How To Do SEO in 2024 – Off-Page SEO

September 3, 2024 12:53 pm Published by admin

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to any efforts made outside of your website to improve SEO. While you can keyword-optimize until you’re blue in the face, off-page SEO is crucial to moving that needle.

Off-page SEO tactics seek to indicate to Google and other search engines that your website is an authority in your industry and trustworthy. Like most businesses, search engines seek to keep users happy so that they don’t go to a competitor. The way to make users happy is to show them high-quality, relevant results for their searches. While the relevance to the search largely comes from your on-page SEO efforts, off-page SEO boosts indications about the quality of your business.

By investing time and energy into the topics below, you’ll signal to search engines that your business is an authority in your industry, and it should be shown in the top position for relevant searches.

Optimize Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free tool from Google that allows businesses to manage their online presence in organic search results and Google Maps. If you’ve never heard of this, you’re probably already very familiar with these profiles. Inside the red rectangle below is a GBP:

Google Business Profiles are especially important if you have a physical storefront or service area. An e-commerce website that doesn’t have a physical store or office would not benefit from a GBP as much as a local business or restaurant, for example. But, regardless of your business model, you should create a GBP. They improve your local search visibility (if relevant) and send positive signals to Google about your business’s activity level online.

When someone searches for a type of business/service near them, Google will show business profiles that are the most relevant to the search term and searcher’s location. Depending on the search, users might see the “Map Pack” results before any organic search results.

The best way to appear high in Google Maps and the “Map Pack” is to have an optimized Google Business Profile.

To create a Google Business Profile, follow this link. The steps are relatively straightforward. To verify your business, Google will mail you a postcard. This step can take a few weeks, so get started on this as soon as possible.

Once you’ve created your GBP, you need to optimize it.

How to Optimize your GBP:

Fill out every section accurately and in detail. While this might sound obvious, businesses often miss filling out crucial information like their hours of operation or a contact number. Don’t skip the attributes section, even if most options don’t apply to you.
Write a good, keyword-rich “from the business” description. This will appear on your GBP, and helps give Google context about your business. Make sure you put key information first and keep this unique and well-thought out. For some people, this will be their first impression of your business.
Choose the correct category. Again, this might seem obvious. Make sure you choose the most appropriate primary and secondary categories.
Accurately list out all products/services. This is a free and easy way to advertise your business offerings. If relevant, including prices and a brief description can make the difference between someone reaching out to your business vs. a competitor.
Add high-quality, unique photos. Photos appear on a GBP either from the business or from reviews. While you can’t control the images posted in reviews, you can control the images you upload. Take some time to showcase the best of your business through these photos.

**Note- Google will review your photos before publishing them. Typically, this occurs in 30 minutes or less, so follow up to make sure the photos get posted. Sometimes, Google will deny photos for seemingly no reason. I’ve torn my hair out over this before learning that if I try again a day or 2 later, the images often go through.

Get good reviews. This is one of the make or break aspects of a good GBP and online presence. I know that asking customers to leave reviews is painstaking, but it is crucial to growing your client/customer base. You can generate a QR code to your GBP to post around your physical storefront, or include a link to it in emails with clients. To incentivize your clients/customers, consider offering a discount to those that leave a positive review.
Respond to reviews. Whether it’s a review raving about your products/services, or an unhappy customer complaint, you should respond. If it’s a negative review, responding gives you a chance to tell your side of the story for anyone reading it. Make sure you keep it calm and professional, as frustrating as the negative review may be. Regardless, responding to reviews signals to Google that you are active online and engaging with your clients/customers.
Fill out the “Questions and Answers” section. This is an underrated aspect of GBPs that give potential customers more information about your business. Customers can ask questions for you to answer, or you can post and reply to frequently asked questions you’re accustomed to.
Regularly update your GBP. Profiles that are very active tend to rank better than profiles that are inactive. By answering questions, responding to reviews, posting images, and updating hours for holidays or events, you’re signaling to Google that you care about your customers and your online reputation.

Use our SEO checklist below to help you dominate search engine results!

Add Business to Online Directories

Online directories are websites that list and categorize businesses based on their location, industry, and products/services. An example that you probably recognize is The Yellow Pages. Once a giant yellow phone book, it is now a digital directory of businesses across the US.

As you may recall from earlier in this blog post, online directories can often take up some of the top search results for keywords like “attorney near me.”

