Top 5 Advanced Off Page Activities in SEO For 2019

Some search engine optimization tips and tricks don’t work anymore as well as they used to. This is why SEO professionals are turning to new ways of attracting traffic, which include off page activities.

In this article, we will discuss the best five advanced off page activities in search engine optimization in 2019.

1. Inbound Links

Backlink building is perhaps the most effective way to influence the Google algorithm and improve your ranking. In fact, your backlink profile has been proven to be more important than the length of your content and your keyword optimization. High-quality inbound links continue to be the primary off page strategy used by many successful marketers.

By now, you probably know that high-quality content does not automatically rank higher. This is why you need backlinks, and backlinks have their own rules:

• Authority: Your inbound links should be present on sites that possess authority. It is better to have several links on a few authority sites than have dozens on smaller, less established ones. The popularity of the sites that link to you spreads from them to your own site and makes Google rank you higher.
• Relevancy: Just like the reputation of the site you backlink from is important, so is the relevance of that site in relation to you. It is much better to have sites on related topics link back to you than have completely different websites do so. If you work with flowers, don’t have links from sites that focus on cars.
• Traffic: The last component of a good backlink is the traffic that the site receives. If the sites where you have inbound links receive a lot of traffic on a daily basis, you will also get more traffic and this will boost your rankings.

There is yet another important factor determining the effectiveness of your backlinks. You must take care of the dofollow and nofollow attributes on your backlinks. Dofollow backlinks pass the link juice to your site. Nofollow, on the other hand, don’t, and Google, as well as other search engines, will not take these backlinks into account when determining your rankings.

But while it may seem like a good idea to make all of your backlinks dofollow ones, it actually may be quite harmful to you as it will seem unnatural. Try to balance out your dofollow links with your nofollow ones in a 1:1 ratio. This will ensure that your backlink profile is effective and will not seem suspicious to search engines.

One of the goals of building a good backlink profile is to create inbound links that can’t be easily replicated by your competitors. For example, backlinks from directories and forums are easily replicable, which will make your backlink value diluted. This is why you should first analyze the opportunities you have and choose the ones more suitable for your needs.

2. Competitor Backlink Analysis

Most of the time, there will already be someone ranking in the top spots for the keywords you chose. It doesn’t mean that you should instantly opt for a different keyword though. You still have a chance to rank high and maybe even higher than your competitors. But how can you do that when they seem to be all-powerful and you are much smaller than them?

This is where competitor backlink analysis comes in. By analyzing the strategies your competitors use and implementing them yourself, you will start moving up the ranks and slowly (or maybe even quickly) reaching the spots under them and maybe even over them at some point.

Your aim is to find the top 20% of the most influential backlinks of your competitor sites. This 20% must be contributing to around 80% of their rankings and traffic. Once you determine these backlinks, you will be able to replicate them and achieve the same metrics your competitors have. The whole point of competitor backlink analysis is to determine the kinds of backlink building strategies you need to use and what areas of link building you’re lacking in.

In order to analyze your competitors’ backlinks, use a special extension or software. One of such is SEOQuake though you can find equivalents to it that are just as effective. Here is a step-by-step tutorial to guide you through the process:

1. Download and install the extension. Open it.
2. It will display the domain metrics and other SEO data in the form of a SERP overlay. You will be able to see such data like the number of links to the page, alexa rank, links to the root domain, age of the domain, and more.
3. To get the SEMrush load all the backlinks for a specific search result, click on any domain’s link.
4. The two most important sections are the total backlinks and the referring domains. More referring domains are a good thing for SEO. By looking at the ratio between total referring domains and the total backlinks, you will be able to know the link diversity.
5. The trust score is also an important element as it shows the trustworthiness of backlinks. The bigger the score is, the stronger the backlink profile for a specific URL is.
6. There is a list of backlinks with their details such as the internal links, the anchor text, type, and so on. These backlinks can be filtered according to their dofollow or nofollow attributes.
7. When looking through the anchor text information of your competitors, take note of some details as there are some guidelines to follow when it comes to anchor text. For instance, only 15% to 18% of your anchor texts should be an exact match, while 25% to 30% should be with LSI or phrase match keywords. 15% to 18% must be naked URLs, 30% to 35% must be brand names, and 7% of generic anchor text.

3. Guest Posting

Guest posting is the most popular way to increase brand awareness and build backlinks to your site. It has been proven to be very effective and continues to be the number one choice of many content marketers.

Guest posting consists of five stages:

1. Prospection: This is the first and most important step in guest posting. You must first prepare a list of bloggers and influencers that you will consider outreaching afterward. Your goal is to find the most influential and popular bloggers in the niche you are targeting. If you don’t have a concrete list of such people, you won’t be able to successfully guest post even if you do all the following steps properly. Try to find such people by yourself with the help of social media and Google searches or use such tools as BuzzSumom, NinjaOutreach, or equivalents.
2. Research: The next thing you must do is research information about this list of bloggers and influencers you got. This includes such things as their social media profiles, email, site URL, domain authority, location, interests, and more. The goal is to collect as much data about them as you can in order to personalize your email to them and make the next processes easier.
3. Connection: By this point, you already know everything about their interests, the niches they work in, their expertise, and the nature of the prospects. If you are unsure about any of these, go back to the research stage and repeat the process. When connecting with the influencers, treat them like an equal. They should not feel like you are neither superior nor inferior to them. Engage with their content and show them that both of you have something in common.
4. Outreach: If you mess up the outreach stage, then you can say that you’ve messed up pretty much everything. Once you establish what your aim is, think of what’s in it for your prospect. Then, when pitching your guest post, make your aim clear in your email and outline the benefits for them. It must be a win-win offer.
5. Relationship: Sadly, things don’t always work the way you intended them to, and you might be rejected by the blogger you reached out to. But you mustn’t take this as a defeat. Instead, understand their decision and listen to what they have to say. Continue interacting with their content and maintaining a good relationship. After all, they might change their mind at some point and reach out to you themselves.

