How to Get Backlinks and Improve Off-Page SEO Performance

Based on the article “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List” from Brian Dean, the top 8 ranking factors by order of importance are:

1. Quality content

2. Backlinks

3. Technical SEO

4. Keyword optimization

5. User experience

6. Schema markup

7. Social signals

8. Brand signals

While the factor number 1 seems obvious to most entrepreneurs and marketers across all industries, the second most important factor, backlinks, is often neglected or even ignored.

Indeed, your domain authority, made mainly of the quantity and the quality of your backlinks, is critical to rank high in SERPs, and therefore to generate quality leads for your business.

In the article 25 off-page SEO KPIs, you learned what these were, how to measure them, and why you should use them.

Today's article builds on your freshly acquired knowledge about off-page SEO KPIs and will teach you ways to improve your domain authority, your off-page SEP performance, and therefore, how to leverage this forgotten giant to get you qualified leads.

Off-Page SEO represents the elements considered by search engines to evaluate the relevance and quality of your website.

The number of backlinks is a major criteria when it comes to ranking, so try to obtain more backlinks to your home page, your blog articles, and your pages in general.

These pages will be better ranked and your domain will be better ranked on relevant search queries in general.

Not all backlinks are created equals. Some bring traffic, others don't.

Make sure you get links from visited websites from your niche or from relevant general sources, news sites, etc.

Even if some links are NoFollow links, if they bring qualified traffic, they bring potential customers. Ain't that what you request from SEO?

Here again, not all backlinks are created equal. Some pass authority, others don't.

Whenever possible, try to obtain DoFollow backlinks. You will receive some authority from the referring domain.

Actively search for gaining backlinks, with and without outreach. From registering on online directories to contacting webmasters, you should always find a way to get more backlinks.

Always getting links from your own social media accounts?

Enough is enough :). Get links from blog posts, website pages, images, resource pages, online directories, online communities, forums, encyclopedias…

Always getting links from friend's personal blog?

Diversify the sources of your links by gaining new referring domains to show search engines that more people consider your website as authoritative.

Some backlinks and referring domains are broken or lost?

Try to correct this by reaching out to the website owners. Understand why the links are no more. Eventually offer new or updated articles, etc.

Remove all the toxic backlinks because they can make search engines perceive your website as spammy or toxic, decreasing your authority and your rankings.

Before you start building backlinks, it's important to measure your current backlink profile and your website authority.

It's a little bit like fitness transformation pictures of before and after, you've probably seen many of them on social media, but with detailed data on top.

You want to know precisely from where you start, and you need to know how to list your backlinks and their detailed data, as well as how to analyze the important data points. You will need this data on a regular basis to assess your SEO efforts and results.

To audit your off-page SEO, including your website authority and backlink profile, you can:

And if you'd like to see its implementation on a real case, read this article: Case Study: Off-Page SEO Audit of JuGo Graphic Design. Steps, raw data, spreadsheets and results are showed.

Finally, don't forget the forgotten giant!