There are many SEO guides that can be found on the web, today (2016) we propose a recovery from https://neilpatel.com/ that will improve your way of using off-page SEO and the positioning of your sites on google .
Let’s start by saying that off-page SEO isn’t just about links , it goes much further.
Experienced bloggers generally start with on-page SEO . But they don’t stop there. Because, in large part, what is relevant to Google is often done away from their own site.
It is important to identify the marketing objectives to be achieved, based on which the time to devote to off-page SEO will vary. Moz ‘s Dr. Pete Mayers noted that many site managers spend 30% of their time on off-page factors, and 70% on on-page factors.
The function of off-page SEO is to tell Google what others think about your site. For example, if you have a lot of valid links pointing to your pages, search engines will assume you are providing quality content – which provides value for users.
In fact, people only mention, refer to and share the content that most convince them. Just like in a shop, where if the product is useful and convenient, there will be a lot of word of mouth among customers.
SEO can be scary especially when you don’t know what steps to take to rank your new content among the top 10 pages of Google . The important thing is to develop a basic understanding of on-page and off-page optimization, to be ahead of the competition.
Now let’s see specifically what off-page SEO is about.
What is Off-Page SEO?
With “SEO Off-Page” we refer to all those activities that are done away from your site to increase the ranking of a page in the search engine results.
While many people associate off-page SEO with link building , the former goes way beyond the latter. Many activities, which are not fundamental in the creation of a standard link system, are instead important for the off-page optimization of a site.
While on-page SEO takes place within the site, off-page SEO includes all those activities that are performed outside. For example, if you write a post on another blog or leave a comment, you are carrying out an off-page promotion of the site.
Prepare a Site / Page for Link Building
Links are still very important to Google. In fact, it is nearly impossible for Google to determine the value of a web page if there are no links pointing to it – regardless of how useful, innovative and in-depth the page’s content is.
Site managers are often inclined to skip the initial preparation part required to enable effective link building. However, it is important to give it the highest priority, as preparing the site will ensure that you know how many links have been sent.
In this direction we insert the analysis carried out by Dr. Peter J. Mayers on the brands that won (and lost) at Google search 2015 . Mayers found that sites that had outclassed organic search rankings did not, in fact, have a solid foundation.
Sure, most of these sites had strong domains which allowed them to stay well positioned for some time, however, the basic elements that underpin the strength of a page are others.
Therefore to make sure your web pages are ready for link building, it is useful to follow these three steps:
THE). Arrange the pages
Optimized internal pages can make a huge difference in your overall ranking. It is therefore of
fundamental importance to create an interlink between pages using random keywords (placing a particular emphasis on your brand name).
As Braian Dean argues in his famous post “ Google’s 200 Ranking Factors ”, the number of internal links on a page of a site indicates its importance in relation to the others.
Going more specifically, you need to create silo pages that connect to your category and support pages (posts). This way, when a link to the homepage is sent, the juice will go through the category and support pages, boosting the search results.
SEO professionals don’t just send links to the page, they arrange the pages so that each link passes the SEO juice to all the interconnected pages.
It is very important that none of the internal pages be left alone: each page must be an integral part of the site, thus allowing uninterrupted navigation. This is essential for both site users and search results.
Possibly, pages dealing with the same or related themes must be linked with links to ensure an adequate experience for users.
In search engine optimization, internal pages are often underestimated. Most SEO professionals and site managers do not understand that the bulk of the “SEO value” comes from the structure of the internal pages.
This is generally possible when you have links from high-value pages on the same site. For this reason it is important to silo your pages if you want an equity of links between all internal pages.
Ken Lyons shares 3 ways to make sure your internal pages are well structured and links evenly distributed, before fetching inbound links from external sources:
- Use the most linked pages
To start a new linking strategy, you can start by going to Open Site Explorer and take a list of the pages with the greatest number of links (and most authoritative) on a client site and drop the links on these pages towards my “SEO landing pages ”(for example, pages specifically targeted for organic traffic). Theoretically these pages are great sources of link equity, and the goal is to effectively control them and distribute the flow of link juice .
- Create an interlink between all your SEO Landing Pages Target
To scale the link building efforts as much as possible, it is necessary to create an interlink between all the SEO landing pages of a site, so that every time an inbound link is created to one of the Seo landing pages, the generated link equity will be subsequently transferred. on the other landing pages, multiplying the result of the efforts made. The easiest way to create an interlink between SEO landing pages is to add a list of “related links” at the end of the page or in a sidebar.
- Decrease the links on the homepage
The home page is often the page with the most links on a site, so it can be the first target to take advantage of link equity. In addition, any page that has internal links from the homepage sends a strong signal of trust and authority to the engines, indicating that the organization they bring places a high value on these pages.
