ed content to influential industry news outlets are fantastic ways to boost your off-page SEO,” says Rafe Gomez of VC Inc. Marketing.
“Once this content is posted/published online, the backlink to your site within the story (or in the bio about you if you’re the author of a submitted op-ed piece) will quickly and dramatically elevate your site’s off-page SEO and domain authority.”
“It will also organically ramp up your organization’s credibility, validity, and trustworthiness among prospective customers/clients.”
“This approach has been hugely effective for both my clients and my company.”
20. Create Expert Roundups
“We do a lot of roundups where we reach out to experts willing to share their thoughts and experiences,” says Referral Rock’s Jay Kang.
“The ratio of these types of posts being shared is more than enough for us to continue with this approach, and the amount of backlinks for one roundup is a lot easier and more effective to generate than reaching out to hundreds of people or doing guest posts for each link,” Kang says.
Alex Tran of Schimiggy Reviews agrees: “I collaborate with bloggers in my niche to grow off-site SEO. I find bloggers who have ‘featured on’ or ‘press’ pages and interview them in a roundup for my blog.”
“I ended up getting ten backlinks using this method. I ask them to add my link to their press page, and they usually oblige. I also join niche Facebook groups to request roundup queries,” Tran says.
21. Ask Experts for Feedback
“Ask for feedback on your content rather than asking directly for a link,” says Patrick Ward of High-Speed Experts. “Thought leaders and industry peers want to be seen as experts and will be more favorable to your brand if you reach out to them with a soft ask or offer of exposure rather than simply begging for a link.”
“If you’re providing them with an opportunity to add value—and are adding value for them as well—they will be more receptive to providing a link rather than feeling like they’re being sold to.”
22. Participate in Link Exchanges
“If you have a blog with numerous posts, a great SEO strategy can be exchanging links with other companies in the same niche,” says Mailbird’s Andrea Loubier.
“Doing a little research on blogs that can support your claims or add more data to your statements can pay off, especially when you discover a post on a site that could benefit from a link to one of your articles for additional information.”
“This can quickly set you up as an expert on various topics and help you creep closer to that coveted page one on Google search.”
23. Form Co-Marketing Partnerships
“The best tactic you can use is co-marketing,” says Chanty’s Olga Mykhoparkina. “Since directly exchanging links can be considered a black-hat tactic by Google, you can go one step further.”
“At Chanty, we have co-marketing partnerships with several influential websites. The way it works is simple:”
- “We write a guest post and mention company A.”
- “Company A writes a guest post and mentions us.”
“It’s a straightforward and effective tactic to win you a few easy monthly backlinks.”
“The key to making this strategy work is finding reliable and trustworthy partners that do a decent amount of guest posting.”
24. Establish a Referral Program
“Referral marketing can manifest in several different ways, but the goal is to get confirmed customers to attract potential customers,” says Nate Masterson of Maple Holistics.
“You can give cash rewards, significant discounts, or even product giveaways: the point is to encourage your customers to become brand advocates on social media and divert traffic to your site. The key is that a referral should be rewarded, and with incentives, you’ll get many more referrals than you will without one.”
“Make sure your referral program rewards customers who refer more than one person. Better yet, make the second or third referral earn bigger dividends. A repeat referral customer should be rewarded for exceptional loyalty.”
25. Hold Contests and Fundraisers
“Hold contests and fundraisers,” says Best Company’s Rochelle Burnside. “When you post about your contests on social media—and invite your followers to share your content as part of a contest—you’ll get people talking about your company.”
“It’s one of the best ways to increase social sharing and build a social media following that will see your content in the future.”
26. Comment on Relevant Blogs
“Comment on blog posts relevant to your niche,” says Marc Bromhall of Contentellect. “Blog commenting is one of the most underrated off-page SEO methods.”
“Although blog comments almost always result in no-follow links, you’ll still get some link juice from Google for these backlinks. In aggregate, these no-follow links can certainly move the SEO needle.”
27. Conduct Email Outreach
“An effective off-page SEO tactic that every marketer should use to grow website traffic is email outreach,” says Johnny Santiago of Social Catfish. “Now, I’m not suggesting that you mass email a generic template to 1,000 people begging for a link to your website. Your email will get deleted for sure.”
“The goal is to send them a personalized message and to build a relationship with the person—not spam them. It is also essential to pitch them with a unique angle to have a better chance of getting a link back to your website,” Santiago says.
