What is an ecommerce website which cannot be found on search engine result pages (SERPs) by its targeted and potential customers? When your ecommerce website can’t be found, that amounts to no customers, and when there is no customer, there is no profit. You have employed the on-page SEO strategies, including alt tags, keywords, meta descriptions, meta titles, web copy, anchor tags, alt-tags, and the other elements of technical SEO. However, as an ecommerce website owner, you should also know the off page SEO techniques for Ecommerce websites so you can get the maximum result for your ranking on SERPs.
Just as on-page SEO Techniques are the tactics used on your websites, off page SEO techniques are the opposite. Off page SEO techniques are the tactics you use offline, outside your website. Off page SEO for beginners don’t have to be difficult, which is why we have broken down every step you can use in achieving an off page SEO techniques for Ecommerce website this 2022.
What are off page SEO Techniques with examples? – Off Page SEO Explained
Off page SEO techniques are the marketing tactics and strategies done outside of your website to boost your ranking on Search Engine Result Pages, increase your online visibility and ultimately increase your ROI.
Off page SEO techniques or off-site SEO technique is liken to word-of-mouth advertisement. It is centered around the actions you take that make other people, in this case, other similar websites, talk about your brand to one another digitally.
Off Page SEO versus On-Page SEO- What is the difference between On-Page SEO and Off Page SEO
Common on site or on page SEO techniques includes keywords, anchor tags, meta titles, meta descriptions, internal linking, alt-tags.
Common Off page or off page SEO techniques includes link building, social media, guest posting, content marketing, video marketing, brand mentioning, optimizing local SEO, influencing marketing.
Why is Off Page SEO Important?
The off page SEO techniques you perform on your website influence what search engines think about your website. Off site SEO techniques tell search engines how valuable your website is. This in turn helps search engines know how well to rank your website.
If a search engine like Google ranks your website high, say it comes up as the first to third on the first page of SERPs, this results in high traffic and ultimately an increase in ROI (Return of Investment) for your ecommerce business. However, if your ecommerce website is ranked low, you risk no one visiting your online store and, sadly, of course, no ROI.
So, if off page SEO techniques have such a huge effect on your ecommerce website, don’t you think it’s worth finding out the answers to the question of “what are the off page SEO techniques for ecommerce websites in 2022?”
If you’re asking this question, relax. This is the reason we have put up this article for you. However, you should know that the success of your ecommerce website does not depend only on the on-page and off page SEO tactics you employ. How your website is designed and promoted plays an important role. If your ecommerce website is not in good shape, you just might want to see these must-have features of a good ecommerce website and the essential ecommerce website features.
So, back to the game of how to use off-page SEO techniques for your e-commerce website.
Top 7 Off Page SEO Techniques for ECommerce Websites
1. Backlinks Building:
The most important off site SEO techniques for Ecommerce website is Backlinks.
How does this work?
Backlink building is the process of getting quality links that points to your ecommerce website. When similar websites link back to your URL, it shows Google and other search engines that your website has the quality and reliable information. Such links from authority websites go a long way to influence your ranking on SERP. You come among the first websites on SERP. This, in turn, makes your ecommerce website visible to any searcher searching for information, goods, or services related to yours. And ultimately, profits roll in. Get it? Here is more:
The exciting benefit of building links as part of off-page SEO strategies is that it helps you stay ahead of your competitors without having to pay a dime! Link building as off-page SEO tactics helps you build Google’s most important ranking factor- page-rank authority.
However, these off-site SEO techniques for an e-commerce website is arguably the hardest of all off-page SEO techniques. I mean, how the hell would you begin to look for authority websites to link to your own, especially when you’re new? How do you convince and get similar or complementary websites to link to your websites? It takes a lot of effort. But wait right there!
Before we go ahead with how to create backlinks, here is a red flag you should be aware of:
Desperately finding links by every means will hurt your SEO! You can’t game the system!
Again, if spammy websites with no authority continue to link to your website, Google will also recognize your website as a spammy one too!
So, how do you acquire backlinks for your off-page SEO techniques?
Backlinks can be built in 2 ways:
- Natural/ Organic or Earned Links: You acquire a backlink to your ecommerce website when people link to the contents of your website, without your direct effort, that is you directly influencing them. This happens when people see that you have quality and informational content that can better explain what they are writing on, on their website. They choose to redirect their visitors to your website because of your valuable content. This consequently increases your traffic.
- Unnatural or Build Links: These are the links you acquire intentionally or purposely to draw traffic to your ecommerce website. (Much of this will be discussed later). This off-page SEO technique for e-commerce websites can be challenging.
Try not to forget the red flag.
So, here are some backlink strategies for 2022.
- Analyze your website’s link profile using backlink checkers such as Moz, Ahrefs or Semrush. These backlink checkers will reveal the number of links to your website and which of your pages have the highest number of links.
- Analyzing your backlink as part of your off-page SEO strategies also includes ensuring you don’t have an identical anchor text, as this can result in Google penalizing your website.
- Also, fish out spammy websites characterized by low-quality and irrelevant links that link to your e-commerce website.
- Don’t stop there. Also, analyze your internal links too. Your on-page SEO backlinks are as essential as your off site SEO strategies too—both work hand in hand.
- Here is another one in analyzing your backlink for off page SEO tactics, examine your competitor. You never may get to know you’re below the game until you analyze your competitor’s website. Besides, looking at your competitor’s backlink profile will make the metrics the backlink checkers provide you more meaningful. Target your direct competitors and those who rank for the same keywords in their content, to know where they get their links from.
- Identify all broken links using SEO tools like Linkminer. This off page SEO strategy includes finding identifying broken links to reference sites on other websites and suggesting to the web owner that yours be used as a replacement.
