How to Do Off-Page SEO: Simple techniques to get better rankings

Off-page SEO - by pryma


Meta Description (example):In this post, I’ll cover simple SEO techniques and some popular SEO tools to do off-page SEO. Check out this guide to know how to do off-page SEO [for beginners].

Although some of the off-page SEO techniques that I’ll mention below are very old, all these techniques are in trend and are applied by the digital marketers in the recent times.

I have tried to present my research, observations, and thoughts in a layman’s language so that anyone and everyone can understand these. If you like to read about SEO in general or want to grow your knowledge about digital marketing, don’t miss to check out our digital marketing blog here, where you will get to read articles about SEO, Analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, and E-commerce.

First of all, what is off-page SEO?

Search engine optimization also known as search engine marketing (SEO or SEM) is the most broad and general term for organic rankings on the search engines, mostly Google and Bing.

When optimizing for SEO, you have to optimize for 2 types of SEO, on-page SEO as well as off-page SEO. On-page SEO is covered more ind-depth here, but generally speaking is that off-page SEO is everything related to YOUR website.

This can be your content, loading speed, pictures, technical details, meta descriptions and everything else that is on your site (there are way more ranking factors than this, check out the 50 most popular here). Off-page SEO is just everything else, that is not “directly related” to your site. Which is mostly backlinks as the most important factor.

In general the difference between On-page SEO and off-page SEO is:

  • Off-page SEO = Backlinks + social signals
  • On-page SEO = Everything else. Literally everything else, regarding SEO and SEM.

Now, let’s check out how to do off-page SEO easily.

Best Off-Page SEO Techniques in 2018 for First Page Ranking

A webpage needs to be relevant to the visitors. Before that, it needs to get visitors in. For that to happen, your website needs to be visible in the top search engine result pages (SERPs). How would a webpage get good ranks in Google SERPs and other search engines? The answer to this question is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is the sum total of tools and techniques to ensure better search results. The better the rank on the SERPs, the more the number of visitors directed to the website. More visitors to a website is what every webmaster aims, which is why SEO is so important.

Types of SEO

There are two ways of doing search engine optimization. The first is to work on the content, title, keywords, links, Meta descriptions etc. These refer to as on-page SEO. Don’t forget to read our previous post on how to do on-page SEO. The second way is to work on the world outside the website. This can be done by creating the backlinks on other relevant sites obeying the search engine guidelines for SEO. This can make it popular with search engines. As a result of that, this brings in more traffic to your website.

Benefits of Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is always important, and so it has lots of benefits. Some of them are:

  • Off-page SEO techniques work outside the web content. But the first impact of these techniques is on the search engine results pages.
  • Many companies and SEO tools like Google, Moz, and Alexa allocates every webpage/website a specific value; Google calls it PageRank, Moz has named it domain authority(DA) for websites and page authority (PA) for particular webpages, and Alexa has named the term Alexa rankfor websites. This depends on the quantity and quality of the backlinks of your site.
  • Off-page SEO not only plays a major role in enhancing the ranking of your website in the SERPs, but it also helps improve your website value in terms of PageRank, DA, PA, Alexa rank, etc..
  • Off-page SEO helps in making your website popular among the like-minded search engine traffic who search website like yours with the relevant search terms or keywords to your website.

Simple Off-page SEO Techniques to follow in 2018

Search engines like Google update their search algorithms on a regular basis. This determines what activities of SEO impact the search. Off-page SEO techniques should keep abreast of the latest algorithms. Based on all the Google algorithm update till now, these are the best off-page SEO techniques that I recommend in 2018:

1. Blog Commenting:

Blog commenting is one of the oldest off-page SEO techniques and is still very effective. However many things have been changed. As Google has become stricter to filter spam links, you need to be very careful and serious while utilizing this technique.

Here are the steps to do it safely in 2018:

  • Search blogs relevant to your niche.

Note:Do not run for blogs having do-follow links, but searching blogs having high PA will be great.

  • Write comments that should look real and include your target keyword wisely in your comments.

Note:Your comments for every blog should be unique and relevant.

2.Social Bookmarking:

Social bookmarking is another very old off-page SEO technique and is highly preferred by almost all the SEO experts. There are some very important social bookmarking sites where you must create backlinks to go ahead of your competitors. These are the 10 best social bookmarking sites which should not be missed to create backlinks on:

  1. Pinterest
  2. Reddit
  3. Tumblr
  4. Delicious
  5. Folkd
  6. BizSugar
  7. BibSonomy
  8. Bookmarkee
  9. Diigo
  10. linkaGoGo

3. Guest Blogging:

The website owner or webmaster of the website should pull in backlinks to his website by writing guest blogs and posting them on other sites having relevant niche or category. This is a modern off-page SEO technique and is given great importance by SEO experts globally.

4. Forum Posting:

The internet has several forum discussion sites having lots of forum threads for specific topics. You can take part in such online discussions which have similar themes or subjects as your website. Google mostly prefer to show forum thread links in the top SERPs. So, this can not only be a great way for your website to be regarded as an authority, but this will also help you get high ranking positions in the SERPs.

