Off-page SEO tactics to drive consistent traffic on to your website
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become such a broad term today that whichever activity drives any traffic on your website is considered as an SEO Activity! In earlier days, we – as SEO Consultants - used to focus specifically on the structure and content of websites only, which we called “On-page SEO”. We tried hard to make sure that our clients’ websites have been set up right with proper page titles, meta text, content placement, image names etc. But today, the definition of SEO has changed expanded drastically. Now-a-days, SEO as a service is divided into 2 categories :-
- On-Page SEO - optimize content, internal links, meta tags etc
- Off-page SEO - backlinks, social media, forum posting, press release etc.
Honestly, I don’t agree with the concept of Off-page SEO. You may call it ‘Off-page promotions’ or ‘Off-page optimization’ but ‘Off-page SEO’ definitely does not make sense to me. Wikipedia defines SEO as
the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural or un-paid (organic or algorithmic) search results.
Then why is everyone writing so much about “Off-page SEO” when, ideally, the term even doesn’t exist at all? I leave this up to you all to help me find the answer in your comments below.
Just because it is such a popular term these days, I could not stop myself from using it as the title of my blog article even though I don’t agree with it 
This is also one of the problems with SEO Consultants & business owners like us – that we have to keep our readers/customers happy with giving them what they want to take!
Image Courtesy - www.topspotoptimisation.co.uk
Coming back to the topic of today’s discussion, which is about the best “Off-page SEO” tactics or “Off-page Promotion” (for my own sake) that can help you drive consistent traffic on to your website for a long run. These techniques are just the ones which I have tried myself and achieved reasonable success for my clients. You may have tried something else which worked for you so don’t hesitate to share that with our readers.
1. Participate in Forums & discussion boards: 5-6 responses or 2-3 new questions a day (with your website’s URL in the signature) in 5 different popular forums a day is all that it will take to get a decent traffic on to your website. It will hardly take you more than 2 minutes to write a response or come up with a question to ask the community. Spending 20 minutes a day religiously on forums for 2 weeks will start generating traffic on your website that you won’t even imagine. Of course, you need to make sure that your responses and questions are intelligent & look like real contribution. Do not post for the sake of posting. It will give wrong impression and other forum members will look down upon you with contempt! Some will even mark you as spam leading to deletion of your account and your hopes as well.
Many SEO companies offer this service really cheap, say 1¢ per post. DO NOT fall for that. They will do more harm than any good. My advice would be that you should hire someone who (1) understands your business’s objectives and can (2) write decent English. He should really contribute in the forums to lure other readers in clicking on his signature URL.
Some of my favorite SEO Forums are :
2. Publish Blogs / News / Press Releases & submit them in bookmarking websites - Everyone in the web community knows the importance of blog and news updates on your company/ product website. Not only it attracts search engine crawlers to visit your website more often, it also helps you generate more back links by submitting these articles on press release and bookmarking websites. Tons of bookmarking websites have sprouted up recently. And believe it or not, most of them are a good source of traffic generation for your website. The ones that I use most frequently for my clients are :
- Stumbleupon
- Digg
- Delicious
- Mixx
- Propeller
- Kaboodle (for online stores)
- Yahoo Buzz
- Technorati
- Clipmarks
There are still more than 200 bookmarking websites which you should definitely consider for this task.
3. Create your social profile & share your news update with the community – The first names that lighten up in our minds are Facebook, Twitter & Myspace. Make sure you create a public social profile for the company that you are promoting. You ought to have your Facebook Fan page, Twitter profile, Youtube profile, LinkedIn profile (of yourself and/or your clients). All the websites I just mentioned require you to sign up and they provide you a unique URL of your profile. This is your social profile. Following are must-do activities whenever you have a new blog or new story published on your website or blog -
- Tweet about it on Twitter
- Do a status update on Facebook & LinkedIn
- Update status on Ecademy as well. Ecademy (has a lot of junk but) is still a good source of traffic once you have a strong network.
- Share your blog article on discussion boards & forum of these social networks.
- Flickr – “A picture is worth a thousand words” is not exactly true in the world of SEO which relies heavily on content full of words. But still Flickr stands out and can become a good source of traffic for your website. Just make sure that whenever you write an article, you add an image in your post and submit that image on your Flickr profile with apt tags and description. If you have an online store and sell products, make sure all the images of your products are also submitted on to your Flickr profile. Picasa, Photobucket & Picli are some other photo sharing networks.
Once your profile has been set up, you should start building a community by adding/inviting friends to join your network.
- Youtube
- Vimeo
- Dailymotion
- Slideshare (See a sample below)
5. Yahoo Answers & similar question/answer websites – I love Yahoo Answers and On Startup Answers community where you can post any question you want and community members will respond within hours. SEO companies are using similar sites to drive traffic by maneuvering questions in such a manner that makes other members click on their URLs. It may not be the best way to get the type of traffic you want but still it is one of the widely used method these days. Again, you have to be very cautious with your language so that it does not appear as spam.
6. Article re-writing and distribution – Haven’t we covered this in point (2) above? Not really. This is about article re-writing. Numerous SEO companies are hiring writers to re-write the same articles many times in different versions and keep distributing them on hundreds of press release & bookmarking websites. It works quite often since your content is not copied and the crawlers will see it as original stuff.