If you’re anything like me, you might just scroll past these directories and look for actual attorney websites. In fact, the consumer usage of online directories has dropped dramatically in the past decade.

However, for those consumers that frequent online directories, being listed on top-ranking sites can help build awareness and establish your brand as an authority in your industry and area. A lot of online directories also have sections for reviews, which attracts additional customers and sends positive signals to search engines.

While the verdict is out on how many people actually discover businesses through online directories, being listed is still valuable from an SEO perspective because it grows and solidifies your online footprint.

While submitting and claiming your listing, it’s crucial that your NAP (name, address, and phone number) are consistent throughout the web. Ensuring there are not duplicate listings for your business is also absolutely critical. Especially if the listings have different NAP information displayed. Duplicate and incorrect business listings have a strong negative impact on your SEO.

There are tons of online directories out there. You could spend days trying to exhaust the list, but I don’t recommend doing that. Not only are some not trafficked enough to be worth the effort, some of the websites simply don’t work to submit, update, or claim a listing. Take my word for this, I’ve learned the hard way.

First, you can run a business listing scan on your website to see which directories have your information listed incorrectly. Sometimes these scanners get it wrong, so cross check it with another online scanner.

Most online directories let you submit your business for free. There are a couple that cost money but are worth it. Here is a list of some of the top directories that I recommend utilizing. Keep in mind that your business could already be on these sites, even if you never submitted it. Search for your business before adding it to avoid duplicate listings.

Google Business Profile (free)
Bing Places (free and you can sync it to your GBP)
Yelp (free)
The Yellow Pages (free)
Better Business Bureau (free)
Chamber of Commerce (free)
Data Axle (free)
Dun & Bradstreet (free)
Foursquare ($20)
Manta (free)
Neustar Localeze ($79/year)

Here are some best practices to keep in mind while filling these out:

Fill out your profile accurately and in detail.
Add a link to your website website for backlink building (more on this later)
Upload your business logo to increase brand awareness
Create a unique, keyword-rich description for each listing. Don’t just copy and paste the same description across multiple listings

If you don’t have the time or energy to fill all of these out, there is reputation management software out there that you can use to streamline this process. One of the biggest ones is Yext. Some listings actually only allow you to update through Yext, Mapquest is an example. Yext also has a business listing scanner that will show you where your business is listed incorrectly. If you have incorrect information on a lot of Yext’s entries, consider using their software.

For the most part, you should be able to get your online directories consistent without spending a fortune. You can check each directory manually or run a listing scan to see if your updates have been processed. Keep in mind that it can sometimes take 6-12 months for these websites to update your business information, so be patient.

Wield Social Media

While a strong social media presence does not directly improve your SEO, it is a great way to establish your brand identity, create awareness, connect with your target audience, and drive traffic to your website.

Social media is a way to promote your brand and content. This expands your reach and can lead to backlinks to your website, which is the ultimate goal.

Best practices for your social media channels to drive SEO:

Create social media accounts. If you haven’t already, you should have at least a few social media accounts for your business. Facebook and Instagram are the biggest platforms to focus on. If you’re in a B2B or technical industry, create a LinkedIn account. If you create and share a lot of videos about your business, use YouTube. You can also consider creating a Snapchat, X (formerly Twitter), and/or TikTok account depending on who your target audience is.
Optimize your social media accounts. Use consistent imaging (logos, color themes), create an engaging and descriptive bio, and include links to your website and other social media channels.
Post Regularly. Keep your account active by regularly posting and engaging with your audience.
Use strong content. This may seem intuitive, but make sure your content is the best representation of your brand as this can be your first impression for new customers. Use engaging images and videos, descriptive and informative text, and encourage your users to share your posts.
Optimize website content. If you’re using social media to drive visitors to your website, make sure your website encourages visitors to share your content. Align your voice throughout both social media and your website. You should also add buttons on your website to share your content to social media. This makes it easier for users to promote your brand for you!

Backlinks backlinks backlinks!

Backlinks are links to your website from another website. In the eyes of search engines, they are like votes that your website is trustworthy and credible. They also greatly expand your audience by driving traffic straight to your website from another site.

Backlinks are the ‘bread and butter’ of SEO. A well-executed backlink strategy is the #1 way to propel you into SEO success and page 1 domination. Backlinks from high-authority websites pass SEO “juice” to your website and signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy. Likewise, backlinks from sketchy or low-authority websites can pass negative signals to search engines about your website.

