Offsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become more vital than ever because onsite SEO won’t suffice anymore. Most of the competition is already up to par with the things you do and can do with your site and content. And, search engines aren’t kind enough to throw you a bone and let you rank even if you have the best content on the internet.
That’s the short answer. If you want a detailed explanation, read on.
The current state of search engines
To get the traffic you want, you need to get to the search engine result page’s (SERP) prime real estate: the top three spots. Being on the first page alone can’t cut it nowadays. While being on the first page is still valuable, the search engines themselves can screw you up.
You may be asking why the top three spots and not the number one spot? That’s because search engines often try to make all the results after the first one more noticeable. And, they may do it randomly or depend on what configuration was effective in making users stay on the SERP instead of clicking.
Whenever you do a search on a search engine, do you notice that some snippets don’t always appear before or after the number one search result? You may find them on the third result. They may appear between the fifth and sixth. But typically, they often appear in the second or third result.
Because of that phenomenon, the eyes of searchers are attracted to those snippets instead and may not even notice the first result. After all, most people nowadays have positive experiences with search engine snippets as they always provide the information people are looking for.
And that is especially true with mobile users. When you search online using your phone, you’ll always hesitate to click on a search results link. Instead, you would try to find the information you’re looking for on the search results page yourself.
That’s normal behavior for mobile users. They have their reasons why they would rather stay around in the SERP than click. Some may be saving some data. Some may think it’s annoying to risk themselves landing on an irrelevant site. And, some just trust the search engine more than they trust the websites listed on the SERP.
Because of the current state of search engines, you must add more effort to your SEO. You can’t just rely on onsite SEO alone; you also need to do offsite SEO as well if you want your websites to be in the prime real estate on SERPs. You should immediately start generating backlinks, accepting guest posts, improving your social media presence, and engaging with your audience better.
The adage content is king doesn’t ring true anymore
Now, you may be asking, ‘Why is onsite SEO not enough anymore?’ There are many answers to that question. And one of them is the fact that content isn’t king anymore.
That adage is often misattributed to search engines, but it was actually coined in 1998 by a certain billionaire who made money with operating systems. While misattributed, it doesn’t mean that search engines didn’t make it true.
For the past few years, most experts have pushed this idea that having quality content should be enough to get you ranked. And they weren’t wrong back then, but things changed. Now, having great content isn’t enough to get ranked.
If you think about it, most SEO, web devs, and website owners have followed this advice. And if you make some searchers, you’ll know that it’s already a level playing field when it comes to getting to the top spot using quality content. In the past few years, you’ll hardly get redirected to irrelevant websites with gibberish content.
Instead of being the main factor in SEO, quality content has become only one of the main factors. And about the new list of metrics that can significantly influence your website’s rank, most of the items there can be achieved through offsite SEO strategies. Some of them are:
- Number of backlinks
- The freshness of those backlinks
- Diversity of those backlinks
- Number of social media shares
- Quality and relevance of the anchor text used in the backlinks
- Authority and rank of the web pages that contain the backlinks
The competition is tighter than before
If you’ve already scoured the web for SEO advice, you might have read phrases like SEO today is five times harder than SEO before. And that’s not far from the truth. On a poll on a social media website, SEO experts were asked if performing and achieving results in SEO is easier, harder, or the same compared to five years ago. Almost 60% of the respondents answered that it’s harder now than before. (2)
More businesses have already realized how powerful SEO can be for their companies. And a few years have gone by, most of them are already rocking it in the search engines.
Also, the information you need to become an SEO expert is bountiful. With a few searches, you can find articles that can convert you from zero to hero when optimizing content. If you have enough time in your hands and patience, you won’t even need a team to boost your website back then. After a few years, regular website owners became SEO experts, which only made the competition tighter than before.
Those are just a few reasons why SEO is difficult now and why you need to go beyond onsite SEO. Offsite SEO, unlike onsite, requires more work, expertise, and time. Also, it can give you an edge over the competition, especially if you are knowledgeable about how to achieve the metrics mentioned above.
Your alternative is to focus on technical SEO
It’s established that everyone’s already good at onsite SEO. If you think about it, it’s an easy but tedious job. And if you have resources, you can hire SEO veterans to do that for you, and you won’t need to worry that they will fail at it.
The competition is indeed stiff, but you can still outrank most of your competitors. One way to do that is through technical SEO. However, unlike offsite SEO, the learning curve in mastering the technical aspects of SEO can be steep.
It can be challenging to learn and apply technical SEO, but it’s worth the while. However, that’s why offsite SEO strategies have become more vital. You don’t need to learn anything new with offsite SEO. As long as you can produce high-quality content and connect with other website owners, you can start doing it. There’s no need to master anything or become a computer whiz.
There are a lot of red herrings surrounding SEO
It was mentioned a while ago that you could learn how to do search engine optimization on the web easily since there’s a lot of information about it. However, that has its drawbacks. Currently, there are a lot more hacks than experts, and you can easily stumble upon their confusing articles and highly opinionated guides that lack proper research.
Some websites would say that you need to do this and do that to your site, even if they have little data to back up their claims. Speculations abound regarding what sort of new factors and KPIs search engine algorithms are focusing on. And the list goes on.
You don’t need to listen to those quacks when it comes to offsite SEO. Thankfully, nothing has changed much when it comes to offsite SEO for the past few years. It was effective before, and it’s still effective now.
The correlation between the page rank of websites and the number of links directed to them is still true and strong. And, you can’t go wrong with other offsite strategies as they can guarantee you results. You may not get better ranks with them 100% of the time, but they can still bring other benefits, like boosting your overall online presence and bettering your brand image.
Conclusion
Your website ranking is crucial now. Know that search engines are bloating their SERPs with various features. These features make it easy for users to find what they want, but they make it difficult for other websites like yours to rise to the top and get noticed.
Suppose you’re running a dictionary website. When people search for definitions on search engines, they provide the answer searchers need. Even if you make it to the top ten results, do you think users will still need to click the link to your website if they already have the information they’re looking for on the search results page?
While onsite SEO is still important, its effect isn’t as tremendous as before—it’s not enough. This reason alone should convince you to work on your offsite SEO strategies. You indeed have the alternative to learn or apply technical SEO, but the amount you can do with it is limited.
With offsite SEO strategies, like link building, your value in the eyes of search engine algorithms will always go up. And the longer you keep at it, the better. So, in 2021, you should invest more in your offsite strategies.
