When starting an SEO optimisation project, on-page factors should be the first ones to be analysed and optimised. Learn how to start an SEO Project with our previous posts on SEO Strategy and how to perform an On-Page SEO Audit.
Once you have defined your strategic plan as well as audited and optimised your website’s on-page, it’s time to start optimising for off-page ranking factors.
Off-page factors are relevant and contribute to more than 50% of your website organic search ranking.
Keep reading to find out how you can start optimising it to increase your traffic and achieve your digital marketing goals.
Linkbuilding
Linkbuilding is a strategy whose main objective is to increase the authority of a web page as much as possible by generating links to it.
To establish a solid linkbuilding strategy there are a few rules to follow:
Few links from many domains: trying to make the ratio 1: 1, that is a link from a single domain. It is not the same to have 100 links from a website than 1 link from 100 different websites.
Increasing links gradually: for a new website try 5 to 7 links per month and grow gradually.
From the same category: the category of the pages that link to your website is vital. The more links you get from your sector the more you will be recognised as a reference.
Different IPs: to avoid fraudulent practices. If a person creates several websites from the same hosting and interlinks them, Google will know that these links come from the same IP. For this reason, it is recommended that links come from websites hosted on different IPs.
Local if it is a local strategy: if you are looking to rank in a specific country, despite working with a local Top Level Domain (TLD) (.uk, .fr, .es) or with a geolocated .com domain you should get links from local domains of that specific country.
When it comes to analysing links from a website one of the best tools is Majestic.
Let’s take a look into the example below:
Here you can see Majestic’s two main metrics: Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
Trust Flow refers to link quality. You will have a high trust flow if the majority of your links come from trusted websites. On the other hand, Citation Flow refers to link volume, not taking into account the quality of those links.
With these two metrics, you’ll be able to determine a really relevant metric that is the Trust Flow or confidence index, which is obtained by dividing the Trust Flow by the Citation Flow. This value should tend to 1, or be greater than 1 (ideal).
In this example we can see that the TF (Trust Flow) is 12 and the CF (Citation Flow) is 34, which gives a TR (Trust Ratio) of 0.35, indicating a nonhealthy state of this website links.
Linkbaiting
This strategy consists of generating links in an organic way to the website through the generation of quality and valuable content. This is achieved by creating regular content that is relevant to the target audience.
Follow Vs No-Follow Links
No-follow links are exactly the same as traditional links, with the difference that they don’t transfer authority for SEO purposes.
If you want to know more about the difference between follow and no-follow links watch this amazing video from Neil Patel.
Link Juice
As Woorank explains:
Link juice is the term used in the SEO world to refer to the value or equity passed from one page or site to another. This value is passed through hyperlinks. Search engines see links as votes by other websites that your page is valuable and worth promoting.
The link juice to a website is not effective when it comes from:
A no-follow link to your website.
Pages with irrelevant content.
Pages that have numerous links, for example, advertising links.
Pages that are not indexed in the search indexes.
Paid links.
Links obtained through a link exchange scheme (consisting of linking to a person’s website so that, in return, they link to your website).
Links from unranked websites with no content.
Anchor Text
In simple words, anchor text is the visible text in a link, like this link to the Strategy Pixel homepage. Here the link is “https://www.strategypixel.com/” while the anchor text is “Strategy Pixel”.
Make sure all your anchor texts are SEO-Friendly:
Concise
Relevant to the linked content
Short
Specific
Disavow Links
When you disavow a link you are informing Google not to take that link into account, this is useful when you detect links pointing to your website that come from non-reliable sources.
Google recommends disavowing backlinks if:
You believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and the links have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action, on your site.
For that, you can use the disavow links tool page.
Conclusion
Optimising off-page factors is one of the most important stages of an SEO project.
Linkbuilding, when done right, will contribute to an increase in traffic and therefore a better ranking of your website.
Make sure you follow these basic rules:
Few links from many domains
Increasing links gradually
From the same category
Different IPs
Local if it is a local strategy
And create quality and relevant content to your target audience.
Now it’s your turn. Which strategies are driving you the best results?