Hello Reader,

We usually get caught up with on-page SEO. Like the techniques, we’ve been discussing in our Friday emails. However, one of the most important ranking factors isn’t on any of your website pages at all. It’s “backlinks”, links from other websites pointing to your site.

The top results on Google have on average 3.8x more backlinks than results that appear in positions 2-10.

It’s not all just links though. Even brand mentions are important off-page signals.

Off-page SEO simply tells Google what others think about your site. People only share content they like. It’s word-of-mouth for search engine land.

How do you go about off-page SEO optimisation? Let’s dive in.

We need to get links back to our site. One of the best ways we used to do this is by guest blogging, and this is still a viable option if you’re in an industry where blogging is still huge, but chances are decent blogs are far and few between. The quality of the blog also matters so just getting spots anywhere won’t necessarily move the needle in your favour.

A more modern approach to this would be to get invites to podcasts. While highly saturated the podcast world isn’t slowing down, and more reputable podcasts have a website archive with transcripts and descriptions which can house the link to your site.

This is by far the best option, not only do you get a decent backlink to your site, but you get to build authority with a whole new audience.

Getting on a podcast is easier than you might think since most need guests to be part of the show you only have to ask or put out on your social media that you want to be a guest on some podcasts.

The second option you have is the broken link strategy. As websites get moved around over time files go missing, URLs start to break, and that leaves authority sites that have linked to a specific article with a broken link. You would be surprised how many sites don’t stay on top of their broken external links, which is good for you.

To make use of this opportunity, you want to conduct a backlink analysis on a relevant site, find the broken link, contact the site owner, inform them of the broken link, and provide them with your option. Just do it in a non-spammy way.

Oh, and before you ask, unfortunately, links on YouTube descriptions aren’t counted towards your backlink count.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s a quick way to get a backlink from a major authority site in your niche, which can start moving the needle in your favour.

Till next time,
​marketrnotes