It is vital to remember that it is no longer just about the number of links your page has, but the quality of the links to your internal pages is just as important as the structure of the pages themselves.
In fact, sometimes reducing the number of links leading to your internal pages might help.
Let’s take an example: CMS North America, a 5-axis CNC machine manufacturer, has started a website with 170 indexed pages. Yet the site is not generating substantial traffic.
Through a review of the site, using the Internal Link Juice Tool , they found more than 168 links pointing to the homepage. A much higher number needed, which is a problem especially when the SEO juice of these links doesn’t go to internal pages.
The company prepared a new navigation structure and removed some links that led to the silo pages, while retaining the links that supported usability (such as “contacts” and support pages). In total, 70 links were removed.
After 6 weeks of refurbishing the internal pages and homepage links, most of the new pages and links were re-crawled by Google spiders.
The company saw an improvement in ranking of 18 of the 21 keywords formulated for site targeting . These keywords are already positioned on page 2 and have raised the average ranking of 3.7 slots.
II). Do basic on-page SEO: On-page SEO is important. In fact, we don’t want Google to rate our site as a neglected portal.
Surely you have heard enough about meta tags and keyword density. There are, however, other important factors related to on-page SEO that interest us and which are often underestimated. Here are some of Backlinko’s on-page SEO infographic :
One of the reasons many relevant sites no longer dominate the heights of organic results is that they have neglected basic on-page SEO.
It is essential to create links to your internal pages using keywords that best define that page. For example, to create a landing page that has a high rank on Google, it is necessary to pass more SEO juice from the important pages to this page.
In fact, if Google sees many pages on the site for a specific search word, it is unsure which one to rank first, and it will be difficult to manage organic traffic regardless of the value contained in the pages.
This is what you need to know about on-page SEO. There is no magic formula. You simply need to make sure that your pages are well structured, the keywords specified, and that the signals are sent to Google in the right way.
Let’s see an example: Daily Mail Online, a famous online magazine that has a very high ranking for numerous keywords, failed to dominate the top list during the 2014 World Cup.
Other brands have instead taken their place
The online magazine missed this opportunity to attract thousands, if not millions, of users, given the enormous interest aroused by the competition (peaking around June 18).
With several brands dominating the front page of Google, Dail Mail Online missed the word “World Cup”. This is because every new article posted on the World Cup overlapped the Daily Mail landing page, which they desperately wanted to rank better than the other pages (shown in pink).
What happened in this case is that Google, finding many pages of the Daily Mail Online for this search term, did not know which one to rank higher.
This is due to internal linking to the page – or lack thereof.
In fact, to make the most of the search trend of a term, Mail Online could have sent links to the central page from each internal page (especially those related to the ‘Word Cup’). This would have been a strong signal for Google to identify this page as meaningful and useful for users.
Daily Mail has had many opportunities to post links to the center page from relevant pages and blog posts, but it hasn’t.
III). Choose thematic keywords
Although links continue to be of great importance, the result of the SEO that checks every other factor is the chosen keywords system.
Keywords create the fundamental structure for your campaign content. In the diagram below, a closer look at on-page SEO shows that the use of related and primary keywords account for 7.5% and 40% of on-page SEO, respectively.
In his book, Keyword Research: How to find and earn from low competition long tail keywords , author Nathan George says that to be successful in a business, you need to help a lot of people.
So the question is, how do you find people to help? The answer is “keyword research”.
Not all keywords are created equally. If you want to increase the chances of managing organic traffic on your site, you need to choose thematic keywords, or words that refer to a specific theme.
So when choosing keywords, you need to focus on those that are related to a particular topic.
Let’s imagine you have a business with WordPress theme customization services, you need to find the right combination of keywords on which to create the content.
Let’s start by entering the main keyword (wordpress theme customization) in the search bar of Google Keywords Planner. We click on the “Get ideas” button. Here we will find some thematic keywords:
Knowing the words, phrases and search terms that are used most in the search, it is easier to adapt the content according to the needs of the users.
To increase the strength of your keywords, you can replace them with keywords related to the brand. In other words, instead of creating the “SEO tips” tag, we will include the brand or domain name (eg Moz SEO tips, Neil Patel SEO).
In fact, domain or brand-oriented keywords in Google search results generally lead to many results from the same site.
Definitely you need to create useful content. The important thing is that many of your pages are seen in the search results on Google, no matter what position they have – it is in fact possible to give them more link juice through one of thelink building strategies , below:
The thematic keywords related to the brand will give an advantage in the competition. No matter how many top brands dominate the top 10 organic entries, you can still drive motivated users to your site.
Moving on to on-page SEO, the title tag is the most important factor. This is why it is essential to use the keywords in your titles in the right way.
Brian Dean did some experiments and found that when you start a title with keywords, you will rank better in the SERPs.
In general, the closer the keywords are to the start of the title tag, the more weight it will have for search engines.
Let’s suppose you decide to focus on these 3 keyword phrases:
- web design strategy
2. WordPress theme developer
3. website design costs
You can adjust these titles by putting all the keywords at the beginning:
- Web Design Strategy: How to Design a Website that Converts
- WordPress Theme Developer: 7 Factors You Should Consider First
- The Costs of Website Design for Small Business Owners
Starting the title tag with targeted keywords is important. But, this applies when you really want to improve search performance for a given keyword. There are, however, situations in which content is created without focusing on a particular keyword. Let’s see what Brian says:
“It is not always necessary to start the title with your target keyword. But if there is a keyword you are targeting, make sure you put it at the beginning ”.
When you are selecting keywords for on-page optimization, you don’t have to repeat them over and over in the text. Instead, use synonyms or latent semantic index (LSI) terms. LSI keywords are intended to help search engine spiders extract the meaning from normal keywords (especially those with more than one meaning). For example, Apple, the computer company vs. apple, the fruit.
So, if we’re writing a text related to Apple, the company, Google expects you to put in relevant words and terms that are typical of the organization.
Similarly, if we write about Microsoft Windows 10, to help Google spiders extract the correct meaning of the page and serve the right users, we should mention words and phrases like Bill Gates, Operating System, OS, Windows 8.0, etc.
Never repeat your primary keyword too many times in the text (e.g. cheap airline tickets). Google will see this as over-optimization and penalize you
It can be useful to refer to other synonyms, optimizing the content in the right way (essentially the way Google and users want it).
If you wanted to write an article focusing on the keyword “how to get traffic on a blog”, here is what you would need to do: replace the search term with these LSI keywords:
How to get traffic on a blog
- How to generate traffic on a blog
- conduct web visitors to the blog
- have visitors on the blog online
- Attracting web traffic to my blog
At first glance, psi notes that the above keywords are tied to the primary keyword (like having traffic on a blog).
On the inside pages, it will be possible to use these LSI keywords in the title tag, but imagine what would happen if all the pages referenced only one keyword – with no variation.
In the Google ranking algorithm, the presence or absence of latent semantic indexing keywords determines where the page is positioned, because it is a strong signal of quality for Google.
There are several tools you can use to find these synonyms:
to). First step: go to Lsigraph.com and enter your primary keyword (eg, cheap airline tickets). Solve the captcha, then click the “Generate” button
b). Second step: select LSI keywords from the list. Simply identify the keywords that are ideal for your content. Then use them.
The optimization of on-page keywords is all about searching, choosing and integrating keywords that can be positioned more easily, in order not to compete with the top brands with a much greater domain authority.
In this sense, we must also focus on long-tail keywords . Let’s see some examples:
Neil Patel generates more than 20,000 organic visitors to his site, mostly thanks to long-tail search.
With just 5 hours of work, Jamie Press turned Google Autoclete ideas into traffic and rankings . He helped his clients create useful content that ranked # 2 and # 3 in search results at the time.
How to have Relevant, Authority and User-Friendly Backlinks
Nearly 100 billion searches are done by Google every month for content, products, and services. And that’s only part of the market, as was announced recently at the Re / code’s Code / Mobile conference by Amit Singhal, senior vice president of Google Search.
He also explained that more than half of these searches are done by cell phones.
For most SEOs and bloggers, backlinks are the most important factor in off-page SEO. And they are right, because natural links from authoritative and relevant sites act as a “vote of confidence”, which helps search engines to trust that site more.
When Google’s serch spider crawls a site, looking for new content (sometimes based on sitemap setttings), it indexes new pages and prepares them for user searches.
Once pages have been added into its vast index to be returned as search results when relevant search queries are entered, Google uses several algorithm-related factors to determine where these pages will rank.
In the SEO world, we refer to these as Googgle’s ranking factors . They are the determining factors for organic web page rankings. Fortunately, you don’t need to memorize all ranking factors – good news, because according to Google , there are over 200 of them.
But the most important factor in SEO is the links. Not links per se, but the impact that links of this type have. Below are other off-page factors related to links:
- The number of linking domains . The number of domains linking to your site is one of the most important ranking factors.
2. The number of linking pages. There must be a number of links to your site from a particular domain. Their number is a ranking factor. However, it is better to have more links from a private domain than from a single one.