Sure Oak’s Franco Colomba recommends ScrapeBox for email outreach: “Use automation tools such as ScrapeBox to streamline the link-building process.”
“ScrapeBox is a potent tool, but it’s underrated, partly because its user interface has a steep learning curve and because you need proxies to begin using it in the first place.”
“Once you have proxies out of the way, I utilize this tool daily as it helps me search on Google for certain keywords with link intent, and it takes out the burdensome work of using one search query modifier at a time. Instead, I can do dozens or hundreds if I wanted to.”
“Nevertheless, my job is made 90% easier because of this tool. I then vet each site, filter by domain authority, relevancy, and quality, and then do outreach to build a relationship and high-quality links that otherwise would take countless hours to find,” Colomba says manually.
28. Highlight Your Content in Email Newsletters
“Establish an email newsletter to promote your content and grow your website traffic,” says Shelby Liu of Brand Buddha. “Then, send new emails regularly. Notify people of your latest work, newest blog posts, or something that happened on your team that could humanize your brand.”
“A delicately designed email is key to the number of visitors you’ll drive to your site. So make good decisions on choosing headlines, email body text, and images,” Liu says.
But Paige Arnof-Fenn of Mavens & Moguls says, “Instead of trying to start your blog or newsletter, try contributing regularly to existing well-trafficked blogs in your industry—or newsletters of like-minded organizations reaching the same target audience as you.”
“Make sure you include your URL or contact info on it so they can find you and follow up,” Arnof-Fenn says.
Editor’s note: Want an easy way to see how much traffic your email newsletters drive to your site? Mailchimp users can download this free, shareable dashboard to monitor opens, clicks, list growth, subscribes and unsubscribes, and more.
Do you know if this is a Mailchimp user? We have similar dashboards for several other popular email marketing providers like Seventh Sense, HubSpot, Marketo, and SendGrid.
29. Participate in Industry Events
“Participating in industry-related events is a great way to
30. Host and Participate in Local Offline Events
“Part of local SEO is being local,” says Dan Christensen of Morningdove Marketing. “Encouraging your clients to participate in city events and networking groups can help them acquire local backlinks, which can be a major offsite boost.”
Ian Cogswell of Superior Honda agrees: “As a Honda dealership, we often do promotional events and other off-the-net activities that generate interest in our business. Apart from seasonal discounts and specials, this mostly involves charitable giving.”
“Giving to charities and other public outreach organizations is great for PR, keeps our company’s morals in check, and generates attention from various media outlets across all channels (web, TV news, and radio).”
“In terms of SEO, this exposure helps us get high-authority backlinks to our relevant web pages that help us rank higher and increase our domain authority. Off-page SEO methods like these are largely overlooked, and our success shows that there’s still great value in the grass-roots marketing methods,” Cogswell says.
31. Publish Google Posts
“One effective off-page SEO tactic every marketer should use to reach new customers is Google Posts,” says Antonella Weidman of WebTek. “Google Posts are a great way to share new website content, promote sales, and feature new products or events.”
32. Encourage Customers to Write Reviews
“One lesser-known tactic that advances your overall off-page SEO strategy is to acquire positive customer reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp,” says Michael Anderson of Passport Explored. “This helps signal to Google that you are actively engaging your customers and that your business is still relevant in any field.”
“If you go too long without generating any new reviews, Google may think that you’re not active online, and your rankings may drop accordingly in due time,” Anderson says.
Richard O’Connor of First Mats agrees: “Reviews should not be overlooked, especially in the ecommerce industry where buyers often want to see what others have thought of the product and experience before making their purchase.”
“Review pages like Trustpilot can be a source of good traffic, and with Google’s current emphasis on E-A-T (experience, authority, and trust), it may become a ranking factor (assuming it isn’t already),” O’Connor says.
33. Update and Manage Your Directory Listings
“One of the best—but often overlooked—pieces of off-page SEO strategy includes cleaning up, building, and claiming citations,” says Kimberly Scholten of Odd Dog Media.
“Developing a thorough and accurate citation management strategy can be a quick way to comply with search engine algorithms and give your website the best shot for a bump in rankings.”
“What are citations? Citations mention you or your client’s business on internet directories (i.e., Google My Business, Yelp, Bing Places, SuperPages, etc.). Citations typically include the standard name, address, and phone (NAP) information but often include a company’s website.”
