off page seo checklist is all about building your website’s reputation, trust, and authority outside of your own site. Think of it like word-of-mouth for the internet. The more people talk about and link to your site, the more search engines like Google will trust it.
Off-page SEO includes activities done off of a website in an effort to increase the site’s search rankings.
Common off-page SEO actions include building backlinks, encouraging branded searches, and increasing engagement and shares on social media platforms.
Off-page SEO is all the stuff you do off of your site to get Google and other search engines to see your website as trustworthy and authoritative.
Why Is Off-Page SEO Important?
Backlinks and other off-site signals still form the foundation of Google’s algorithm.
In fact, our 2020 search engine ranking factors study found a clear correlation between total backlinks and Google rankings.
For example, Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines emphasize a site’s off-site reputation to figure out whether or not that site can be trusted.
(They call this “Reputation Research.”)
“Reputation Research” includes looking at online reviews:
Recommendations from experts:
And mentions on authority news sites and Wikipedia.
The Quality of Google Raters are advised to find out what other people have to say about websites rather than just what they say about themselves.
According to the rules, reputation information should originate from reputable sources, particularly when it comes to Your Money Your Life (YMYL) themes.
The bottom line? One of the most crucial off-page SEO indicators is links. However, they’re just one among several.
In the remainder of this article, I’ll go over links and other off-site considerations.
But for now, let’s find out more about
Boost Off-Page SEO With Backlinks
A while ago, I was looking at the links pointing to Moz’s keyword research guide.
And I noticed something REALLY interesting.
The vast majority of that page’s links cited a specific stat from that page (that long tail keywords make up 70% of all searches).
Here’s an example:
In other words: People didn’t link to the page because it was a piece of “high-quality content.”
They linked to cite a stat on the page.
That’s when it hit me:
What if I added more stats to my site? Would that get more people to link to me automatically?
So I decided to put this little hypothesis to the test.
Specifically, I invested a ton of time and money into creating this giant list of email marketing stats.
And I optimized it around a keyword that bloggers and journalists search for when they’re researching a topic: “email marketing stats.”
Sure enough, within a few weeks, the article started to crack the first page.
And a few days after that, I got my first link.
Generate Brand Signals
The number of Google searches for your brand is known as “branded searches.”
Your precise brand name (“Backlinko”) can be searched here.
or a word or phrase added to your brand name (“Backlinko SEO tools”).
The Google Search Console Performance Report is a convenient place to get this information.
Look at the “Impressions” column for all of your branded searches.
For example, you can see that 123,525 people searched for “Backlinko” over the last 3 months.
So that’s my benchmark.
If I wanted to increase my branded search totals, I’d look to improve this number over the next few months.
Improve E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T has rapidly emerged as a crucial off-page SEO ranking element.
(In particular, YMYL niches.)
Contrary to popular belief, E-E-A-T is much more than just putting a ton of author biographies on your website.
This is due to the fact that Google primarily uses signals that originate from your website to measure E-E-A-T.
Therefore, this chapter is for you if you wish to increase the E-E-A-T of your website.
Here’s a step-by-step Off-Page SEO checklist to improve your rankings and grow your online visibility: