Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors

Any SEO activity is a complex balancing act of many factors to improve your search engine rankings. There are many things to consider and manipulate in other to achieve your SEO goals. The important thing to know is that SEO doesn’t stop with managing only your page. There are many off-page SEO ranking factors to consider and attempt to manage in a satisfactory way. To do this you must know just what these factors are and what is important with off-page optimization. Or you can opt for finding propper help in managing your SEO effort.  Knowing this will allow you to decide just how much time and effort you should put into your off-page optimization. The way you deal with off-page factors will be primarily influenced by your marketing goals.

What is off-page SEO?

Well simply put it is any action that happens off-site that in turn affects your search engine rankings. This aspect of SEO happens outside your site. It tells Google just what others think of your site and what their perception is. Based on this Google will rank your site in a certain way. Although Google’s algorithm is unclear about how it does its rankings, off-page factors play a role. Many studies show that this SEO aspect and factors can carry as much as 50% of weight in the ranking.

So, it is clear that investing in improving your popularity can considerably influence your ranking.  If you position yourself as a relevant, trustworthy, and source with certain authority and quality you can get a higher rank. The conclusion is that your SEO activity must not stop with on-page optimization but should also tackle off-page SEO ranking factors and strategies. Making quality content that people like will get you referrals and links and word of mouth referrals will increase your rankings. But to do so you must understand and master both on and off-page SEO elements.

Off-site SEO

Usually, off-site SEO is connected to link building. However, this SEO activity is much more deeper and complex than simple linking. Basically, off-site SEO divides into:

• Link related SEO and
• Non-link-related SEO.

However, it must be said that there is no need to analyze non-link-related SEO distinctly. This type of off-page SEO is connected to any activity in Social media marketing, Blogging, Brand linking, press releases, and mentions or influencer marketing. However, the fact is that any of these activities aim and as a result create a reference or a backlink. These activities ultimately lead to the same result. So, we can conclude that the concept of non-link-related SEO may not stand and be a relevant SEO aspect to be reviewed separately.

Link related off-page SEO

Building backlinks is the backbone of off-page SEO. It is important to make connections to other sites and resources. If you have quality content then people tend to link to it. In this case, you will have a lot of referring sites which will be proof of your site contents quality and relevance. This also means that sites with more quality backlinks will rank better than sites without too many backlinks. But, keep in mind that there are different types of backlinks.

Natural links are created without the influence of the owner. Other sites link to the relevant and quality content on their own as a reference and this process happens naturally.

Manually built backlinks are a result of a planned link-building campaign. You may request from your customers to link to your website or to share your content.

Self-created backlinks are on the margins of black-hat SEO and are not popular with search engines. These links are inserted into optimized anchor text or in a directory, forum, or blog comment signature.

Main factors of link related off-page SEO

There are many link-related off-Page SEO Ranking Factors to consider. In the beginning, the situation was very simple. The number of backlinks you have would determine your rank, meaning that the page with more backlinks would have a higher rank. Today, however, things have changed. The number of factors to consider is overwhelming. So, the main factors to keep in mind for off-page SEO success are:

• The number of domains that link to you. The more the better and this is probably the most important factor. The more domains and sites the credible and authoritative your content is.
• The page rank of referring pages is also important. The higher rank of your referring pages will contribute to your rank.
• Home page linking is also a factor. One view claims that better visibility is possible by linking to the home page rather than to internal pages.
• Follow and no-follow links. No-follow links no longer influence your page rank as Google does not consider them while ranking. This means that the more natural follow links the better for your rank
• The diversity of linking pages is also important. It may seem like a spammy practice if your backlinks come from the same kind of linking sites.
• Link anchor text of links is today considered spam and is not recommended for use.
• Try to link contextually. This means that you have a stronger reference if the link is aimed towards the main content of the page and not subsections or content.

  

What to consider?

As you can see, link quantity is not the only relevant factor. Link quality and diversity come into play. As Google analyzes different aspects of your backlinks, you also must take a closer look into:

• Where are your links originating from?
• Why are they linking to you?
• Is it a quality link, from a high-ranking or authoritative site?
• Is it fresh
• Are your links natural, etc?

Knowing the answers to these questions will lead you to help you manage your off-page SEO better and more efficiently. It will help you focus on more relevant factors which will lead to better ranking and overall authority. So, make sure you know and understand the key off-page SEO ranking factors that will help your ranking in combination with your on-page SEO effort.