- Promote linkable assets
2. Use Social Media Strategy
So much on backlinks and building links. However, off page SEO tactics is not all about building links. It also includes leveraging on social media.
How is social media an important aspect of off page SEO techniques?
With over 4.5 billion internet users, an average of 3.8 billion utilized social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. This alone implies a wide reach of the targeted audience. You can reach your target audience faster when you post content on social media and link them to your website.
Although, according to Google in 2014, social likes and signals do not in any way affect ranking on SERPs, we still can’t rule out the fact that your content shared across social media can drive traffic to your website, improve engagement and increase the chance that someone will link organically to your website.
Also, there are many social media influencers who can come in contact with your valuable content, share it, and help get them in front of your customers
Besides, social media platforms are in themselves search engines where users learn more about different brands and products. Having a solid social media presence is very important for your e-commerce business.
3. Guest Posting
Guest posting involves offering to write or create valuable content for someone else’s blog, preferably a high-authority website in a subject or field in which you’re an expert. These off page SEO techniques for ecommerce websites allow you to link to your own website as you write. However, it is important you link only when it is necessary. Because of this, you can offer to write a guest post in a niche similar or complementary to the product or service you offer.
According to the survey carried out by SEMrush, guest posting is one of the topmost effective link building strategies you can employ for your off page SEO techniques for an ecommerce website.
What’s more? As the author of the blog post, you gain recognition and build authority in the process. You could get a backlink in the author’s bio or within the article. It’s a win-win situation for you and the blog owner!
How do you use guest posting as an off page SEO strategy?
Follow this process:
- Research the relevant websites in your industry on Google. Type manually either of the following:
Copywriting write
Copywriting submit your article
SEO content writing guest contributor
Digital marketing blogs accepting blog posts
- Find the website owner or editor’s contact on LinkedIn, Twitter, or the “contact us” page on their website. The page can also contain some guest posting requirements.
- You can also go through the cold-pitching method, where you reach out to people responsible for guest posting manually.
What do you think about guest posting as an off page SEO technique for ecommerce website? Sounds interesting, right? You should try it out as soon.
4. Content Marketing:
Content marketing is generally thought to be part of on-page SEO techniques. However, it can also be used as an off page SEO technique.
Creating and publishing content outside of your ecommerce website is an example of off site SEO strategy you can start employing in 2022. This may include guest posting, as earlier explained.
Moreover, promoting valuable, engaging, and highly informative content such as case studies, surveys or infographics, press releases from your website makes it an off SEO technique. You can use these tips to help you produce content good enough for your e-commerce website.
In addition to this, finding and sending your content to publishers already posting on the subject that interests you is part of using content marketing as an off page SEO tactic
Above all, more importantly, is ensuring your content is 100% unique. Avoid duplicating content. Google bots seek fresh content, which helps increase online visibility and ROI.
5. Video Marketing:
Unofficially, videos have gradually become the new content. This has been proved from the statistics pulled from YouTube usage. With people streaming offline and online content and spending a significant amount of time on YouTube daily, YouTube becoming the second most popular website in the world.
Many people now prefer to learn about a product rather than reading the product description. Creating an engaging video product description that helps your consumers make a convincing purchase decision with a backlink to your website can help draw traffic to your ecommerce website and ultimately convert them to sales. This is one off page SEO techniques for ecommerce websites you can start using in 2022.
However, videos need to be optimized to be found and ranked high on SERPs. You can follow the steps on how to optimize a video for better ranking:
- Depending on your goal, choose a hosting platform. If your goal is brand awareness and building authority in an industry, go for YouTube. If your goal is to generate traffic and convert leads into sales, Wistia should be your go-to.
- Add transcripts to every page to help you rank for relevant keywords. Transcripts make your videos find more audience.
- Design and add an attractive thumbnail. A thumbnail represents a small image or snapshot of your video pages.
- Optimize title tag, long and short-tail description, and synonym keyword. This is like optimizing your written content with meta descriptions and tags.
- You can as well promote your videos to the right audience organically or paid through social media. You can use your email list for broadcasting.
- Choose to add videos to your top-ranking pages. When anyone clicks on your video, they are automatically redirected to your website and not YouTubes
- Big guys like Ahrefs uses video marketing to drive traffic, over 25,000 to their websites monthly through Google in only three months. When video SEO is done right, it can help bring traffic to your website and drive sales.
6. Mention Brand Names in your Website
Brand name mentions appear as implied links, and they connote the relationship between brands. Mentioning a brand’s name (not your competitor but an ecommerce website with a complementary product- else you risk taking visitors outside your website) tells Google that you have a relationship with the brand. Mentioning a brand’s name on social media and creating a campaign to promote or boost it is an example of off-page SEO techniques.
7. Optimize local SEO
Lastly, optimizing local SEO is an off-site SEO technique you can use if you have a physical location store alongside your ecommerce website. The best off page SEO strategy for ecommerce websites with a physical location store is using Google My Business
All these off page SEO techniques can be divided into long-term and short-time off page SEO techniques.
Long-term off page SEO strategies include backlinks, social media, and Guest posts.
Short-term off page SEO strategies include video marketing, content marketing, brand name mentioning, and utilizing local SEO.
Bottom Line:
As an ecommerce website owner, there are many things you must put in place. One is ensuring your ecommerce website has great features first. You can then apply these on-page and off page SEO techniques to your ecommerce website. Now, that you have the on page SEO techniques and the off page SEO techniques at your fingertips, go ahead to optimize your ecommerce website. Take your business to the next level with these strategies.
If you still need professional help with your e-commerce web development and SEO, check out the resourceful section below or reach out for professional help today
