Search engine optimization is a broad subject. Like a large tree, it has many branches, and one needs to understand these branches to really grasps what SEO is all about. There is a popular side of SEO, called off-page SEO, which can prove difficult to define and understand. I will attempt to explain it in the simplest of ways with this article so that you begin to understand and use SEO in a way that draws you the results you crave.
Before we go into off-page SEO proper, I’d like to remind you what SEO means. It means search engine optimization and involves methods by which one can optimize their site for easy access and recognition by search engines. This makes the respective sites rank high on search engines, in an area where people are most likely to click on them, visiting your site and giving you the traffic you need.
Off-page SEO
If you were tasked to sell a dress that seems to be doing badly in the market—that is, if someone promised you a bulk of money if you managed to sell a certain number of dresses, you would do two things.
First, you will make sure you make that set of dresses become the finest dresses in the world. You will aim to make the kind of dresses that make people turn around, the kind whose colors are warm and welcoming, giving splendor to whoever puts them on.
You will not only stop at making the dress. No. To get the many sales you crave, you will make posters. You will get some time on-air, radio or TV, and sell the dress. And after that, you will look for a way to advertise this dress.
You may even use platforms like a Facebook business. Anything at all to make sure the dress is visible and in everyone’s eyes. From this example, it is obvious that you are trying to sell the dress by:
- Improving the quality of the dress (Physically tweaking the dress so that it looks good)
- Making the dress a lot more visible, so that people come around and then see its physical quality, which is further going to encourage them to buy it.
Imagine your page to be one big, beautiful dress. The tweaks you make on the page are called on-page SEO. Because you are physically altering the page, making certain, it looks good.
Whereas the adverts, the things you do without physically altering the page, are called off-page SEO. The page remains the same, with no changes made, but traffic still comes from search engines.
Off-page SEO can be done in a number of ways, all of which usually involve some traffic from other pages or platforms on the internet. These platforms, like radio ads, do a beautiful dress bring traffic to your website even without you altering the page.
You can do off-page SEO by using social media—Twitter, Facebook, etc.—and making guest posts on other sites similar to yours. Off-page SEO does not work in isolation. It usually works in line with on-Page SEO to produce desired results.