3. PageRank of the linking page. Not all pages are created equal. Links on a page with a higher PageRank have a higher weight than those with a low PR. Hence, you should strive to build link building from pages with a high PR.
4. Relevance of the link. Some SEOs believe that links from pages related to the topic of your pages have a higher relevance to search engines.
5. The authority of the linking domain. Like page PR, domain authority can also be a ranking factor. For this reason, a link from a page with a low PR on a site with a high PR will have more value than one with a low PR.
6. Links from the homepage. Similarly, some SEOs believe that links from a linking domain homepage have more power than those on one of its pages.
7. Number of dofollow and nofollow links. Google has officially established that nofollow links are not taken into account (links with rel = nofollow assigned to the attribute). Consequently the number of your dofollow links should hit your ranking.
8. Diversity of link types.It also counts the type of links you create for your site. Many links of one type can be an indicator of spam and negatively affect your ranking.
9. Contextual Link i. Links within the content of a page are more valid, for example, in a sidebar.
10. Link anchor. The anchor text of a link is a strong ranking factor. Today, however, it can also be used as an indicator of web spam, negatively impacting your ranking.
In the past, if someone had generated 100 links to their page , compared to just 20 from another, Google would have seen the first page as more authoritative and valuable than the second.
Link quality wasn’t that important at the time, but today, links are perceived differently. Many questions arise when Google sees a link that leads to a given web page. For instance:
- Where does the link come from
- What prompted the site owner to link to you?
- What is the quality of the link? (Ex. Does it come from an authoritative site?)
- How new is your link?
- How natural is the to link profile?
- And so on…
When creating links for your site or internal pages (which is ideal for today’s SEO), you need to focus on relevant, authoritative and SEO-friendly links.
Now let’s talk about some ways to get valuable links:
1). Broken link building: Even though tons of posts have been written about broken link building , sadly, not many people do. In fact most people still rely on guest blogging, a good way to acquire the right links , but it requires a huge research to find the right topic, the right blogs, write the post, submit it and wait for it to be published.
On the other hand, broken link building is easier, faster and can provide a considerable way to get the right links.
When Neil Patel launched his nutrition blog, he used broken link building tactics to his advantage and generated a handful of natural links from different trusted sites using just this strategy. The opportunities are virtually endless when you make the most of dead links.
Many authoritative blog links are actually dead. When a hosting dies, the sites are upset during the file transfer or migration or transcription errors can occur and the links are destined to be interrupted: you will be redirected to the 404 error pages.
All these broken links can be an advantage.
There is nothing new or extravagant about repairing broken links. This link building strategy will never be out of date, because the internet will always have new broken links that need to be repaired.
It is important to know that, according to the Official Google Webmaster Central blog , 404 error pages or broken pages have no effect on a site’s ranking.
“404s are a perfectly normal part of the web; The Internet is constantly changing, new content is born, old content dies, and when it dies it returns (ideally) to the HTTP 404 response code.
Search engines are aware of this; we have 404 errors on our sites, as you can see above, and we find them all over the web. In fact, we prefer that when you get rid of a page on your site, you make sure it reports to 404 or 410 response codes (rather than “soft 404”) “.
However, getting to a 404 error page is a very bad experience for the user.
When people click on a page from an organic results page, they don’t expect to see a 404 error page, but rather the exact content of what they were looking for.
Some of these searchers could probably write down the site address and swear never to visit it again. Obviously, the user experience was poor. And there is nothing that turns people away more than a negative experience.
The result can be disastrous. According to the Sacramento Design Network, “85% of your business can be lost due to poor customer service.”
In short, broken link building in 4 simple steps: conduct a backlink analysis on a relevant site, find a broken link, contact the manager, and let them know about any dead links you found.
By helping site operators track down broken links, they may return the favor by placing a link to your site.
If you have placed a link to a particular web page from your blog and found dead links, they can easily be replaced with a relevant, high-value resource. Plus if this high-value page belongs to you, you’ll have both SEO juice and a valuable link.
Create the right links to your web pages using this tactic. You will find these resources very useful:
- How to create 100 Quality Links without writing new content
- 13 Efficient Link Building Strategies for Engaged Salespeople
- The black belt of the Broken Link Building
- How to use the Broken Link Strategy to get links
2). Create and distribute compelling infographics: There is no doubt that infographics work and will continue to work in the future.
While infographics can still produce noticeable results, they won’t be enough to get the job done.
You can use Dribbble to find professional designers in creating infographics at a moderate cost. If you prefer to use Visual.ly, you will have a better design – but their services are more expensive.
