Off-Page SEO Checklist: 23 Ways To Get More Traffic From Google

To steal that #1 position, you must master off-page SEO.

If you want more traffic, better leads, and revenue, then you need to earn that top spot in Google. 

We’ve simplified things by creating the ultimate off-page SEO checklist. Use this list to outrank your competition.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO, also called off-site SEO, is everything you do off your website to improve your search engine ranking. 

For instance, you could build some juicy backlinks, be active on social media, or start guest blogging to promote your website. 

When your website is on various sites, it signals search engines that it has a high authority. Being available everywhere also makes it easier for people to find you.

Is Off-Site SEO Important?

Off-page SEO is a ranking factor. Search engines, such as Google, use it to understand what your site is about and how it relates to a user’s search intent. 

Off-page SEO compliments your on-page SEO efforts. It adds credibility, relevance, and trustworthiness to your domain. 

Off-page and on-page SEO are 2 sides of the same coin. Pay attention to only one, and you risk your efforts being for nothing.

Our Complete Off-Site SEO Checklist

Our ultimate checklist for off-page SEO has 23 sure-fire ways to help your website rank better in the SERPs. 

Work through this list to improve your ranking.

1: Do Basic On-Page SEO First

Optimize on-page SEO to help your off-site SEO efforts succeed.

When you fine-tune your on-page SEO, you tell search engines that you’re not neglecting your website.

SEO is like owning a house. When you’ve got a beautiful exterior, the interior needs to reflect that, or you’ll turn visitors away. Improved on-page SEO will also provide visitors with an optimized user experience. 

Use our comprehensive on-page SEO checklist with 29 tasks you should do as a guide to ensure your on-page SEO works.

2: Start Link Building

Earn backlinks to rise through the SERPs.

Every link you score from another high-authority website is a vote of confidence. 

Backlinks (links from other domains) tell search engines that your site has authority and is a respected source of information.

The more quality and relevant backlinks you win, the higher you rank in the SERPs.

Unfortunately, link building is a complicated, effort-filled task. Only ever use whitehat link-building strategies. Search engines could penalize your site if you don’t.

Here are some link-building things you need to know.

3: Understand Link Juice

Understand link juice to get more link equity.

Analyze links to your website to see which provides the most authority. Use Ahrefs or Moz’s Open Site Explorer tools to review your links.

You can also use these tools to find complimentary sites with authority. Approach these websites and see if you can’t get a link back to your domain. If you don’t understand link juice, master it with our link juice guide.

4: Create A Link Building Strategy

Create a link-building strategy tailored to your niche.

Link-building is a long, complicated off-site SEO strategy, but it’s worth it.

In short, you need to:

• Find suitable sites with enough authority.
• Convince the site owner to link to your site.
• Rinse and repeat.

Here’s some straightforward advice on effectively building links to your site.

1. Create content that people want to link to: Look at your competitors. Do they have how-to guides, studies, or infographics that everyone is linking to? Create content that’s even bigger and better. Let site owners know to link to your resource instead of your competitor’s.
2. Build relationships: Don’t be a spammer. Don’t go begging for backlinks. Instead, form solid relationships with industry leaders within your niche. For instance, you could ask your vendors to write a review about your company.

Finding suitable backlinks is a long, arduous journey, but it’s essential to your success. 

5: Be Social

Be social and interact with your audience and other websites.

Once you’ve become social, search engines will see that you’re gaining traffic from various sources. They will assume that you’ve got engaging, high-quality content and will rank your site higher. Here's how to quickly become social.

6: Be Active On Social Media

Regularly share your new content on social media.

Being active on social media means your domain is alive and well. You can boost your engagements by responding to social media mentions about your website, products, or services.

Reply to reviews, answer questions, and share valuable information.

People may become curious about your website when you’re active on social media. Soon, you’ll gain some extra organic traffic. This traffic is essential for conquering the SERPs.

7: Leverage Those Comments

Leave comments on other sites.

Not every website is your competitor. Find complementary websites, and engage with their content through comments.

For instance, approaching office-automation websites will pay off if you have a website about booking software. You can establish yourself as a leader by leaving positive, helpful contributions here.

Every contribution is an opportunity for someone to notice you. They may check out your profile and then your website.

While commenting isn’t a powerful off-page SEO strategy, every bit helps.

8: Dominate Local SEO

If you're a local business, then focus on dominating a geographical area.

You need to optimize your local SEO if you’ve got a brick-and-mortar business or a site that services clients in a specific area.

For instance, if you’ve got a hair salon in New York, you need to let search engines know that you serve customers in New York.

9: Update Local Citation And Directory Profiles

Update your local citation and directory profiles to dominate local SEO.

Local citations and directory profiles can help your website climb through the SERPs. If you’re planning on using this tactic, keep the following in mind:

• Only list your website on trustworthy, high-authority directories.
• Always provide the latest information about your company.
• Update your listing regularly.
• Create a Google My Business Listing.

Being listed on a trusted directory will make it easier for people to find your business or website. It also adds another juicy source of traffic for your domain.

10: Promote With Paid Ads

Use paid advertising to get traction and test your landing pages.

Paid advertising can help your content, products, or services gain more exposure. It also narrows your audience and targets a specific user persona more likely to convert.

11: Embrace Content Marketing

Create content to reach your target audience.

To attract the ideal audience for your niche, create content and lure them in with information that addresses their specific needs.

Content marketing is an excellent way to drive more traffic to your website. You can also use it to generate more leads and ultimately improve your website’s ranking.

12: Start Guest Blogging

Find relevant, high-authority websites where you can start guest blogging.

