Welcome to part three of our series on SEO and marketing best practices for 2019. You now have some great ideas for building a website that showcases your valuable content. But how do you get people from other sites they’re perusing to yours?

That’s where off-site SEO comes in. Off-site SEO is anything you do to drive quality traffic from other sites to yours, increasing your reputation (and rank) in Google search results.

HOW TO DO OFF-SITE SEO

Build Links

Link building within your site makes your content, and your user experience, richer and higher quality. Building links from other sites and platforms to yours is a way to build bridges for potential customers to find your content from other valuable, relevant sites.

There are a few ways you can build your off-site links to improve SEO:

• Include links in the signature of any program or platform you use so that your comment, email, or post always includes a link to your website.
• Ask business partners or satisfied clients to link to you on their website. Offering to link to their content on your site is a great way to sweeten the deal, since doing so benefits their off-site SEO, too.
• Stay on top of your content creation and production. The more relevant and regular your content is, the more likely you’ll get natural links (people linking to your content on their own) and continue to build customer trust.

Having these plans is all well and good. But you may be struggling finding opportunities to build links. Good news: those opportunities abound and can be easily integrated into your current marketing efforts.

Demonstrate Expertise

Your website isn’t the only place from which you can create and share valuable content and build links that will boost your off-site SEO.

Sharing your expertise is a great way to do both.

Where do people with questions about your products and services go to get them answered? Meet them there and answer their questions. It positions you as an authority without being “salesy”, and you can always link to your content in your comment or signature. That way they can explore your content more readily, and Google bots have another link to your website to read and rank.

You can connect with people by:

• Researching industry and product forums and creating accounts there
• Joining discussions on Quora or LinkedIn
• Participating in Facebook groups and pages other than those directly associated with your business

You don’t have to spend all day on forums to improve your link-building. But keep your posting regular and relevant to your topic. Spammy or overly “salesy” posts won’t do your off-site SEO any favors.

Form Partnerships

Forming partnerships is a great way to boost credibility for your business, and it includes built-in improvements for your link-building strategy and off-site SEO results.

Who can you partner with?

• Companies or entrepreneurs that provide a non-competing service to similar customers (i.e. a nutritionist and a personal trainer, a fashion designer and a stylist, etc.)
• Influential people who use your product or service. Think of someone you know from your community work, professional organizations, or alumni organization who has a large online following that may benefit from your products, services, or expertise.
• Nonprofits to whom you donate or for whom you volunteer regularly

Once you identify someone with whom you want to build a partnership, be sure to create a written agreement with mutually beneficial terms. Your partnership could include linking, cross-promotion, interviews, guest blogging, and more— all of which provide great content for clients and customers while improving your off-site SEO.

Knowing where to start when it comes to off-site optimization means knowing what’s working (and what could improve). We can help with an analysis that gives you insights into what you’re doing well, and what your competitors are doing better. Send GoEpps a message today, and build a smarter off-site SEO plan without wasting time or money.