15 Off-Page SEO Factors that influence your search volume

In recent times there has been much debate on what exactly are the off-page SEO factors that significantly will impact the search volume impressions a site is likely to get. While there is clearly no straight answers to this, there are some very useful off-page seo factors that can be implemented and are un-debated by SEO specialists.

1.Among off-page seo factors Internal Link is at the top

Internal Links are links that point to different parts on your own website and these are very important to Google. In fact, it’s almost impossible for Google to determine the value of any web page if there are no links pointing to it no matter how fresh, useful, or in-depth the page content might be.

If you are the site owner you should give this top priority as internal link building is a key off-page seo factor that will help you rank better and give you better search volume.

Internal Link building helps not only users to better navigate a site and discover it in a more meaningful manner, but it also helps in establishing information hierarchy and link juice

Lay out your internal pages

The way to lay out your internal links is not to just put in links in a random manner but lay them out in a manner that each link passes on link juice to other interconnected pages. It is not a good practice to have any web page stand alone.

Usually pages addressing same or related topics are  linked together in order to provide a rich informational experience for the users.

When it comes to off-page seo factors internal pages are often overlooked. Most SEOs specialists don’t realize that much of a site’s “SEO value” flows from how internal pages are linked together. This is mostly made possible when you have links from high-value pages on the same site. Connect your pages properly so that you get positive link equity between your internal pages.

Do On-page SEO

On-page SEO is crucial. After all, you don’t want Google to view your site as a neglected portal. If you are unsure on how to start with on-page seo, check out  On-Page SEO Guide: What is SEO and how to do it

I’m sure you’ve heard enough about Meta tags and keyword density. Still, there are other important On-page SEO factors that matter but are often overlooked.

 Pick thematic keywords

Keywords are fundamental to building good on-page SEO content. The image shown alongside gives an accurate representation of the relative importance of keywords vis other aspects.  It shows that use of related keywords & primary keywords accounts for 40% of On-page SEO, respectively.

2.External Links

External links are links from external sites that direct traffic to your site. Among all off-page seo factors, external linking is the 2^nd most important factor that directly impacts your seo rank and through that the likely search volume of impressions that your website will get.

Getting external juice value from other sites is the toughest job of any SEO specialist. That’s largely because it has to be earned. Sure, there are several players that offer to sell external backlinks to you but our advice would be to ignore them. They are unlikely to do anything much in terms of improving your SEO rank.

When you attempt to get external backlinks to your website, you need to bear in mind that quality of the source trumps quantity every time.  It is far better to have 10 high quality backlink external sources directing traffic to your site than a 100 low quality sources.

The type of sites that are more valuable include:

• Authority sites in your niche. If you are unsure of what an authority site is, they are bigger websites that tend to feature a lot in the search results for your chosen keywords (and related keywords)

• Sites that are relevant to your
• High PR websites.
• .edu or .gov websites.
• Sites that have been around for a long time.

3.Engaging through Social Media is another important Off-Page SEO factor

With an ever increasingly connected world, Google has raised the importance of integrating social media into your SEO mix as an important off-page seo factor. The underlying principle here is that the more socially integrated your website is, the higher you’re likely to rank in search engines.

The off-page seo factors that influence this aspect are:

Quality of shares

Quality of shares refers to authority of the person sharing your content. Google recognizes influencers and when they share your article, then that share has a higher SEO juice than when your best friend shares it.

A good tactic to get influencer’s to share your content is to include them in your content in a positive manner. Quoting them, interviewing them, speaking positively about them are some of the ways. You should also give them a heads up once you publish them. Chances are high that if they like what you’ve published, they will share it to their followers. And Voila!! Your SEO juice goes up!

Quantity of shares

If you can’t get influencers to share your content, focus on quantity then. The more shares you get of your content across multiple social networks, the greater will be the SEO juice that you generate. Going Viral is the ultimate, but unless you’re doing something really innovative, don’t expect your content to go viral. Good quality content that addresses your topic and domain or industry will help you generate good quantity of shares from people in that domain.

Trust

Trust is a fairly nebulous term and there are many off-page seo factors that contribute to improving your trust score. Google hates spammy sites with little content and their latest algo change takes this into further cognizance by penalizing sites that primarily carry advertising messages and little content.

Trust in a website is a function of several factors including the quality of backlinks that you get (source quality) , depth of your content ( long form), quality and quantity of your social shares, freshness of your content, frequency of updates of your content – all of these contribute to improving your trust score and improving your page rank

PageRank, the famous formula invented by founders of Google is not the only measure they take when ranking pages in the top 10 search results. Trust is getting increasingly important and most of the recent Google updates have hit spammy and obscure websites.

Trust rank is a good way for Google to see whether your site is legit or not. If you look like a big brand, Google is likely to trust you,

4.Authority of your Site

The overall authority of your site is determined by a mix of 2 kinds of authority you can build:

• Domain authority has to do with how well known your domain name is (coca-cola.com is very authoritative), and
• Page authority relates to how authoritative the content of a single page (for example – a blog post) is.

