Off-Page SEO: The Definitive Guide

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO includes activities done off of a website in an effort to increase the site’s search engine rankings. Common off-page SEO actions include building backlinks, encouraging branded searches, and increasing engagement and shares on social media.

In other words: off-page SEO is all the stuff that you do off of your site to get Google and other search engines to see your website as trustworthy and authoritative.

On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO

On-page SEO is everything that you can directly control on your website, including content, title tags, keyword usage, SEO-optimized URLs, internal links and image alt text. Off-page SEO are actions that happen away from your website, like links and mentions on other websites.

For example, I published this complete list of seo tools a few years back.

And to optimize that page, I used my main keyword in my title tag, URL, and a handful of times in my content.

I also sprinkled in synonyms and LSI keywords to help Google understand the content of that page.

Even though that page was “perfectly optimized”, I knew that my job was far from done.

My target keyword for that page has an Semrush keyword difficulty score of 94.

Which meant, if I wanted to rank that page on the first page of Google for that keyword, I needed some serious off-page SEO.

This is why I promoted that post on social media.

And used email outreach to build links directly to that page.

Because I combined on-page and off-page SEO, this page now ranks in the top 3 for that keyword.

With that, let’s get into the strategies that you can use to improve your site’s off-page SEO.

Be a Data Source

A while ago I was looking at the links pointing to Moz’s keyword research guide.

And I noticed something SUPER interesting.

The vast majority of that page’s links cited a specific stat from that page (that long tail keywords make up 70% of all searches). Here’s an example:

In other words: people didn’t link to the page because it was a piece of “high-quality content”.

They linked in order to cite a stat on the page.

That’s when it hit me: What if I added more stats to my site? Would that get more people to link to me automatically?

So I decided to put this little hypothesis to the test.

Specifically, I invested a ton of time and money into creating this giant list of email marketing stats.

And I optimized it around a keyword that bloggers and journalists search for when they’re researching a topic (“email marketing stats”).

Sure enough, within a few weeks, the page started to crack the first page.

And a few days after that, I got my first link.

Nice!

Double Down On Long-Form Content

Will publishing long-form pages magically send links your way?

No.

But it can increase the odds that other people link to you.

In fact, when we analyzed 900+ million blog posts with BuzzSumo, we found that long-form content gets 77% more links than shorter posts

Audit Your Branded Searches

Branded searches are how many people search for your brand on Google.

This can be searches of your exact brand name (“Backlinko”). Or your brand name plus a word or phrase (“Backlinko SEO tools”).

You can easily find this info in the Google Search Console Performance Report.

Look at the “Impressions” column for all of your branded searches.

For example, you can see that 38,997 people searched for “Backlinko” over the last 3 months.

So that’s my benchmark.

If I wanted to increase my branded search totals, I’d look to improve this number over the next few months.

Set Up Brand Tracking

This is an easy way to see how many people talk about your brand on news sites, blogs and forums… and see how that pattern is changing over time.

There are a lot of great brand tracking tools out there (like Mention.com). I personally use BuzzSumo’s “Alerts” feature.

You can even see if brand mentions are trending up or down over the last year.

Get Brand Mentions on Authority Sites

Google’s Gary Illyes recently stated that both links AND mentions can help determine a site’s E-A-T.

So yeah, links are your best bet.

But I’ll take an unlinked mention if it’s on a big enough site.

For example, I got mentioned in The Globe and Mail.

And to get that mention, I had to email back and forth with the reporter a few times. And do a 45-minute interview over the phone.

In the end, that coverage “only” landed me an unlinked mention.

Fortunately, the Globe and Mail is a huge newspaper in Canada. So that mention probably still helped my off-page SEO… even though they didn’t link to me.

Get Positive Reviews Online

Google’s Quality Rater guidelines put a lot of emphasis on online reviews.

Which makes sense: if people hate your business, why would Google want to show your site to more people?

If you run a local business, you probably already know that reviews are huge for local SEO.

As it turns out, reviews also affect your site’s E-A-T in the eyes of Google.

If you don’t run a business that people review (like a blog or media site), Google relies on any awards you’ve won:

And how other experts in your field feel about your website:

For example, Semrush listed Backlinko as the #4 SEO blog.

From a traditional SEO point of view, the only SEO benefit I get from this post is the backlink.

But it’s clear that Google probably also uses awards like this to determine my site’s E-A-T.

Press Release Distribution

Sending out a press release can directly lead to brand mentions and backlinks.

(It obviously helps if you have something newsworthy to share. But that’s another story. 🙂 )

For example, a few years ago we had this press release syndicated around.

There was (obviously) a brand mention and a link in the release itself.

But more important than that, a handful of sites found out about our study from the press release. Which led to even more links and brand mentions.

Create Visuals That Other Blogs Can Use

Visual content is an awesome way to get other blogs to mention your site… without needing to rely 100% on blogger outreach.

For example, in our guide on LSI keywords, I asked our designer to create this graphic.

As you can see, nothing fancy. But it’s a helpful visual for people that aren’t familiar with how Google figures out a topic of a page.

Which led to people using that visual in their post (and linking to our site as the original source).

In my experience, most people that use your image in their content will link to you.

Even if they don’t, you still get an unlinked brand mention out of the deal.

Which can still help your off-page SEO a little bit.

Case Study #1
How Josh Used Broken Link Building to Get Links to His SaaS Tool

Josh Howarth is the co-founder (along with me) of a new tool called ExplodingTopics.com.

Back in January, Exploding Topics was brand new. And Josh and I were both thinking of ways that we could build links to our new site.

Then, one afternoon, I saw this:

A semi-popular tool called Google Correlate just shut down. Bingo!

The next day, Josh started sending out super-targeted broken link building emails.

Even though Exploding Topics wasn’t a 1:1 replacement for Google Correlate, it was close enough to land Josh several decent links.

Not bad.

Case Study #3
How Ash Got Dozens of Media Features With Zero Marketing Budget

Ash Turner runs a mobile device trade-in site called BankMyCell.

Because Ash was bootstrapping his new site, he had essentially zero marketing budget.

But he DID have experience getting press for small businesses using surveys.

So the first thing Ash did was look for surveys in the mobile phone space that already got press coverage.

Then, once he found a successful survey, he popped it into SEO tool to see which data points journalists cited most often in their coverage.

(Very clever.)

Next, Ash basically used The Skyscraper Technique on an existing survey… and pushed out a bigger and better version of his own.

To get the word out, he creates a press release with the key findings and sends it to journalists that covered the initial study.

And because he’s promoting super valuable content to people that WANT to cover it, Ash has racked up tons of authority links from sites like The Guardian, Wired, CNET, Forbes and more.

Pretty cool.