Many continue to use infographics to attract the right audience, acquire authoritative links, and increase their mailing list. Let’s see some examples:
Ken Lyons recently shared a case study on how WordStream created a useful infographic that helped many people. Curiously, the infographic got a link from CNN , and that brought a huge amount of traffic to the site.
Ann Smarty, a prolific content vendor, created a useful infographic that generated 10 powerful links in just two days .
If you are a B2B or B2C company, you can use visual marketing o create engagement with your audience and get editorial links from the right sites. In fact, ideal customers will respond better to visual content rather than simple text: data collected by the HubSpot has shown that the human mind processes visual information 60,000 times faster than textual information. This could explain the continued demand for infographics, which has grown by 800% . Below is the current growth trend :
As with any compelling content, when a sufficient initial promotion is made, an infographic has a high chance of going viral, leading to continually generating traffic to their blog when people start sharing the infographics entered.
Infographics generate 37.5% more backlinks than a regular blog post . This makes creating infographics an irresistible link building strategy. Here are some useful resources:
- How to Create and Promote Infographics to Get 5,000 Visitors a Week
- What I learned about Content Marketing from the 614 Posts Analysis
- 14 Tools to Create Engaging Infographics and Images for your Social Media Posts
Of course, there are other ways to build quality links to your web pages. For example, use the presence of a blogger to your advantage to build relationships that will produce better links, and use the social media extension to advertise unlinked brand names on relevant blogs.
How to avoid the penalties that Google applies to Unnatural Links
Backlinks are very important, especially if you want to maintain the position of your site . But we can’t talk about off-page SEO without mentioning Google penalties and unnatural links.
The truth is, links can significantly affect search performance – positively or negatively.
If you ask professional bloggers which factor they think has the greatest impact on search rankings, most of them will say “links”.
Data from MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report reported that 59% of companies have performed external link building.
It is essential that you avoid being penalized by Google, as recovering can be daunting and very difficult.
Over time, many things that previously interested Google – such as links from sites with a high PR – no longer have such a strong impact.
Today Google is more concerned about optimizing content for users , prioritizing the user and quality content. The focus is no longer on the search phrases people use, but the motivation that prompted them to use that particular phrase.
A full backlink analysis can help you pinpoint which links are best for your site – and how to steer clear of Google’s penalty radar. While Google hasn’t yet advised the SEO community on the step-by-step steps to stay safe, there are still things you can do to make sure your site isn’t penalized.
These practices have helped Neil Patel generate more than 700,000 visitors to the QuickSprout blog without incurring any penalties due to unnatural links and over-optimized anchor text.
THE). First, create content and optimize it for users : Putting users first means forgetting to repeat keywords several times in the text, especially if they don’t flow naturally. But this is not enough, sometimes even if there are no keyword tags somehow the content can seem too promotional.
Users don’t like this. They need to be helped by creating quality content . By integrating data into blog posts , and using visual elements to more clearly convey the message you want to convey.
By helping them with quality content, they will want to know more about who helped them.
II). Diversify Anchor Text : Once you’ve done a thorough backlink analysis and understand where the links come from, you can start working on diversifying your anchor texts .
Diversifying anchor texts simply means using different keyword phrases , brand names, and generic terms so that Google will see the links as natural and non-manipulative.
In the diversification of anchor texts, it is important to highlight your priority, because Google will analyze your link based on the topic of the page it refers to and on how consistent it is on a thematic level with yours.
Anyone can share content and link to this content wherever they like, and since you can’t control your anchor texts or where the links come from, you need to use your brand name as anchor text more often.
If you are a social media expert and you are being interviewed by an automobile blog, you should use your brand name as anchor text, because these two topics – cars and social media – are not thematic or directly related and Google uses the anchor text of the links. external to the page to evaluate its quality, relevance and usefulness.
Finally, it is essential to make sure that you have links from high quality sites, that you mix nofollow links in your profile to make it more natural, and that you publish new content to increase citations of your brand .
Conclusions
It must be understood that Google penguin and other algorithm updates will not position search results that do not have a large number of incoming links on the first pages . Also, you should always use white-hat link building strategies to improve your off-page optimization.
Similarly, you have to prepare your web pages to receive an authoritative link juice, making sure it is easy to navigate the site.
When it comes to creating a better content experience, it all boils down to answering user questions. You need to start by identifying the questions asked by the target customers. You can find these questions on Quora , Twitter and other social networks.
Finally, search engine optimization is not a hit-and-run marketing approach, SEO must be approached knowing that the efforts made today will pay off in the future.
The important thing is to be consistent and patient, and you will gradually rise to the top of Google’s results.