Off-Page SEO
Summary
TLDRThe video discusses off-page SEO, emphasizing the importance of backlinks for improving search engine rankings. It explains how backlinks from high-authority sites significantly impact a webpage's rank and provides an overview of various link attributes like follow, nofollow, sponsored, and UGC. The video also highlights tools like SEMrush for analyzing backlinks and offers techniques for building quality backlinks, such as broken link building, using link building tools, and creating original content to attract links. The video concludes by encouraging viewers to apply these SEO strategies using SEMrush.
Takeaways
- 🔗 Off-page SEO, also known as off-site SEO, focuses on activities outside of your website that can influence your search engine rankings, with backlinks being the most significant factor.
- 🏆 Google uses backlinks as a key ranking factor, considering each backlink as a 'vote' for a webpage's authority. Links from popular and authoritative websites are more valuable.
- 📊 The SEMrush domain overview report includes metrics on backlinks and referring domains, both of which are crucial for assessing a website's authority.
- 🚫 Links can have different attributes such as 'follow', 'nofollow', 'sponsored', and 'ugc', which affect how Google perceives them. Nofollow and sponsored links are less valuable for ranking but still useful for other purposes.
- ⚠️ Buying or selling backlinks can lead to penalties from Google, including possible removal from search results. It's important to avoid link spam and ensure all backlinks are legitimate.
- 🔍 SEMrush provides tools to analyze backlinks, including identifying broken links, which can be opportunities for link building by offering your content as a replacement.
- ✉️ SEMrush's link building tool can automate the process of reaching out to relevant websites for backlinks, offering strategies like guest posting or directory listings.
- 📝 High-quality, original content, particularly content with original research or data, tends to attract more backlinks naturally and can be a highly effective link-building strategy.
- 📈 Conducting studies or research that fill a gap in your industry can lead to backlinks from authoritative sources, as journalists and bloggers often link to such data.
- 🎯 Focus on a few effective link-building strategies rather than trying to use all possible methods. Consistent and strategic efforts can help you compete for competitive keywords.
Q & A
What is off-page SEO?
-Off-page SEO, also known as off-site SEO, refers to all the activities done outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). The most important aspect of off-page SEO is backlinks, which are hyperlinks from other websites pointing to your site.
Why are backlinks important in off-page SEO?
-Backlinks are crucial because they are considered by search engines like Google as votes of confidence. The more quality backlinks a website has, the higher it is likely to rank in search results. Google also evaluates the popularity of the website providing the backlink, giving more weight to links from well-established sites.
How does Google view backlinks from more popular websites compared to less popular ones?
-Google considers backlinks from more popular websites, which themselves have a lot of backlinks, to be worth more than links from less popular websites. This means a backlink from a high-authority site can significantly boost your website's ranking more than multiple backlinks from low-authority sites.
What are 'follow' and 'nofollow' links?
-'Follow' links are regular hyperlinks that pass on SEO value from one site to another. 'Nofollow' links include the 'rel=nofollow' attribute in the HTML, signaling to search engines not to count these links as votes for the site they point to. Although Google treats nofollow links as hints, they do not carry as much weight as follow links.
Why do some websites use 'nofollow' links?
-Websites use nofollow links to prevent link spam, reduce the number of people trying to get backlinks purely for SEO, and comply with Google's guidelines on paid links. Nofollow links are commonly used in user-generated content (UGC) like blog comments and forums to avoid endorsing potentially spammy links.
What is broken link building and how does it work?
-Broken link building involves finding broken links on other websites and reaching out to the site owners to suggest replacing the broken link with a link to a relevant page on your website. This helps the site owner fix broken links, which is beneficial for user experience, while also gaining a backlink for your own site.
How can the SEMrush link building tool help in acquiring backlinks?
-The SEMrush link building tool helps identify websites that are likely to link back to your site by analyzing competitors' backlinks and ranking keywords. It offers different outreach strategies, automates email templates, and helps manage the entire process of reaching out to potential backlink sources efficiently.
What type of content tends to get the most backlinks?
-Content that contains original data, studies, and original research pieces tend to naturally attract more backlinks. This is because journalists and bloggers often link to such content as sources when writing their articles.
