Today's post is an excerpt from The MFS Guide to B2B SEO: How to Integrate SEO into a Broader B2B Marketing Strategy.
The next section in our deep dive into strategic B2B SEO is off-page SEO which primarily covers backlinking, brand mentions, social signals, and online reviews. Off-page SEO is essentially all the activities outside of your website that contribute to increased search engine rankings. These off-page activities can have multiple benefits including referral traffic, brand awareness, and increased site authority.
Off-Page SEO - Setting Out Your Stall
1. Consider the Role of Off-Page SEO Within Your Broader Marketing Strategy
2. Check Your Current Domain Authority
3. Set Your Off-Page Goals
Off-Page SEO Tactics
1. Local SEO - Depending on the nature of your business, local SEO may or may not be an extremely important factor. If you are reliant on people in your local area finding you, then you should prioritize local SEO. If you are a remote or global business, you should still perform some basic local SEO activities like setting your business up on Google Business with a verified address, phone number, etc. Other local SEO activities include creating location pages on your site, creating pages that target local keywords, and seeking out feature opportunities on local websites.
2. Public Relations - PR - although a separate area to off-page SEO - can be one of the most effective ways to generate high quality backlinks to your site and increase brand awareness. If you have a separate PR team in your company, it is worth liaising with them and trying to understand their goals and how they can tie in with your SEO project. If you are an early stage company starting with a relatively new website, then you should consider running some PR campaigns to kickstart your off-page SEO. A press release with an interesting angle about your company can get widespread pickup - bringing you multiple high quality backlinks, referral traffic, and increased brand awareness.
3. Guest Posting - This tactic was once the holy grail of backlinking and while possibly not as effective as it once was, guest posting can still have an impact. Some of the higher domain authority sites will charge for a guest post - and, depending on your budget, these links may be worth forking out for. In general, do not waste time guest posting on lower domain authority sites, instead focus on ways to get featured on high authority sites. In particular, this option might suit if you are trying to build up a reputation as a thought leader in your target industry.
4. Broken Link Building - This tactic, a favorite of the career SEO professionals, can deliver a lot of bang for your buck. Research shows that 66% of links to sites over the last 9 years no longer work. You can take advantage of this situation by identifying broken links on sites you would like to feature and reaching out to the site owner or company to suggest a replacement link from your own website.
5. Proprietary Research - Publishing your own research can be a very natural way to build up backlinks. If your company is data-focused or collects data points that would be of interest to others within their industry, then you should consider putting a research report together with some key findings. You could also think about a press release to promote your report and lead with some of more interesting findings backed by your own data. This report can generate some initial brand awareness and can, over time, pick up some backlinks as other writers use data points and statistics from this proprietary research to support their own articles.
6. Social Media - You may well have a separate social media strategy, but here is another area where there is some crossover with off-page SEO. If you are starting out, the basics here are setting up company accounts on all the major social media sites. You can share and re-share all of your content on social sites and there may be potential here for engaging with possible customers in comments sections as well. Another consideration with social media is to weigh up whether there is someone in your company that you are looking to build up as a thought leader - using this person’s account as a way to get your company out there on social media can often be more valuable than simply sharing from the company social media accounts.
7. Directory Websites - Take the time to create a company profile on all directory websites that are relevant to your industry. This step is a basic minimum requirement. Some of these sites have options for paid promotion and lead generation which may be worth exploring depending on your budget and current priorities.
8. Reviews - Responding to reviews online can be a good way to build up your company’s reputation and brand awareness. Listening to and engaging with customer concerns is never a bad thing.
9. YouTube - Building up your video library is a very important and sometimes overlooked part of off-page SEO. YouTube, after all, is the world’s second largest search engine after Google.
10. Podcasts - Everyone seems to have a podcast these days. Unless you have major podcast fatigue, then you should also consider featuring on a relevant podcast. There are a number of benefits here - you will get a link back to your website, you will get in front of a ready-made audience, and you can build up your company’s reputation as an industry thought leader. Even if the podcast does not have a huge listenership, it could have a lower number of highly targeted listeners that would be potential high value customers for you.
11. Events - Last, but not least, events and event marketing also have an element of crossover with off-page SEO. If you choose to sponsor events, you can generate a high domain authority link back to your site. If you have someone in your company to speak at an event, then there are numerous awareness and backlinking benefits there too.
Within off-page SEO there are many different tactics to work with. Above are some of the tactics we have seen to be really effective, but you should maintain a creative and agile stance here - SEO like many other areas of business today is evolving at a rapid pace. New off-page SEO tactics continue to emerge and you should be ready to adapt as needed.
This post is an excerpt from the MFS Guide to B2B SEO: How to Integrate SEO into a Broader B2B Marketing Strategy. If you would like to read more you can access the guide in full here. If you have a marketing challenge you are looking for support with, you are welcome to set up a no obligation initial strategy consultation with our team.