Guest blogging is a fantastic way to promote your site and build your brand. A guest post can introduce a new audience to your brand, improve traffic, and increase your revenue.

Here’s an excellent guide on how to do guest posting.

13: Start Pitching On HARO

Get high-quality backlinks and brand mentions using Help A Reporter Out (HARO).

HARO connects journalists with authoritative sources. As a business owner you can be a source. HARO is free to sign up to and you can score very high quality links from media publications like Forbes, The Washington Post and Business Insider.

The trick to success on HARO is to pitch consistently with unique insight. It's a time-consuming gig, but it can be very effective.

Read our guide on how to pitch using HARO, or check out our HARO link building service.

If you're familiar with HARO, then you may be interested in these HARO alternatives.

14: Leverage Digital PR

Get massive exposure on national press using digital PR.

Digital PR is an advanced off-page SEO tactic, and requires a fair bit of creative thinking. But in short, digital PR relies on creating interesting insight that dovetails with the prevailing news.

For example, currently there is a fuel shortage in the UK. All major publications and 100s of journalists are writing about this issue.

If you are an automative or energy business, you could use public data like search traffic statistics or Google Trends, to uncover if there are any unusual anomalies like a spike in the searches for electric cars.

If you found an interesting data point (like a 50% spike in searches for electric cars since the fuel crisis), you could pitch this insight to every journalist writing about the fuel shortage. If the insight is interesting enough they will often use it in their on-going news coverage or even write a full article on the insight. And importantly they will source your website as the one that did the research.

15: Recycle And Reuse

Repurpose old content in new forms to expand your reach.

If you’ve got excellent content, consider repurposing it. For instance, you could turn a how-to guide into an explainer video, ebook, or podcast.

Since you’ve already done most of the hard work by researching and creating the original content, repurposing it’ll be quick and easy. 

You’ll also capture a new audience on a new platform that could diversify your traffic sources.

See our guide on content repurposing.

16: Build Relationships

Find industry leaders or influencers and build a relationship with them.

Social media makes it easy to find influencers or industry leaders. Identify these figures and build positive relationships with them. 

They may be inclined to share your content with their audience. You may also get an opportunity to work with them or sponsor them for some added exposure.

17: Be Active On Question And Answer Sites

Become an authority on public Q&A sites.

Build professional authority and get your name out there by answering questions on public Q&A sites like Quora, Reddit and eHow.

Here are some tips for doing this:

• Identify yourself.
• Link to your site whenever possible.
• Use your content and articles to answer questions.
• Answer questions as clearly and accurately as possible.

While the backlinks you get from these sites may not be dofollow, they can quickly help establish more traffic and ensure that you’re a leader in your industry.

18: Understand User Intent

Create content that has value and addresses the user’s search intent.

Search intent is the reason why a user is looking for something. Do they want to:

• Buy something.
• Research a product or service.
• Find a service provider or website.

When you create content that addresses the user’s intent, you create content with real value. Readers will share your content, you'll convert traffic into sales, and improve your SERP ranking.

19: Share Your Knowledge

Share your valuable resources.

Share your content if you’ve created standalone resources like infographics, ebooks, or videos. 

Many sites, such as Scribd, Academia, and SlideShare, let you place an URL to your site. This backlink can be a valuable addition to your link-building strategy. 

Sharing your knowledge also spreads the word that you’re an industry expert. You’ll quickly gain more followers and, ultimately, leads.

20: Know Your Competitors

Understand how you compare to other sites in your niche.

SERP research lets you quickly see how you rank against your competitors. Google your target keyword, and see who comes up.

Use this list of competitors to see how they promote their sites. A detailed survey with a tool like Ahrefs can quickly show you why they rank so high.

When you compare your site with your competitors, you’ll see where you’re lacking and how you can improve. 

For instance, when you analyze a competitor’s backlink profile, you can better understand which sites regularly link to the content in your niche. You can use this knowledge to target these sites for backlinks that’ll make you outrank your competition.

21: Steal Competitors’ broken links

Use broken link building to steal your competitors’ broken links.

Once you’ve run a competitor analysis, you may end up with an excellent opportunity to do broken link building. To steal competitor’s links, you’ll have to:

• Check a competitor’s backlink profile.
• Use tools like Ahrefs and Check My Links to find broken external links.
• Find a suitable replacement from your site.
• Contact the site owners and tell them about the broken link and your page.

You can do broken-link building in bulk. When several sites link to a broken link, you can contact all of them with your fix. 

22: Use Brandjacking

Use brandjacking to create content that brings in bottom-funnel visitors.

With brandjacking, you can get your brand to page 1 when people search for your competitors. Follow our handy brandjacking guide to make your way to #1 in the SERPs. 

Here are some key notes to remember:

• Create content that compares products, i.e., Apple Vs. Samsung.
• Create alternatives, such as Top 5 Apple Alternatives.
• Write detailed reviews.

When consumers search for a competing or complimentary product, they may end up on your site. Here you can convert them into leads or life-long fans.

23: Be Consistent

Always be diligent and consistent when working with off-page SEO.

Mastering off-page SEO is not a quick-fix solution for instant fame and fortune. It takes time and effort. The work you put in today will only pay off in the future.

As long as you stay consistent and continue to put in the effort, there’s no reason why you can’t reach that coveted #1 spot. 

Succeed And Dominate The SERPs With This Off-Page SEO Checklist

Our ultimate checklist for off-page SEO tactics provides you with many ways to promote your website. 

While the most crucial part is link building, don’t neglect social media, paid promotions or becoming a true leader in your niche.

If you find that time is an issue, consider chatting to us. We can help improve your off-page SEO with a detailed strategy.