How can original research content be used to build backlinks?
-Creating and publishing original research content, such as surveys and studies, can attract backlinks from other websites that cite your research. Reaching out to journalists and bloggers who have previously linked to similar studies can further amplify the reach and backlink potential of your research content.
Why is it important to avoid buying cheap backlinks from link building services or freelancers?
-Buying cheap backlinks can be detrimental because these links are often of low quality and can be flagged as spam by search engines. Google has strict policies against paid links that manipulate rankings, and engaging in such practices can result in severe penalties, including removal from search results.
Outlines
🔗 Importance of Off-Page SEO and Backlinks
Off-page SEO, or off-site SEO, involves all SEO activities that take place outside your own website, with the most important element being backlinks. Backlinks, or hyperlinks from other websites to your own, are crucial because they act as votes of confidence for your site. Google uses backlinks to determine the popularity and relevance of web pages. Backlinks from high-authority sites are more valuable than those from less popular sites. Studies have shown that backlinks significantly impact a webpage's ability to rank well in search engines like Google and Bing. Tools like SEMrush's domain overview report help analyze backlinks and understand a website's ranking power.
⚖️ Understanding Link Attributes and Their Impact
Link attributes such as 'follow', 'nofollow', 'sponsored', and 'ugc' play a significant role in how Google values backlinks. 'Follow' links are regular hyperlinks, while 'nofollow' links tell Google not to count them as votes for the linked site, though they are still considered hints. 'Sponsored' and 'ugc' links are treated similarly to 'nofollow' links. These attributes help prevent spam and manipulation of search rankings. It is essential to avoid buying backlinks, as it can lead to severe penalties, including removal from Google search results. Tools like SEMrush's backlink analytics report provide insights into the types of backlinks a site has.
🔍 Techniques for Building High-Quality Backlinks
Building high-quality backlinks is crucial for improving search rankings. One effective method is broken link building, which involves finding and fixing broken links on other websites by pointing them to relevant content on your site. SEMrush tools can help identify these opportunities by analyzing competitor domains and broken pages. Another method is using SEMrush's link building tool to find and reach out to relevant websites for link requests, such as guest posts. Crafting personalized and professional outreach emails increases the chances of securing valuable backlinks. These strategies help build a robust backlink profile, enhancing your site's SEO.
📊 Creating Link-Worthy Content Through Original Research
Creating high-quality, original research content is a powerful way to attract backlinks. Content that includes unique data and studies naturally garners more backlinks, as it is often cited by journalists and bloggers. An example is a study on top-level domains that gained significant attention and backlinks from major sites. To replicate this success, analyze competitors' top-linked pages using SEMrush tools and create updated versions of popular studies. Reach out to the same journalists and bloggers who linked to the original studies. This approach not only builds backlinks but also establishes your content as a credible source in your industry.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Off-page SEO
💡Backlinks
💡Authority score
💡Follow links
💡Nofollow links
💡Anchor text
💡Link spam
💡Broken link building
💡Guest post
💡Original research
Highlights
Off-page SEO is a critical component of SEO, focusing on factors outside your website, primarily backlinks.
Google counts hyperlinks as votes, with links from popular websites being more valuable.
Backlinks significantly impact a webpage's ranking ability, as confirmed by various SEO studies.
Google uses the anchor text of backlinks to determine a page's relevance for specific keywords.
No follow links, while less valuable for SEO, can still provide referral traffic and reduce spam.
Google has strict policies against paid links and considers them link spam, which can lead to penalties.
The SEMrush domain overview report provides essential backlink metrics, including the number of backlinks and referring domains.
Broken link building is an effective technique where you replace broken links on other websites with links to your content.
SEMrush's link building tool helps identify and reach out to websites for backlink opportunities.
Creating original research content is a powerful way to attract backlinks naturally.
Surveys and studies are particularly effective in earning backlinks from larger websites and journalists.
Competitor analysis using SEMrush can reveal top-linked pages, providing inspiration for your own backlink strategies.
The backlink gap tool in SEMrush shows sites linking to competitors but not to you, highlighting potential link opportunities.