You should strive to attain backlinks from websites that are relevant to your business. Search engines want to see a relation between the two websites. Ideally, backlinks to your website would contain your target keyword as the link’s anchor text. For example, if the target keyword for the homepage of my website is “criminal defense law firm Wilmington NC”, I would want a backlink that looks like this:

Additionally, you should aim for links from various websites. Multiple links from the same website don’t count towards SEO as much as one link from multiple websites. In other words, Website A linking to your site 100 times is less valuable than Websites B-Z each linking to your website 1 time. So, if you’ve gotten a backlink from a website, look for new opportunities rather than trying to get more backlinks from that site.

You should also focus on attaining “dofollow” links rather than “nofollow” links. These are HTML attributes that give search engines instructions when they come across a link. Dofollow links tell search engines to follow the link to the destination website, passing along the SEO juice. Nofollow links tell search engines to ignore a link, which renders it null from an SEO perspective.

Nofollow links are much easier to attain than dofollow links because they don’t really help or hurt anything. You will often see nofollow links with blog comments, reddit/quora comments, press releases, and online directory links. Dofollow links require more strategy, time, and effort to attain.

Backlink building is the process of acquiring high-quality, relevant dofollow backlinks to improve your SEO. High-quality backlinks are links from websites with a strong domain authority (or rank). You probably remember this term from the keywords section. You can figure out the domain authority of a website through Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush, or another SEO software.

Below is an image portraying how link building works.

When a page links to your website, it’s like a “vote” of credibility. The more dofollow links you have, the more authoritative and trustworthy search engines deem your website. This improves your search engine rankings for your target keywords, increasing the chance that potential customers and clients will find your business.

There are many backlink building tactics and strategies you can employ to boost your SEO. The gist of backlink building is that you have to convince other webmasters that linking to your website will add value to their website.

Backlink building opportunities:

Analyze your competitors. Seeing where your competitors are getting backlinks is a great way to discover opportunities for your website. You can do this by running a site audit on their website with an SEO software. Look at some competitors in your local area, then look at competitors in another area. There could be low-hanging fruit here that can get you some backlinks with ease. In general, this will be a great starting point to understand this process and how websites attain backlinks.
Create strong, linkable content. To get links to your website, you need to have content other webmasters would want to link to. This can be images/videos, a case study, a survey, a piece of software, an informative blog post, and more. Then, promote this content on your social media platforms.
Find broken backlinks. Broken backlinks are links that no longer work, either because the webpage moved or the website is no longer available online. The idea here is that you find broken links to content that is similar to yours. Next, you reach out to the webmaster to let them know they have a broken link (which they don’t want because it’s bad for SEO). Then, offer up your webpage as the solution. Chances are they will be thankful that you alerted them to this issue and, if your content is sound enough, they will have no problem swapping out the links. Most of the SEO software I’ve discussed so far (SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc.) have broken link checkers.
Guest blog post. Guest blogging is when you write a blog post for another website in your industry in exchange for a backlink/s. These are opportunities to provide value to another website through content that you’re knowledgeable about. You can find these opportunities by searching for your industry + “guest blogging.” There are likely already lists out there that you can work your way down.

There are a ton of other backlink building strategies and opportunities out there. Some of them are considered “black hat”, such as paying for links from scammy private blog networks (PBNs). These are against Google’s guidelines and can harm your SEO progress. Although it is tempting to take shortcuts, try to focus on more organic, “white hat” backlink building tactics.

As I mentioned above, these are the bread and butter of SEO. Backlinks can also be the most time-consuming part of SEO. There is no end to backlink building.

So, be patient and intentful with your backlink building efforts. It can take hours and hours of effort to get 1 backlink, so focus on valuable, high-quality websites.

Conclusion

As you can see, SEO is a very in-depth process. It is also constantly evolving, especially with the AI integrations we are rapidly seeing across the internet.

Make sure you keep track of your starting point to measure results. Periodically check in with your keyword rankings and overall online presence to see where improvements can be made. Remember, SEO can take 6 months to a year to yield results, so don’t expect an overnight boost in ratings.

It’s hard to cover every single task under the Search Engine Optimization umbrella in one blog post, but this list will get you on the right track to SEO domination. If you’re a small business owner, I highly recommend hiring an SEO specialist to grow your organic presence online.

That concludes our comprehensive guide to SEO. If you have any questions, leave a comment or contact us. Our team of SEO strategists and web developers are always happy to help! Click the button below for an SEO consultation with our experts!

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