Internal linkage.
404 errors.
RSS feeds.
Directory submissions.
What do any of these even mean?
When it comes to ensuring your website ranks high on search engines, it takes more than just keywords and on-site SEO to guarantee that happens.
In this blog, we’ll outline how to prepare your website for off-site SEO (Search Engine Optimization), how to optimize your website once it’s ready, how Zoek can streamline your off-site SEO for you, and our ultimate checklist for off-site strategies (scroll down to the bottom if you’re just here for the checklist!).
What Is Off-Site SEO?
On-site SEO refers to the optimization you do on your website; for example, optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions or writing keyword-rich content, while off-site SEO refers to the optimization done off of your website; for example, submitting your website to your local chamber of commerce or taking part in guest blogging.
If you want to increase your brand awareness and drive organic traffic to your website, you need some really effective off-site SEO practices.
For a more in-depth analysis of SEO and good SEO practices, read our blog here.
How to Prepare Your Website for Off-Site SEO
Create A Show-Stopping Website
First and foremost, your company has to look professional. If your website looks like a mess - it’s going to be hard to convince others to take you seriously.
Design is crucial when it comes to SEO practices. According to Taylor & Francis Online, it takes the average person 50 milliseconds to decide if they want to stay on your page.
If your branding is outdated, hard to read, or just plain bad - you could be missing out on opportunities to grow your business.
Read more about how intermixed web design and SEO are, here.
Optimize Your Site’s On-Site SEO
Once your website is crafted, it’s time to take advantage of on-site SEO. We’ll get more into keywords and content below, but for now, you need to focus on the following…
Title Tags: These page titles tell both visitors and search engine crawlers what they can find on your pages. To ensure your site pages rank for their intended purpose, be sure to include the focus keyword for each page in the title as naturally as possible.
Headers: Like Title Tags, headers help organize your content for readers and crawlers to distinguish what part of your content is most important and in which order it’s in.
Meta Descriptions: These descriptions are what shows up in search engines under your content titles. It’s best to keep these descriptions less than 3 sentences long and to include keywords that naturally flow within the content.
Image Alt-Text: Search engine crawlers cannot see images, so image alt-texts help those crawlers “see” what your images are about. You don’t need to include keywords in your text if it’s impossible to include them naturally, but be as descriptive as possible.
Structured Data: Structured data is information that has been organized into a database that is easily accessible and understandable for processing and analysis. This data is what Google reads when posting your content under search results.
Page Speed: Page speed is one of the most important factors of SEO; if your page takes too long to load, many consumers will leave. If you need to check your website page speed, you can use Google’s checker, here.
Publish High-Quality Content
Next, make sure you are publishing high-quality content. Research which keywords your target audience is using and create content based on those results.
This content can be anything from blogs, podcasts, newsletters, magazines, social media posts, and more! When you create keyword-rich content, you are more likely to be cited as a source. When you are cited, these create backlinks from someone else’s content to yours.
Google sees these backlinks as “votes” for your website; the more “votes” you have, the more reliable you are to search engines.
Optimize Your Domain and Create an SEO-Friendly URL Structure
An SEO-friendly URL structure and domain make it easier for search engines to crawl your pages and understand what they are about. Because of this, the domain you choose should be something easy to understand.
Fix Any 404 Errors
A 404 page is a landing page that tells your site viewers the requested page is unavailable or, in some cases, doesn’t exist.
When this happens, that viewer does one of two things. They either leave your website altogether, or they go back to the homepage and try again.
To check if you have any 404 errors on your website, you can use dead link checker to help.
Update Your Local Citation and Directory Profiles
Local citations and directory profiles are accounts you have on websites like Google, Yelp, Foursquare, Yext, and more, that exist for search purposes. When your target audience visits these sites, they are specifically targeting other companies like yours.
When you exist on these platforms, you can be seen by that audience, and it gives your company a chance to be chosen as their provider of whatever goods or services you sell.
Not only that, but when your company appears on multiple platforms on the internet, search engines start to see you as a trustworthy source of information and content.
WebFX has a great blog that goes into more detail about local citations, here!
Set Up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
One of the most important steps of this entire off-site SEO checklist is registering your website with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster!
These two platforms allow you to view the searches and keywords that users are using to find your site, where you can submit sitemaps, identify search engine crawl errors, and much more.
Set Up Google Analytics
Next is to set up your Google Analytics account. Similar to Google Search Console, it’s a platform that allows you to view data and insights about how many people are visiting your site, who they are, and how they are engaging with it.
While they seem identical, these platforms have different goals in mind. Google Analytics is user-oriented, so it focuses on providing data related to the people who visit and interact with your website. On the other hand, Google Search Console is search-engine focused; it provides you with tools and insights that help improve your visibility and search engine rankings.