Effective link building strategies can help you compete with larger websites for competitive keywords.
SEMrush offers various tools to simplify the backlink-building process, making it accessible even for beginners.
Transcripts
thank you
[Music]
off-page SEO is the last major component
of SEO but that doesn't mean it's not
important some people have built large
businesses or very successful careers
based on off-page SEO alone without even
touching on-page or technical issues
off-page SEO which is also called
off-site SEO is just what it sounds like
it's all the parts of SEO that aren't
actually on your own website in practice
the most important part of off-page SEO
is backlinks meaning hyperlinks that
point from other websites to your own
when Google was first created it was
competing with lots of other search
engines but one of the ways that Google
was able to provide better search
results was by taking links into account
basically Google counted every hyperlink
as a vote so a web page that had 100
links pointing back at it from 100 other
websites would rank better than a web
page that only had 10 links pointing
back at it from other websites
Google also considered links from more
popular websites which themselves had a
lot of links pointing to them to be
worth more votes compared to Links from
less popular websites so imagine website
a with 10 million backlinks pointing to
it and website B with only 10 backlinks
pointing to it
getting a link from website a to your
own website would be worth a lot more
than getting a link from website B and
that's still true today Google has
confirmed that backlinks are a ranking
Factor they won't tell us exactly how
important they are but studies that
different seos have done over the years
have consistently shown backlinks make a
huge difference in a web Page's ability
to rank and just like pretty much
everything else we've talked about in
this course that's also true for other
search engines like being so backlinks
are incredibly important
that's why semrush's domain overview
report includes several important
features related to backlinks which you
can use to analyze any website
at the top left is the website's
Authority score which is an overall
measurement of how strong a website's
ranking power is it's based on backlinks
as well as a couple of other factors
then over to the right are the backlinks
metrics this shows the raw number of
backlinks and below that it shows the
number of referring domains which is how
many different websites those backlinks
are coming from
there's nothing wrong with getting more
than one backlink from a single website
in fact it's helpful but generally
speaking a higher number of referring
domains is more important than a higher
number of individual backlinks and of
course you can click on either of those
elements to see all the backlinks or
referring domains let's click on the
backlinks number to see the full
backlink analytics report
the backlinks tab of this report gives
us some new information about the links
pointing to this website the link
attributes section here on the right
shows follow nofollow sponsored and ugc
these are important to understand
follow links are just regular hyperlinks
no follow links look like normal
hyperlinks to users but if you look at
the HTML they include the Rel equals
nofollow attribute like this
Google recommends using nofollow where
you want it and link to a page but don't
want to imply any type of endorsement
the nofollow tag basically tells Google
not to count this link as a vote for the
site it's pointing to
in reality Google has said that it still
considers nofollow links to be hints but
they aren't weighted as heavily as a
regular follow links
because nofollow links are less valuable
for SEO purposes one reason websites use
them is to produce spam issues for
example the comments section of most
blogs automatically adds the nofollow
attribute to all the outbattle links or
else it uses the ugc attribute which
Google treats similarly to nofollow
comment spam is still incredibly common
but it would be even more common if the
links were followed
lots of large websites also know follow
their outbound links by default
especially when they have many
contributors like Wikipedia and Forbes
this helps reduce the number of people
trying to write for them simply for link
building purposes it's also important to
nofollow any links that were paid for
you can do this either using the
nofollow attribute or the sponsored
attribute which Google treats similarly
this is important because Google has
strict policies against paid links that
are followed Google considers buying or
selling any links for ranking purposes
to be link spam and websites that engage
in linkspam can be severely penalized
including potentially being removed from
Google search results entirely by the
way that's also a good reason not to buy
the cheap backlinks from most of the
link Building Services or Freelancers
you might see online those backlinks
will pretty much always be worthless and
they may even get you penalized
so the link attributes section of the
backlinks report shows how many of the
links are followed and then how many are
instead marked as nofollow sponsored or
ugc all of which carry less weight with
and then underneath that we can see the
full list of backlinks that are pointing
to the Investopedia website including
the pages they're pointing from
the target URL they're pointing to
and the anchor text they're using
