Transcript
Hi there! I’m Jason Crabtree, Director of Search Engine Optimization, for Agent Branding System. Thanks for joining me. In this video, we’re going to cover three of the top sources to get results in off-page search engine optimization. The goal of this is to help you become more comfortable and more knowledgeable on how to get good results in your visibility online. First, let me address what is off-page Optimization. Off-page optimization refers to the creation and publishing of content outside of your website on places like blogs, article sites, etc. with a link back to your website. So it’s creating content, pushing it out to the web, and having it link back to your website. That’s off-page, sometimes referred to as off-site, optimization. Why is off-page SEO so important? Well, in addition to your website sending out relevancy signals to the search engines, the search engines also look for credible sources outside of your website that can “vote” for you and say that they believe that this website is a relevant, credible, and valid source for this particular topic. The goal of off-page optimization is to position your website as a credible authority and a trustworthy, noted source. According to a 2016 study conducted by a company called Backlinko, they studied over one million different pages of search results. The number one factor that they found that influenced where websites ranked in those search results were the links that come into those sites. That’s the number one ranking factor still in 2016. As you may or may not know, search engines now rely on these sources to validate your authority. How credible are you? How trusted are you? How many other websites would vote for you to be the leading authority on a particular topic or keyword? The three core areas of focus are article and blog sites, directory listings, and social media. So let’s talk about this and how it works. When topical content is posted around the web and the search engine crawlers find and index that particular piece of content (whether it’s an article site that posts an article, or a blog site that posts a topical blog, or any other material that’s posted outside of your website) they figure out that that the content is about a specific topic, and then they find a link within that content that links back over to your website, that is essentially giving you a vote. It’s equally as important to have that same material and content on your website. If the search engines crawl and find content outside of your website that talks about a certain topic and it links back over to your website, but they don’t find any content that talks about that particular topic, they’re not going to give you credit for that link. That link is not going to help you because they’re not going to view your website as relevant to that topic. The off-page sources that have been proven to give us the most success are article sites, directory sites, and blog sites, if they’re relevant in topic. Social bookmarking sites and social media have also proven to be successful. So let’s talk about article sites for a second. In general, you want to stay away from article directories because they’re not very focused. They are not about a specific topic or theme and they can be about any random topic. Articles can be about anything under the sun. What you want to do is steer towards article communities. Article community sites are going to be generally around a specific theme or topic and you want to find the articles that relate to your specific targeted customer. Article community sites, like Hub Pages or Squidoo, allow users to engage via message boards, forums, and they can even share articles. This will bring traffic to your website and it also allows links to come into your website. As they share the article with their community, more and more people have this article and more and more links are pointing back to your website. Blog posts are similar to article posts only they’re usually longer, more in-depth written pieces of content. They also tend to be on a blog site that generally is about the same topic, so when you have content that’s posted on a blog site, the theme and the topic tend to be the same. The longer, more in-depth, well-written piece of content with links coming back to your site are just as valuable if not more valuable than an article site. Social bookmarking sites are similar in nature as far as there being a piece of content with keywords in it and a link pointing back to your website. The difference is social bookmarks are generally just a little blurb, a very small amount of text, that is a precursor, or a highlight, of what someone would expect to find if they click that link and follow it back to your website. Some of the most popular ones are Reddit, StumbleUpon, Dig, and Delicious. There tons of others, literally hundreds, that you can post social bookmarks on and get links back to your website. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are great places to get links back to your site. If you’re going to post a status update or a tweet about your business make sure that you include a link back to your website to get that credit from the social media site. The final source that I’m going to talk about as far as off-page optimization and getting links back to your website are online business directories. Directory sites like Yelp, Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Superpages, CityGrid, and Foursquare are all sites that give an opportunity to list your business information and put a link back to your website. The key to optimizing your business listings are to make sure that your map, name, address, and phone number are consistent across every directory in order to get credit for your business. For example, if on Yelp your business is an LLC and on Citysearch your business is not an LLC, the search engines may not identify that as being the same business. There you have it! The top sources for off-page optimization and some ideas about how to capitalize on these opportunities. If you thought that this information was useful and informative please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn, and share this video with your friends. I’m Jason Crabtree, thank you for your time.