Generate and Submit A Sitemap
Your final step in preparing your website for off-site SEO is to generate and submit a sitemap.
While you might not need a sitemap if your page is small or properly linked, it never hurts to create and submit one anyway.
Whenever you’re ready to build a submit a sitemap to Google, you can find instructions here!
How to Optimize Your Website for Off-site SEO
Now that your website has been properly prepared, you’re ready to implement your off-site SEO strategies!
If your website wasn’t properly optimized with the above on-site SEO strategies and off-site suggestions, then it might be hard for others to see you as a reliable source or even find you.
Create and Take Advantage of Backlink Opportunities
Backlinks are one of the most important strategies to include in your off-site SEO plan.
Since you’ve created, and continue to create, high-quality content, we suggest meeting and collaborating with people in your industry, your clients, news outlets, etc., to create backlink opportunities either with the content you’ve already created or content that’s yet to be created.
Interview them for a blog, appear on a podcast, publish your articles in a newspaper or magazine...the possibilities are endless!
Invest In Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing are a must-have when it comes to off-site SEO strategies.
Not only is social media free, but they are excellent platforms to post your content and generate buzz about your business. You can also collaborate with similar businesses and promote each other online to gain more backlink opportunities, be seen as a reliable source of information, and grow your audience.
Neil Patel has a great content marketing strategy guide that we recommend if you need help coming up with your own strategy.
Add an RSS Feed Subscription Box to Your Website and Blog
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication," and it's just that - a way to syndicate your content to other sites or tools.
When a user clicks this icon, they’ll be given options for subscribing to your blog using the RSS reader of your choices, such as Google Reader or Flipboard.
Having an RSS feed gives you the ability to embed your content on other sites. Not only that, but if they like your content enough to share it with other sites, an RSS feed lets them easily do so. Whenever you publish a new post, it will also update their website automatically.
Share Your Updates in a Press Release
By contacting and maintaining a good relationship with journalists and outlets in your community, you’ll help your brand reach out to more customer segments and get your message heard.
Not only that, but these press releases are more backlinks that you can collect.
Join Review Sites and Build Your Customer Experience
Brand reputation and the customer experience are everything these days.
One of the web’s most trustworthy review sites, Trustpilot, also recently found that “nearly 62% of online shoppers perform a search for the company when unfamiliar with [them].”
Not only can reviews help you gain new customers, but the total number of reviews also directly impacts your search engine rankings. The more review sites that feature your company, the more backlinks your website attracts.
Once you register on websites like Trustpilot, Yelp, Foursquare, etc., ask your customers to leave reviews for you. You can also launch an email marketing campaign designed to grow your reviews online.
Sync All Your Information with Zoek’s Listing Sync
Off-site SEO can be one of the more difficult SEO strategies to build and implement. With the vast number of platforms out there to join, how do you know which ones are good for you and which ones can damage your search engine reputation?
Not only that, but if you’re reported as spam by different outlets, platforms, and customers, Google may blacklist your website and remove it from all search engines.
While being blacklisted is rare, Google does quarantine around 10,000 suspicious websites every day.
One way to ensure this doesn’t happen to you is by choosing Zoek for your off-site SEO needs. Our SEO bundles and Web Design services include Listing Sync, a program designed to help get you on directories, keep them updated, and ensure your NAP (name, address, phone number) data is consistent throughout the internet.
When your information is the same on every platform, search engines and customers trust you more as a reliable source.
We also offer monthly upkeep services for as low as $99/month to ensure this information stays consistent and that your web reputation doesn’t take a hit.
Off-Site SEO Checklist
Prepare to Be Found
Depending on your size, market, and content, SEO tactics can sometimes take up to a year to see results - so be patient!
But if you continue to take advantage of off-site SEO strategies consistently with social media, submitting your links to directories and review sites, and collaborating with others in your industry, your chances of ranking higher, quicker, skyrocket.
If you’re still unsure how to correctly do your own SEO, on-site or off-site, Zoek is here for you! We work with small and medium-sized businesses to scale their online presence and establish themselves as credible sources to rank high on search engines.
Click here to speak to a representative, and let’s show you how Zoek can expand your reach online.
Kellyann Doyle is a Content Marketing Writer at Zoek, an SEO, Web Design, and Digital Marketing Agency that assists small and medium-sized businesses with their online footprint. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in 2013 from the University of Houston with a Major in Communications and a Minor in Marketing and has been working in the Digital Marketing world ever since. When not working, you can find Kellyann trying new recipes, enjoying a good nap, or watching Friends for the 500th time.