5. Blog Submission:

There are several blog submission sites having high DA and authority. You can write blogs relevant to your website niche and post on the sites like Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, Reddit, etc.

6. Infographic Submission:

This is one of the newest off-page SEO techniques that work as a weapon to attract your target audience and engage them. Creating infographics have become very easy with the availability of some great online infographics creation tools like Piktochart,Canva, etc. After you are ready with your infographics, you can share them on popular sites like Flickr,Slideshare,Reddit, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.

7. Video Submission:

Videos are becoming much more popular than simple text blogs or images. There are several video sharing sites where you can share the links of videos uploaded on your website. As soon as someone clicks on those videos, they would be directed to your website.

You can’t shoot videos every time to publish them on video submission sites on a regular basis. The easiest way to create several promotional videos is by creating a PPT first, then converting it to video format and adding good background music to it. You can post them to popular video sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

8. Other Popular Off-Page SEO Techniques:

There is a long list of Off-page SEO techniques, but it is neither possible to mention all of them here in this post, nor you can utilize all those techniques for the SEO of your website. But, apart from the above-discussed techniques, there are some other important off-page SEO techniques such as PDF (document) sharing, PPT submissions, Q&A (Question and Answer), business listings (citation) and directory submissions.

The Comparative Pros and Cons of off-page SEO

The difference between on-page and off-page SEO is that the effects of on-page SEO are immediately visible on the webpage. That is why a webmaster who wants to use off-page SEO must be aware of the fact that the usage and results of off-page SEO might be slightly different. Let us look at a few pros and cons.

Advantages of off-page SEO

If I go into depth explaining the advantages of off-page SEO, the post will become very big. So, I have summarized some important points which are as follow:

1)Exposure and Visibility:

If you are a new business looking to reach your name to new prospects and other stakeholders, then on-page SEO will be effective for you only when someone logs on to your website. Off-page SEO gives you visibility and reach beyond your website. The specific forums and discussion boards pertaining to your line of business would be great arenas to propagate your business because they are likely to contain subject matter experts of the same niche, who can become your ambassadors for your company.

2) Useful Traffic:

When your website features on the SERPs, it might attract visitors who are doing just that – visiting. They might not all convert to useful traffic for your website by providing revenue. Many of those visitors might just be curious. When you engage in off-page SEO, you are likely to reach people who might be more likely to become users or recommenders. This will ensure that the traffic that is generated for your website as a result of your off-page SEO already have a modicum of interest in your business and your products, and therefore are more likely to provide revenue and referrals.

The benefits of off-page SEO can be kept track of using keyword tracking software. A Google search API allows you to see keyword rankings in real-time and know exactly which keywords need improvement.

3) Growth:

Off-page SEO is the best way for a new business to generate interest in the relevant platforms and forums. These forums would have lots of users who can help generate positive word of mouth about the business, which in turn would help the business grow much faster.

4) Authority:

The off-page SEO efforts that you carry out will find their resonance with people who are subject matter experts or respected influencers in the niche that you are in. Once you establish the quality of your products and services in that company, your own credentials as an authority improve rapidly. This would be reflected in a greater number of backlinks from other authority sites in your niche.

5) Cost Effectiveness:

There are many websites which go in for paid advertising to generate traffic. The advantage of off-page SEO is that it provides organic traffic backed up by authority recommendations which are greatly respected in the community. But this does not cost anything at all if you can do it yourself. Even if you hire an agency for setting up your backlinks and doing other off-page SEO, it will not cost as much as PPC advertising or other paid efforts.

Disadvantages of off-page SEO

To be honest, there is no any disadvantage of off-page SEO till you are obeying the search engine guidelines and are taking care of the Google algorithms. However, there are some points related to off-page SEO which, being an SEO expert, I think should be better:

1) Delayed ROI:

The advantage of using paid advertising is that it begins to show you the numbers very quickly. But when you carry out off-page SEO, what you can expect is organic growth which would take its own time to give you adequate returns on the time and money you have spent. That’s why a webmaster doing off-page SEO must not expect the returns overnight.

2) Delayed Results:

Not only the financial returns, but the results in terms of the spread of the website’s acceptance and popularity will also take some to come in. By definition, off-page SEO pushes organic growth in the footprint of your website. This would depend on how well your videos, blogs, forum posts and other off-page SEO efforts are received by the experts and authorities and how quickly they pass on the good word to others in the community. That why the results in terms of page views, followers, shares, inquiries etc. might not happen exactly at the speed you want, but might take longer.

3) Not Completely Free:

There is a misconception that doing off-page SEO would bring results free of cost. While it is true that money doesn’t need to be spent, but it is also true that there is a lot of bandwidth on the part of the webmaster, in terms of time and effort. In contrast, a paid advertising campaign would cost money but it would free up the webmaster’s time for other productive work.


The beauty of off-page SEO is that it doesn’t involve technical stuff which the owner of a website might not be an expert on. The steps involved in off-page SEO helps spread the word about your website. This helps to create good quality links (back and forth) with domain authorities. Many webmasters focus only on on-page SEO. But off-page SEO provides great benefits too. The techniques and tools detailed above bring visibility and traction to your website.

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