4. Brand Mentions

Brand monitoring is crucial for those who are only growing their brand. It allows you to monitor your brand sentiment across various channels and get notified if your competitor starts spreading lies or hatred about your brand. On the other hand, if you are a well-known brand but you are not doing brand monitoring, then you are very likely to be missing out on a lot.

In order to monitor your brand mentions, you can use Google Alerts which has become a standard for such things. However, Google Alerts often fails to notify you about all of the mentions connected to your brand, which is why many entrepreneurs are opting for alternatives such as Mention, Awario, and so on.

When setting up your chosen tool for brand monitoring, make sure to include the mentions of your competitors or the keywords related to your product. This will help you track all kinds of promotional activities anywhere on the web.

Once you get a notification about your brand or product being mentioned, you have three options for your further actions:

• Claim Your Backlink: This is a great way to get backlinks to your website without having to write guest posts. When you notice that someone mentioned your brand, get in touch with the author and ask for a backlink to your site. Alternatively, if you got a notification for a keyword for which you have some great content, you can ask them to link in your article about the topic.
• Get Mentions: If you decided to track your competitors’ brand mentions or keywords related to them, then you will know what your competitors are featured on. This will help you formulate similar strategies and then benefit from them. Moreover, you can even attempt to guest post on those very sites where your competitors were mentioned.
• Do Nurturing: In addition to being mentioned on blogs and sites, you will also be mentioned on social media. In such cases, there are several things you can do. First, read what people have to say about you and collect their feedback to improve your content, products, or brand as a whole. Second, you can join the discussion and connect with the users. This will show that you keep track of who is talking about you and love interacting with your current or potential customers.

Brand mentions is a relatively new SEO factor, so if your brand gets more unlinked mentions, it will most likely help you rank higher in search results.

5. Social Media Promotion & Influencer Outreach

Get shares on social media remains one of the best off page SEO techniques. Well, social media marketing as a whole is a great way to get extra exposure, find new audiences, raise brand awareness, and even get more traffic.

The first thing you can do is leverage the power of social media influencers to market your brand and products. Depending on your niche and the follower count of the influencers you choose, the cost of influencer marketing will vary, but it’s still quite affordable even for smaller businesses.

Once you publish your blog posts, you need to outreach the people that were linked to or feature in your article, who are likely to share it or have shared similar content before. It is important to have these influencers connected to what you do in some way. Otherwise, an influencer whose niche is, say, makeup will not do much to promote your eco-friendly chocolate bar, for example.

The process of finding influencers on social media is somewhat similar to that of finding popular blogs for guest blogging. Look for experts in their niche who have recently shared someone else’s content similar to yours. Then, get in touch with them asking for their feedback on your own article and mentioning their previous shares.

Along with promoting your brand with the help of influencers, you must also remember about your own social media accounts and how you can promote yourself with their help. It is important to be active on social media platforms in order to, well, not look dead. After all, most people will judge your brand by how it appears to be on social media.

The things to keep in mind when scheduling your social media content is that you must post regularly, provide value, and stick to a schedule. Bring variety to the feed of your followers and don’t try to constantly sell your products or services to them. They aren’t looking to spend their money; they want something educational, entertaining, or inspirational.

Here are some tips that will help you create good content:

• Focus On The Visuals: Don’t just write articles on different topics. Create beautiful illustrations or post photographs. In addition to that, create funny or informative videos to entertain or educate your audience.
• Do Facebook Live Frequently: Facebook Live feature is there for a reason. It has more reach and customers say that they prefer live streams from brands rather than the usual text posts.
• Ask Comment-Provoking Questions: Instead of including the standard call to action that our brains are used to ignore, ask comment-provoking questions in your posts. Show that you want to know your followers’ opinions and they will increase your engagement by commenting.
• Include More Stories: Storytelling creates rapport with people helping them emotionally connect with your brand.
• Do Giveaways: In order to raise your social media boost, do some giveaways.

Conclusion

To sum up, even though SEO may seem like something complicated, it is actually not that hard once you figure out how to do certain things. Off page activities can help you dramatically increase your engagement and attract more traffic to your website. Simply follow the advice in this article and you will soon see results.

About the Author

Cynthia Young  loves taking every opportunity to share her knowledge with others. Along with digital marketing, Cynthia  is also passionate about personal growth and wellness. When she isn’t writing, she can be found hiking with her dog, cooking Thai cuisine, and enjoying hi-tech thrillers. Also she works in the thewordpoint.com .