There are 2 types of SEO practice in existence; on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  Most people think off-page SEO entails link building alone, but that’s not true. Although link building is the crucial and most important aspect of off-page SEO, there are other practices too. For example, social media marketing and social bookmarking. But for this course of this article, I will center majorly on link building. First, let’s consider a brief explanation of SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO (Search engine optimization) is used to describe a set of processes that optimize a website for search engines. SEO is a primary practice not only for getting high-quality visitors from search but also an ideal means of improving the user-friendliness of your website and increase its credibility.

A search engine utilizes complex algorithms to choose which pages to add to their index and the order they show these pages in the search results. Let’s just say SEO is a method of communicating to search engines in a language they can understand and feeds them with more information about your website.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to tactics, methods or techniques that can be used to improve the position of a website in the search engine results page (SERPs). In general, off Page SEO has to do with promotion methods that go far beyond website design solely to rank a website higher in the search results. As earlier established, link building practically summarizes what off-page SEO is all about, so I’ll explain vividly on link building and how to incorporate link building as part of your growth strategy in off-page SEO.

What is Link Building?

Link building is the most popular and highly effective off-Page SEO method. Mainly by building external links to your website, you are indirectly trying to gather as many ‘votes’ as you can, so that you can surpass your competitors and rank higher in the search engine results page. Links are essential for SEO. Therefore link building should be part of your primary SEO strategy. But more importantly, link building should be part of your growth strategy.  Below are five steps to achieving link building as a strategy in off-page SEO.

• Know your audience – as a website owner you should have a general knowledge of who your target audiences are. It is also advisable not to be rigid while selecting your target audience, try to be extremely flexible in any way possible. Ask yourself; who is my audience right now and how does my ideal audience look like?
• Create a list of websites for your desired audience – once you have answered the question as regard how your present and ideal audience looks like, make a list of desired websites that will attract and engage your audience.
• Post an original and fantastic content – a common mistake most site owners make is posting unoriginal content. This singular act will not only affect your page ranking but is equally unethical too. Ensure to publish original and amazing contents capable of engaging and captivating your audience.
• Match content to websites – this is where step two comes into play. Once you have written an amazing post, go through the list of sites you made in step two and select the ones that best suit your post.
• Use social media – Twitter and Facebook is another avenue to promote your blog. Tweet your links on this platform and watch your website transform.

Once all these strategies are in place and functional, you will have a successful off-page SEO practice which will, in turn, lead to increase in rankings, increase in page rankings and more exposure.

Check out our Article on On Page SEO also