Off page SEO, sometimes referred to as Link Building is viewed to be the most effective single activity you can undertake to improve your search engine ranking and therefore drive traffic to your site.
Link building requires you to actively seek out other, preferably highly ranked sites, and request that they link to your site.
The Google search engines positively "weight" off page links from reputable sites as they know that it's an impartial "vote" that your site has worthwhile content. So if, for example you are able to get The Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal to link to your site, you would see an enormous "accelerator effect" on your own ranking as those sites have a lot of "authority".
Why?
Because it's hard to do! Google knows this and realises that it's very hard to fake or to automate. When you see the list of ways to boost your off page SEO you will quickly see it's not an instant fix, but one which takes a significant investment of time and human intervention and energy.
Produce Quality content
Readers of this blog will know that we are passionate advocates of producing genuinely valuable content (see our free eBook on the Content Marketing Revolution) that assists your target audience with the business problems they face in their daily lives. Here is just another reason why you should do this, the search engines love it. Position yourself as a thought leader, build awareness of how to solve the problems your buyers have, advance the debate, share your views, and offer your solutions.
Put your blog to work
A blog is central to off page SEO for two reasons, it allows you to invite other blog writers you admire to contribute to your blog and it allows you to offer your content to other blog writers with whom you have something in common. By inviting guest bloggers and guest blogging yourself you are building the backlinks that the search engines love. Inviting guest bloggers takes time. You have to identify who you think will add value to your target audience and then track them down, contact them and persuade them it's a good idea. It's not instant but the ranking rewards are worth it.
Share and share alike
Add easy ways to bookmark and share your content on your website. Simple one click buttons are a familiar site on websites today and allows your content to be broadcast simply to the social mediasphere, such as Twitter and LinkedIn but also bookmarking sites like, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us
Check out the competition
B2B Marketers have a number of tools at their disposal to do some serious competitor research. If you are smart enough to use an inbound marketing platform like Hubspot this is built right into the application for you. If not then check out one of the tools available online. Pick your highest ranked competitor and take a look at their backlinks, see who they are linking to. Replicate as many as you can.
Press releases
Good old fashioned press releases can work wonders for your off page SEO as many releases get picked up by new outlets and directories. Press release sites typically rank well and have a lot of link "authority".
So there are 5 ways to develop an effective link building strategy. Its requires a deliberate plan and focused deliberate effort over time. But the sooner you start the sooner you will start seeing your ranking improve.
What tips do you have for our readers on successful tactics for off page SEO?