Off-Page SEO Techniques
Off-page SEO is a set of techniques that drives traffic to your site and increases your Page Rank (PR). The purpose of off-page SEO is to complement your on-page SEO efforts with Google Juice. Links, likes, shares, pins, wins, leans, twins, blings and whatever else is out there all play a role to your off-page SEO efforts. Below you will find techniques that can help get your off-page SEO started, refine your current efforts, or just give you some ideas. I will rate these techniques using something I just came up with: the GJS (Google Juice Scale). The Google Juice Scale ranks these off-page SEO techniques from 1 to 10 (1=OK 10=Super).
Off-page SEO Techniques (by my Google Juice Scale)
Blogging (GJS = 10)
Blogging is the best way to create brand awareness and to bring visitors to your site. Not all blogs are created equal and you may have to spend a bit of time to make sure that your content is of quality. Quality brings readers back. “Write it and they will read!” Having a blog is great because you can get your ideas “out there” and the same time, make a name for your brand! A blog’s best friend, besides readers, is Social Media.
Social Networking (GJS = 10)
Some of the most popular are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, MySpace (just kidding), you may also look for non-well known, like CafeMom (which receives ~1M visitors/month). There is a flavor for everyone and there is a target for every brand. Any page that has some kind of networking abilities is a page that can increase your brand awareness and potentially increase your PR.
Blog and Forum Marketing (GJS=8)
Reading other blogs of interest and participating in forums is a great practice. Find something aligned with your industry and start reading and commenting. Bloggers find it encouraging when there are other experts in the industry dropping a note on their posts. So how is it that you can benefit from this? On every blog and forum where you can register, you get a profile. In most cases, this profile will have a place to add a website. In forums, you can add a website and other branding to your forum signature. Potentially, every answer and every comment can turn into a link!
Directory Submission (GJS=4)
Online directories have existed since the availability of the Internet. They are a little passe (as my wife would say), however, I find they still have real value. To maximize your exposure and the effectiveness of your listing, try a niche directory related to your industry.
Photo Sharing (GJS=6)
Photo sharing can be a fun way to create brand awareness. If you are in design or another visually demanding industry, you know what I mean. Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, Pitch-a-Pic, Snap-a-Shot, etc. are great sites to share your pictures and get links going. Do not check the last two; I made those up.
Article Submission (GJS=3)
As mentioned earlier, blogging is one of the best ways to generate off page SEO, but it takes time to generate a following. Suppose you need to get some traction right away. Thankfully, there are some nice websites out there that already have a nice PR score, (some 6 and upwards) that allow you to submit your own editorial content. Ezine is a website that will give you a good start, and you may want to stick with it as a long term off-page SEO technique. These techniques will keep you busy for a while and will yield positive results, although some faster than others. Keep in mind that an effective off-page SEO strategy contains a combination of techniques.
