A page ranking can be influenced to some extent by internal factors (on-page SEO and technical SEO), but external factors still have their share when it comes to ranking. After the owner of the website does their part in creating a good user experience, it is up to the target audience and the general public to respond. This is the good thing about search engine optimization; the owner cannot solely determine how high their web pages will rank.
Why Off-Page SEO Important?
Yes, it is true that website owners who work smart get the greatest results, but there is an external factor that influences ranking, and here is where off-page SEO comes into play. Major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo have a secret algorithm that seems to favour off-page SEO techniques, and this trend doesn’t show signs of coming to an end any time soon.
Search engines are determined to use the ‘public opinion’ about your web pages as a factor to gauge how high your pages should rank. That’s why off-page SEO is important to help you increase your authority among your competitors and target audience.
By focusing on off-page SEO tactics such as social media integration and natural link building, you will get benefits such as higher rankings, an increase in traffic, greater brand influence thanks to a stronger social media presence, and residual business, among other benefits we will discuss later on.
Each of these off-page SEO benefits will contribute greatly to your online marketing profitability and portray your website as a voice of authority.
There is no better accolade in online business than being considered authoritative, genuine, and trustworthy, and these are the off-page SEO benefits you can expect. In the eyes of search engines, when other sites link to you or when your target audience keeps mentioning you on different social media platforms, you demonstrate that your site is authoritative and respected by the online community.
Let’s discuss these and other benefits of off-page SEO in greater depth.
Benefits of Off-Page SEO for Your Business
1. Increases Your SERPs Ranking
Search engine results page (SERP) rankings determine how high your website ranks on Google’s result pages for specific keywords. Obviously, the higher you rank, the more likely your target audience will see you and click on your website when they do specific searches.
When done right, off-page SEO can boost your SERP ranking to help you have a better click-through rate.
2. Increases Your PageRank
Many people mistake SERP ranking with PageRank. Your SERP ranking is the overall ranking of your website on search engine result pages. PageRank is a totally different thing. PageRank is the numeric measure search engines give to individual web pages on your website based on the quality and number of links they have.
Speaking of numeric measures, Google provides a ranking factor of 0-10 based on several factors that off-page SEO takes care of. PageRank is one of the many factors that affect your site’s SERP ranking.
Please note that PageRank is different from page ranking. The former indicates the rating given to a web page based on its importance and quality, while the latter indicates how high a certain page ranks for a specific keyword.
3. More Website Exposure
The whole purpose of SEO is to increase your website’s exposure and boost conversion. With off-page SEO, your website will rank higher, and this will increase your chances of getting more visitors, whom you can convert into customers. By using off-page SEO to boost your page ranking, you will end up enjoying more exposure.
4. More Traffic
With more exposure, you obviously expect to get more traffic. Off-page techniques such as smart link building propel your website to top results pages on search engines. Top results enjoy more than double the traffic from search engines. To be specific, pages on the first page of Google enjoy 34.35% of traffic as compared to 16.96% for pages on the 2nd page of Google for specific keywords.
This shows why off-page SEO is important to focus on. In most cases, off-page SEO acts as the ‘icing to your ranking cake.’ Once you have prepared the dough (technical SEO) and added all the ingredients (on-page SEO), you can now focus on the icing and decorations (off-page SEO) to have the best results.
Therefore, this one benefit of off-page SEO makes it hard to ignore off-page SEO as part of your ranking strategies.
5. More Residual Business
Once you start getting more traffic through social media campaigns and from other websites, you will have first-time visitors who might as well like what you are offering and thus hang around.
Remember that off-page SEO not only focuses on making your website look more authoritative and popular but also increases your traffic sources since you will be getting visitors from your social media pages and other websites that are linking back to you.
Visitors who come from these avenues may end up liking your content and even subscribe to your email list or bookmark your website. This means you have earned yourself a return visitor or even a customer.
6. Stronger Brand Presence
Off-page SEO focuses on creating a stronger social media presence for your brand. When you create pages on all major social media platforms and focus on generating more engagement, more people get to know about your brand.
This means more trust. And with trust being a crucial factor when it comes to doing business online, you can benefit from this, and thus increase your conversion. According to research done on the relationship between brand awareness and sales, it was found that 57% of respondents were more inclined to do business with a brand they know and follow. This shows the importance of having a stronger social media presence, which off-page SEO enables you to have.
Bottom Line
When done right, not only can off-page SEO boost your website ranking on search engines but also make you look trustworthy and genuine. Trust and authority will win you more business online than anything else.
Don’t ignore this aspect of SEO. It should come last after you have focused on on-page SEO and technical SEO so that you can reap all the benefits of SEO as a whole.
