Your website should be the central hub of information about your company and the services that you offer. But you can’t simply build a site and then forget about it. Ongoing maintenance is necessary to ensure search engine optimization, or SEO.
SEO is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a site from search engines.
SEO efforts can be broken into two parts – on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Both efforts should be done simultaneously and work together to improve your SERP (search engine response page) performance. Here is a look at the ingredients of an off-page SEO strategy and why each ingredient matters.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-Page SEO is the work that you do outside of your website to drive traffic to your site. This includes online citations (such as directory listings on services like Yelp, Angie’s List, Google My Business, Better Business Bureau, etc.), blog mentions from trusted influencers, links to your site in social media posts and more.
Think of it as building trust in the digital community. The more quality links (from quality sources) that is driving traffic to your website, the more Google sees that your site is a trusted source of information for people. When Google sees that, it will more likely place your website higher in the search results.
But here’s the most important thing to keep in mind – the sites that contain links to your website must be quality sources. When it comes to off-page SEO, it is more about quality than quantity. It’s also important to have a mix of links. Here is a look at the recipe ingredients to a sound off-page SEO strategy.
Off-Page SEO Recipe Ingredient: Business Listings or Online Citations
Citations is an online reference, or business listing. It includes the company name, phone number and address. Citations are just one of the ingredients for an off-page SEO strategy.
Building citations is part of an overall local ranking strategy. Basically, citations help to tell Google that you offer services that people are seeking in your geographic area. Once Google knows this, it is more likely to pull up your company during a local “near me” search.
A 2018 study by BrightLocal revealed that local businesses who ranked in the top 10 positions in a Google search have an average of 81 citations. Some of the top listings include: Angie’s List, Better Business Bureau, Google My Business, Facebook, Manta, MapQuest, Yellow Pages and Yelp.
Be sure to seek out online citations that are relevant to your window film company and the services that you provide. For example, 3M offers an online directory for authorized users. Make sure that your information is correct in the listing.
It also is important to keep all of your citations nearly identical (which is referred to as NAP consistency). For example, if you type out your address “4123 Clark Rd.” on Google My Business and then type your address on Yelp as “4123 Clark Road” – the difference in the way you spell out “Road” can work against you. The address, phone number and company name need to be identical across all listings.
So, how do you gain and manage listings? There are several online services that can assist you in doing this, including BrightLocal.com. However, if you choose to do this manually, be sure to keep track of your username and passwords for each listing site. If you ever change your phone number or address, you will be thankful you kept those records.
Off-Page SEO Recipe Ingredient: Social Media Backlinks
Linking to your website on your social media posts can assist you in your off-page SEO strategy. This is another ingredient to an off-page SEO strategy.
Your website should be the central hub of information and include details about the 3M products you carry and the services that you provide. You want to drive traffic to your site in hopes that people will ultimately call and book an appointment or schedule a consultation. Therefore, adding a link to your site at the end of relevant social media posts should be standard procedure. These same links also assist you in your off-page SEO strategy.
What’s nice about this off-page SEO strategy is that it is something that you can control. Most likely your company is already engaging on Facebook (and here are reasons you should engage on LinkedIn, too). Begin adding a link to your website at the end of relevant posts to drive traffic to your site and assist with off-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO Recipe Ingredient: Earning Backlinks from Outside Sources
Earning quality backlinks is considered one of the hardest ingredients to obtain for off-page SEO strategy. But it often is one of the most important strategies to employ.
Once again, the key word here is quality (not quantity). To determine if a website is a quality site, it’s important to look at a site’s domain authority score and its relevancy.
About Domain Authority Scores
Each website is assigned an authority score. Different SEO companies (including Moz and SEMRush) have slightly different ways to calculate this, but overall, an authority score is an indicator of the overall quality of a website. A higher authority score is a tangible measurement to determine whether a site will rank higher on a Google search.
About Relevancy
Off-page links should be on sites that are relevant to your subject matter. What makes a site relevant? The topic of the site should match the topic of your link. Finding bloggers or websites that focus on window film content should be key to your SEO strategy.
But what’s most important – domain authority score or relevancy? The Upper Ranks insists that relevancy trumps domain authority scores every time.
“Relevance means context and a link that makes contextual sense is always better from a user’s perspective,” according to The Upper Ranks blog. “Put yourself in a user’s shoes for a minute. Your average website visitor doesn’t even know what DA (domain authority) is. They’re on a website consuming content or researching a product or service. When that user clicks an external link, they have a specific intent and expectation that the destination page will satisfy that. Domain authority has no weight in this case.”
So, how you gain backlinks from credible, relevant sources? SEMRush lists 12 ways to earn backlinks, including:
- Broken Link Building – seek out broken links on websites related to window film. Contact the website owner and ask them to substitute the broken link with your own.
- Unlinked Brand Mentions – find places on the internet where your company was mentioned and ask the site owner to place a hyperlink to your site on the mention.
- Business Association Links – join your local Chamber of Commerce (or other credible business association) and ask them to link to your site in their directory.
- Digital Public Relations – reach out to journalists who might be covering your industry and pitch them news stories. (See the media relations kit on AccentDealers.com.) Also, offer to write a guest column for an associated trade association or trade magazine.
There are other ways to earn quality backlinks. Remember that the most important key to this strategy is to find websites that are relevant and work toward earning back links on those websites.
Speak to a Marketing Expert
Off-page SEO is an important strategy as it relates to improving your website’s overall Google search ranking. As a value-added benefit of partnering with Accent Distributing as your 3M™ Authorized Dealer, Accent Distributing can put you in touch with a full-service marketing firm who can answer your questions. Reach out to Inside Sales at [email protected] for more information.