the anchor text of a link is simply the
text that is actually linked from
sometimes it's just the URL of the page
it's pointing to like this
other times it just says click here
and often the anchor text will say
something descriptive about the page
it's linking to
anchor text matters because Google uses
it to determine what a page is about if
your web page is targeting the keyword
best dog food and it gets a bunch of
backlinks that say best dog food or
related phrases like dog food or Purina
dog food these links are basically
telling Google that your page is
relevant for those keywords in a minute
we'll look at some specific link
building techniques you can use but
before we do let's quickly sum up what
you've learned about backlinks so far
getting backlinks helps web pages rank
better on Google especially if those
backlinks are high quality meaning they
come from web pages and websites that
themselves have a lot of backlinks
pointing to them
backlinks with relevant anchor text can
have an even bigger effect but it's
important not to over optimize for this
or Google may see it as link spam and
penalize your site another dangerous
type of leak spam is buying and selling
backlinks which you should avoid
backlinks with the nofollow sponsored or
ugc attributes are worth much less from
a ranking perspective than regular
follow backlinks but they can still be
valuable for other reasons like referral
traffic
you can use semrush's backlink analytics
to see the backlinks pointing to any
website
for very low competition keywords
backlinks may not matter much but when
it comes to moderate or difficult
keywords you're going to have a lot of
trouble ranking without some solid
backlinks so now let's cover a few ways
you can build backlinks
there are actually almost an infinite
number of ways to do this some are
effective and some not so much here are
a few techniques that you can use the
first is broken link building
with broken link building you can find
outbound links on other websites that
are pointing to a page that got moved or
deleted in other words those links are
broken because they point to error pages
you find those broken links and then you
reach out to the webmaster to ask them
to link to your site instead as a way to
fix them this works because website
owners don't want to have a bunch of
broken links on their site it's a bad
user experience and it doesn't take a
lot of effort for them to fix those
broken links by pointing them to your
site instead as long as you give them a
relevant web page to point them to of
course
semrush makes this whole process pretty
simple
first look at a competitor's domain in
the backlink Analytics tool then click
on the index Pages Tab and click on the
broken Pages at the top
here's a list of broken pages on this
site sorted by the number of domains
that are linking to them
there are multiple pages on this one
site that have backlinks from hundreds
of other websites pointing to them
every one of those is a broken link
building opportunity
you can look to see if you have any
pages on your site that would make sense
for these links to point to instead and
if not you can build new pages on your
site that would make sense
for now let's imagine we have a page on
our website that's similar to what this
one here used to be
we could even use archive.org to see
exactly what was on that page before but
in this case let's just assume
we click on the number of backlinks that
are pointing to that page and that takes
us to the list of those exact backlinks
and the pages they're coming from this
is sorted by the pages Authority scores
so the most powerful backlink sources
are at the top and then we can click
through to each of these find the
contact information for the websites and
reach out via email social media or
contact form to tell them about the
broken backlink and how they may want to
fix it by pointing to our page instead
there are a lot of broken links out
there and this can be a pretty effective
way to build backlinks to your site
another way you can build backlinks is
through semrush's link building tool
this tool makes it super easy to find
and reach out to lots of relevant
websites with different types of Link
requests via email
start by clicking on the link building
tool in the left nav menu
enter your own domain for example
investopedia.com
it will automatically fill in some
keywords that it thinks you might care
about We'll add a few more like Roth
401k how to invest and stock market Roi
and we'll delete some of the ones below
that don't seem relevant
then on the competitors step
these look good so we'll just continue
it will take a few minutes to collect
and analyze the data and then it will
show you a list of prospects
these are websites that are currently
linking to your competitors and or
ranking for the keywords you chose
in other words these are websites you
might be able to get some relevant
backlinks from
click on the blue button next to any of
these to add them to your in progress
list you can add as many as you want
then pop over to the in progress Tab and
it lists them out
in the Outreach strategy column click
the down carrot to see the different
types of Outreach strategies you might
use the one you choose will fill out an
email template for you based on that
strategy
for example the directory slash catalog
option is for asking to be added to a
directory style page
and the guest post option lets you ask
them if you can write a guest post for