“Hello, backlinks! Hello, domain authority. By claiming as many citations from quality directories as possible, you’ve doubled your off-page SEO strategy to include backlink building.”
“Pro tip: if a business has moved recently and noticed a drop in organic traffic, rankings, or local traffic, there are probably inaccurate citations floating around the web directories. This can be easily avoided by updating your citations pre-move.”
“Accuracy is key to this SEO strategy. When citations list accurate information across many directories, it signals to search engines that a business is legit and trustworthy. So claim and update them often,” Scholten says.
John Locke of Lockdown Design & SEO also recommends “making sure your business is in the correct business categories on satellite sites like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, YP.com, and others. This affects local SEO because business categories are often inconsistent greatly.”
“By putting a company in the same, relevant categories on many sites, Google has more confidence that the company is in a specific category.”
“We usually look at the top-ranking sites for a search query and note which business categories the top sites are in on specific third-party sites. When we move businesses into the correct categories, it seems to help with their organic SEO and visibility on piggyback SEO sites like Yelp,” Locke says.
34. Pursue Accreditation
“One tactic that we have found to be effective is working with clients on getting accreditations and mentions within their particular niche, ensuring they have the correct brand profiles with as many accreditation organizations in their industry as possible,” says Jack Wilkinson of AtomicMedia.
“This not only creates backlinks and brand mentions, but it also signals trust and safety in the eyes of Google and the consumer. It’s one tactic that solves two problems.”
35. Make Off-Page SEO a Community Effort
“Off-page SEO is all about relationship building,” says SyncShow’s Jasz Joseph.
“As digital marketers, we often spend too much time heads-down on our computers looking for backlinks and not enough time out in the world meeting people who could give us backlinks.”
“Educate everyone in your company/organization about off-page SEO and its importance. That way, they will think about backlink opportunities when making connections in the field.”
“Companies can get backlinks from associations they are a part of, suppliers, vendors, mentions in industry publications, charitable organizations they work with, and more. If your whole team is on board with the off-page strategy, they will always have link building in their minds.”
How to Approach Link Building Correctly
Now that you have many new ideas for building links, let’s take a few moments to review some general link-building best practices you should keep in mind as you create or add to your off-page SEO strategy.
Aim for Acquiring Topically Relevant Links
“Focus on earning topically relevant backlinks,” says Brooks Manley of Engenius. “Everyone knows backlinks are a huge ranking factor, but one link on a hyper-relevant URL will carry more weight than three or four links on sites unrelated to your topic.”
Target High Domain Authority Sites
“Get the highest domain authority (DA) backlinks you can,” says Ben Walker of Transcription Outsourcing, LLC. “The higher the DA, the more effective it is for your off-page SEO. This has been proven many times over.”
Create Quality Content
“Creating quality content is key,” says Yakira Cohen of FOR VISION.
Tom Beck of TopLine Comms agrees: “If you’re publishing great content, there’s every chance another website will want to link back to your page. So keep posting worthwhile SEO-ready content for others to find and link to.”
“You must follow white-hat techniques when building links to your site,” says Robert Trif of SEO4U. “Getting Google-approved links isn’t hard if you create quality content and collaborate with other websites and influencers.”
“If you create high-value content, users will create backlinks to your site themselves,” says Irena Zobniow of Insightland. “You only need to help them to find your content.”
Monitor for Harmful Links
“It’s important to keep track of the links pointing at your site,” says Blue Digital’s Jordon Goodman. “Some can be harmful and must be placed into a disavow file.”
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
“While it used to be more of a numbers game, the reality of backlinking today is that quality matters infinitely more than quantity,” says Colibri Digital Marketing’s Andrew McLoughlin.
“A single high-value, high authority backlink can dramatically boost your rankings while too many low-value links can penalize your site,” McLoughlin says.
“Google and other search engines know when backlinks are low-quality, spammy, or paid for, and it is considered black-hat SEO,” says Gabrielle Piloto of Hancock Injury Attorneys.
“Focus your link-building efforts on links that provide value,” says Will King of Eastside Co. “Editorial links from contextually relevant pages that refer to real traffic should be objective.”
Alexander Shockley of TheraNest leaves us with this advice: “A great rule of thumb to keep in mind when building links is something the late Eric Ward (LinkMoses) called the golden rule of link building: ‘Would I want this link if Google didn’t exist?’”
Our friends initially published this article at Databox.
