The Importance of Off Page SEO
Performing search engine optimization on your site alone is no longer enough to get you found on search engines. The internet has grown into a diverse marketplace of websites and Google now evaluates a multitude of sources when calculating your Michigan based business's website ranking. It is because of this diversity Off Page SEO should be an essential part of your SEO strategy.
These Off Page sources include business directories , backlinks, bookmarking, social media, and NAP consistency. You may have heard of some or all of these sources before, you may even be actively engaging your off page SEO in all five of these topics. But do you have them properly setup and are you managing them to their full potential?
Applying proper OFF Page SEO is critical on how Google perceives your site relevancy and in turn will affect how well it ranks your business in the Google Search Rankings.
Part of our SEO Services include inspecting and adjusting all of the Off Page SEO topics in a way that is most effective for your business search engine optimization. Let's go into the details below.
Increase your SEO by listing your Michigan Business ON Social Sites
To name a few Business listing sites we will include Yelp, Yellow Pages, Bing, Facebook, superpages, TripAdvisor, and Google Plus. For the most part business listing sites are the same, they will all have options for a business description, options to link to your website, areas to list coupons or special events, as well as your NAP.
While different functions of each and every one of these listing sites could be elaborated on in more detail its most important to understand the common ground characteristics that they share and why they are important to search engine optimization.
First of all listing sites provide reputable backlinks to your website. They also offer reviews which search engines value when ranking your site in search results. It is advised that you always have some type of web based reviews located on your site, as this is not only good for SEO but it also assist in customer conversion. A great wordpress review widget that Web Flux favor is Google Reviews and can be found on the WP network.
Second are your business listing descriptions and category selections. Each Listing will offer an area to add a business description. It is highly recommended to maintain consistency throughout all your listings by using the same business description. This will allow google and other search engines to gather a consistent and accurate definition of your business.
Just like your description every one of your listings should maintain the same category selection. While some listing sites may have different categories, choosing one that is most consistent will benefit your Off Site SEO as it communicates clear and consistent characteristics about your business to search engines. Consistency is important for rankings!
Back Links Are Critical to the Search Engine Optimization Process
Backlinks are one of the most important parts of Off Page SEO. A network of strong backlinks tells search engines that the content on your website is valuable enough that other related websites are willing to link to it. This is essential to boost web page authority.
There are many different ways in acquiring back links however the most important thing to consider is the credibility of websites that are linking to your content. Build relationships with similar businesses or other search engine optimized blogs that are willing to post content that references your website with rel=follow links. Social Sharing buttons are also a great way to build back links, although not as authoritative as a web page links they still hold weight.
Make sure their links are rel=follow. If the webmaster that is linking to your site is using rel=nofollow that does your site no good. A rel=nofollow tells search engine spiders to not follow the link and therefore they won't travel to your website. This rule goes both ways. If a blog or business is willing to post some links to your site you should reciprocate the favor with rel=follow links. Follow our blog for more strategies on backlinking.
Why Bookmarking is important for effective Michigan SEO Services.
Acquiring bookmarks will tell search engines that your website content is valuable. The more bookmarks you can acquire the stronger your rankings will be. Bookmarks come in many forms. One you may be familiar with is located right on your browsers. Most browsers allow you to bookmark webpages. Search engines have access to this data which means the more bookmarks you have the greater authority you site will be optimized for.
There are also many blog sites that serve as bookmarking sites and improve your SEO. We recommend and use these bookmarking sites when building our clients web authority. To name a few you may use are Digg.com Pinterest, and redit.
Social Media Engagement Is great for Improving SEO through backlinks.
Social media engagement is a great way to build up the number of backlinks to your website. The more shares, retweets and re post you can get on your social media channels will have a direct effect on your web page authority which will assist in boosting your search ranking. There are many different strategies to go about increasing your social engagement however for the sake this page and its length we recommend two simple things. Two things that we practice with our own clients are social referral marketing programs and consistently creating quality content that is interesting enough to earn a share. Nothing is free, to get social links you have to earn them by producing high quality blog material.
Make Sure your SEO NAP is Consistent.
Located on business listing sites a NAP citation is an online reference to your business's name, address and phone number (NAP). As stated before consistency is preferred when search engines are evaluating the authority and relevancy of your website. We do NAP audits on all of our clients business listings and make sure you are clearly communication with google your proper business information .