There are tools that help you check your current Domain Authority. Domain Authority is a metric that can be used to understand how Google’s Algorithms rank your website based on your or credibility on the web. Domain Authority is a way to gauge how your website performs competitively when pitted against other websites in your niche. The Domain Authority is a score based on a scale of 100 and an amalgam of many SEO factors that make few websites rank better than others on the web. Remember that this is not a Google rank but merely an indicator of how Google may be visualizing your domain position relative to others.

DA or Domain Authority itself is a function of both age of the domain (how old since it got launched) and the number of authoritative back links coming to your site. If yours is a new site, you’re likely to have a DA of 1 and as you keep engaging through content and backlinks and blogs, your DA will keep rising.

You can also improve DA by:

• Creating marketable content that people like to read and value
• Diversifying backlinks from different relevant sources
• Building strong and relevant links
• Removing harmful backlinks
• Reducing your bounce rate

5.Forum Marketing

Marketing within forums of your industry domain is another off-page seo factor to consider. There are multiple forums. Reddit is one of the more popular forums that millions of people use to discuss and share topics of interest with each other. You can improve your backlinks, improve your discoverability and ultimately your SEO rank by engaging with your community on such forums.

Reply to threads, offer advice or answer questions. You can also comment on threads for the sole purpose of getting a backlink to your website.

6.Photo Sharing

Sharing photos is yet another way to improve your off-page SEO and among off-page seo factors, an often ignored one.  If you have used any of your own photos or images on your site, then you can share them on major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Bucket, Picasa, Photo Bucket etc. Other people will be able to see them and comment on them, hopefully following a link to your site. Also visuals attract users and indirectly improve engagement with them.

7.Video Marketing

Just like photo sharing, if you have any videos that you have used on your site, then you can submit them to sites like; YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook  etc. allowing people to find your content in other ways.

8.Participate in Question – Answering Sites

You can actively participate in question answering questions on sites like Yahoo Answers. Quora is another very popular forum for answering questions and you will often find Google highlighting Quora answers on the top search queries. By answering & asking relevant questions on your site niche, you help to build up your reputation as someone that is an expert in your chosen field. You can insert a link to your website in the source section, if necessary, so that people can easily find your website.

9.Link Baiting

Link baiting is another popular way of promoting your site. If you create a really popular unique post for your site, then other people may want to link to it. Perhaps you have copied/published another website’s content on your site, don’t forget to place their website link as a reference. Do it for others & if your content is trustworthy, let others do it for you. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

Of course off late, link baits have become more of the slimy “ you never guessed what happened after this “ kind of baits which will do nothing to improve either your popularity or your authority.

10. Social Shopping Network

If you run an e-commerce website, then a good strategy for advertising and branding your products for free is to submit them to online shopping networks. By submitting your products to sites like; MSN Online Shopping, Google Product Search, Yahoo Online Shopping, and other major social shopping you can increase your discoverability on Google Search Engine for the products that you are selling

11. Local Listing

If you are a local player, you might find it more useful to list yourself in local directories .You may have a website promoting your local business, that’s why instead of going global & facing huge competition, list your website locally, so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch content that will be much better.  Google gives higher preference to local places when people are searching for specific categories especially services. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to sites like – Yellow Pages, Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, etc.

12.Guest Blogging

Among all the off-page seo factors, Guest Blogging is among the most powerful ones and often the most neglected one. Guest blogging is a method used by bloggers to increase blog traffic where bloggers write posts to be published on other bloggers’ blogs. It is a great way to establish yourself as an authority figure within your market and build relationships with other bloggers and experts within your field.

Guest blogging can work in one of 2 ways:

1. You write apostto appear on another person’s blog.
2. Another person writes apostto appear on your blog.

Websites like hubpages and info-barrel allow you to publish content and in return you could add a couple of links pointing to your websites.

To really make guest blogging effective, choose websites that are relevant to your business industry. Remember backlinks from quality and relevant sources count more than from non-relevant sources. The additional benefit of guest blogging is that you are in fact addressing a new audience segment ( i.e traffic coming to someone else’s site). You could be a guest blogger on this site for instance if you are in the digital marketing industry!

13. Business Reviews

Write reviews about others’ businesses or ask your clients/friends/relatives to write a review of your business in major business review sites. Business reviews are a great way to establish authority. If you haven’t as yet, ensure that your business is listed in Google Business. This will additionally allow people to rate your business.

14. Directory Submission

Many people may say that directory submission is dead! But it is not that you are increasing the likelihood of people seeing your website. This is purely based on how effectively we are choosing those directories & how efficiently, we are choosing the category for submission. You can definitely submit to general directories, but for maximum effect, you are better off submitting to niche directories.

For example if you are in the education business you should definitely list yourself on all educational directories like Shiksha.com or College Duniya and the likes. Not only will it give you incremental traffic it will help establish your credibility within that domain.

15. Document Sharing

The last off-page SEO factor to consider is document sharing. Share your website documents like business documents, information brochures, and slides in Google Docs, Slide Share, etc. This will help you brand your website and draw a larger search volume of organic traffic.

One aspect to remember when considering using Off-page SEO factors is that while each is important some will be relatively more important depending on your business environment, location, and category type. In SEO there is no one size fits all. If that were the case, everyone would be in the top page ! Hence choose your off-page seo factors carefully and have loads of patience when you’re doing SEO. It is a slow burner and should be monitored carefully using webmaster tools