7. Local business listings on search engines & yellow pages- All major search engines like Google, Bing & Yahoo offer business owners to submit their business with full details of name, address, phone number etc. This helps in getting local traffic for your website. Optimizing for local search listings is the discussion of a different topic that I will publish sometime in near future. For now, you should just make sure that your business has been listed on all local listings websites. A few examples of such sites are -
These are some of the widely used “Off-page promotion” techniques by SEO Companies across the globe. Please feel free to keep your opinions on this post in the comment box below.
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Very true, SEO has expanded drastically, its becoming more and more difficult for the newcomers to get going with it.
Nice article.
I might also add look for follow link sites as much stronger than no follow. Although I never pass up a no follow just because it is. If the discussion is worthy of my time to comment, I will.
Great article. Especially the forum posting part. I used to write @ http://googlewavecommunity.com/forum for some time and has received consistent traffic. For some reason I dont get time now. The flow has dropped a bit but it is still giving me traffic. I expect to conribute @ Google Wave Community soon again.
This is great information that I look forward to using. But I have a question. I am always concerned with posting my content online where I think my potential clients will see it. Is this a valid concern? Or is there value in blindly posting my press releases and articles all over the internet even if I don’t think the people who I want reading them go to those sites?
Jane, I’m curious as to why you wouldn’t want your potential clients to see your content? You are providing a service – I trust your client base has their own businesses to run, yes you may lose the odd I’ll try to do it myself kind of client but hey those ones are pains in the butt anyway.
In my experience my clients recognize my expertise and pay for it, likewise when I need their services I pay them rather than do it myself even if I can because I’d rather a professional provide top quality service.
The only question that remains is that if you feel that if you are completely transparent with your clients about what it is that you do they won’t hire you, then it may be time to rethink your business
great post ! informative and full of resources .thnx
The most obvious reason to me to separate on page and off page SEO is because your creating billing and product categories. If you sell a service or consult in the SEO space it’s necessary to define everything your doing for your customer and to be able to separately categorize the services. It also helps if your tracking the time you spend on each function and use it to measure effectiveness – essentially its a billing code category turned marketing term IMO.
Outside of that I enjoyed the article.
Be careful with #5–using Yahoo! Answers. Someone will consider your tagline as spam and report you. Even if the answer you provide is completely relevant, helpful, and free of affiliate links. Believe me, I know. I’ve been suspended from Yahoo! Answers for such activity, even though I have a 55% “Best Answer” ratio!
SEO people speak big seo terms and it’s all the same. Nothing new for over a decade. It’s plastered all over the Web. In over a decade I have yet to see any math. As a business person, I’m interested in making money. How much is that blog post worth in real dollar terms? How much is that video worth? Talk to me like a business person not like some dim-witted seo marketer. If you can’t have your accountant call me. Want numbers.
As a business I have to recover my SEO expense and it ain’t cheap! I have to charge my customers unimaginable amounts of money to pay for SEO. So, show me the numbers. Otherwise, SEO talk is nothing more than talk.
Is the SEO talk any different than the advertising hype and assumed necessity of spending “advertising dollars” that came with traditional media. Now that their readership, viability & validity is in question due to their decline I don’t think the SEO speak is much different in IMO.
As the owner and “webmaster” for BoulderHomeResource.com, a real estate web site in Boulder, CO, I have learned the definitions for and the value of, both on and off-page SEO. The last post about “seeing the numbers” is purely business and, I think, appropriate; however, in assesing the value of something as nebulous as SEO can be, one should also look at the other side of that coin: “What would the online results be without it?”
Web sites are the only form of advertising I’m aware of that themselves have to be advertised. Essentially, that is what both on and off-page SEO are all about, albeit in slightly different ways. It would be rare in business that any one thing delivered the desired result. Like on and off-page SEO, it’s usually some combination of things that gets the job done.
Thanks for the post.
Al,
It should be very easy for you to quantify the value of your SEO. If you’re making an X amount of $ selling a service or product with valid analytical data, any increase of conversions/sales as a result of SEO should be easy math.
A knowledgeable online marketing specialist should be able to look at your analytics, provide a long term plan, show you how they will increase RELEVANT conversions, and keep at it. Well invested SEO $ will bring a great return on investment, however, only if the results are being tracked and analyzed. If you’re just spending money on SEO but have no ways of pulling statistics or analytics, you’re just wasting your money.
What about promoting retail store promotions/coupons in Google Local Business center? Also putting hcard formatting on the site so events are listed in the SERPs.
Nice article. Its helps me as SEO beginners.
Well written Varun, one thing that I would like to add is the importance of RSS feeds.
When we get Internet Marketing briefs for clients we add the following to their websites:
A blog
News
Latest Twitter tweets – show the last 5
We then set up RSS feeds for the news and blog as well as one for the rest of their website. Once we submit these to Google, Yaho, Bing, Technot=rati etc.. then every time they add any content to the website it gets broadcast straight away.
We also automate the title of any news or blogs to go out as a tweet.
James
I have no probs calling it “Off-page SEO” coz these days updates you post on twitter and other social bookmarking sites are bring indexed in Google SEPRs which can directly improve the traffic to a web site from search engines.
btw I many thanks for sharing all the useful resources of off-page SEO. I have not been into many of them.
Great site! This is the first time that I’m hearing about Slideshare so I’ll have to go check this out. I also fell that the term ‘offsite SEO’ is a minsomer. Thanks for sharing.