their blog since guest posts usually
come with a link back to the author's
website let's click this guest post
option and then click contact
this shows you the email addresses of
some contacts that semrush automatically
found for the website it also has some
placeholders which are variables that
you can use to add domains or URLs to
your email automatically instead of
manually typing them in over and over
again
and then it has some very basic
placeholder language in the subject line
and email body that you should
definitely replace in this case we might
use a subject line like do you accept
guest posts
and then in the email body say something
like hi I'm Kyle Byers I've been working
in blank industry for 10 years and I'm
currently the VP of XYZ I would love to
write a guest post for you covering the
topic of ABC
would you potentially be interested if
so I'd be happy to send a writing sample
and some topic ideas for the Post
best Kyle
then you can save it as a template to
use again and again
and you can send the email directly from
here with the green button below
semris makes this easy to do over and
over again for a lot of different
websites
the last link building technique is a
little more passive but it's actually my
favorite it involves building an awesome
piece of content and then reaching out
to the right people to get it to spread
excellent content in general tends to
get many more backlinks than average
content does which makes sense right
you're much more likely to link out or
share to a great page than to a bad one
but beyond that there's one type of
content that gets even more backlinks
than almost any other content that
contains original data studies and
original research pieces tend to
naturally get a lot of backlinks because
journalists and bloggers link to them as
sources when they write their articles
for example I used to run a marketing
blog called growth Badger it was just a
little hobby site that I used to test
different marketing strategies and talk
about them now the marketing industry is
really competitive it's hard to stand
out because you're competing against
world-class marketers so building
backlinks to a marketing blog can be
pretty difficult
one day I decided to run a study about
top level domains people have been
arguing for years about whether having
a.com domain really mattered or if you
should use a DOT IO or net or dot org or
whatever people felt very passionately
about it but there wasn't any hard data
that they could point to I thought if I
could find a way to prove their point
one way or another I could get a ton of
backlinks and attention for my little
blog
so I set up a test and I paid some
Freelancers to take it it was basically
just a survey but it asked people how
much they would trust different made up
websites using different top level
domains like.com dot IO and so on then
it also tested how well those people
remembered those websites addresses and
a couple other things
and I compared the results based on top
level domain
I also asked some SEO industry experts
to add commentary to the post this was
to help give it a little more
credibility and also because I knew they
would share it with their social media
followers if they contributed
then I published the results on my blog
the post got a lot of attention just
like I'd hoped first on Twitter then on
blogs and articles it got backlinks from
much larger websites like the Shopify
blog GoDaddy Wix Mashable aweber and
More in fact it's still getting
backlinks today years later
there are lots of opportunities to
create your own original research piece
like this one and earn it a lot of
backlinks in the process one way to get
ideas is by looking at your competitors
top linked pages in The backlink
Analytics tool for example two of
upworks top linked pages are survey
results they're good studies but they're
both years old at this point and they
both have thousands of backlinks
if I was working for one of upworks
competitors like Fiverr or
freelancer.com I would make it a
priority to launch our own freelancer
survey I would probably even use a lot
of the same questions that upwork did
and after publishing the results I'd
reach out to the same journalists and
bloggers who linked to upwork studies
before because that they linked to
upwork's Old studies they'd probably
link to my up-to-date one too
this approach blurs link building and
digital PR and it's a great way to
attract high quality backlinks passively
over time as I mentioned there are lots
of other ways to build backlinks also
semrush even has more tools for that
that we didn't talk about
for example the backlink Gap tool lets
you see what sites are linking to your
competitors but not to you that's a
great way to find things like comparison
pages and directories where you can get
your site added to a list of others in
your industry
but you don't actually need many link
building strategies in order to be
successful just one or two that you can
use effectively can help you compete
with much bigger websites for some
pretty competitive keywords and that
wraps up this lesson and also this
module
you're now equipped with SEO knowledge
to help you get started so why not put
your new understanding into practice by
heading over to the semrush platform to
try out your new skills thanks for
watching and I really hope you enjoyed
it if you have any questions or comments
please reach out to me on Twitter or
[Music]
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