Off-site SEO (also called "off-page SEO") is all about the things outside of a website that affects its search engine ranking. Most of the time, "off-site SEO" is grouped with "link building," but there is more going on than just building backlinks.
Google's ranking system is based on more than 200 different things. Off-site SEO optimization means making a profile for your website that will make it more famous, trustworthy, relevant, and authoritative. Off-page SEO is like a vote of trust from other people who use the web.
SEOmoz says that off-page SEO factors probably make up more than half of a website's score. Off-site SEO is an important part of making a complete SEO plan.
There are more than 200 things that affect SEO rankings. That number is very scary, especially for people who are trying to do SEO on their own. The good news is that not all factors have the same weight, so you can get a lot done by working on the most important off-site SEO factors.
Some of the off-site SEO ranking factors are:
DoFollow Links vs. NoFollow Links: Not every link is the same. Links to your page that have the rel=nofollow property do not count as links. Still, more and more people think that nofollow links are still important (in a limited way) in figuring out how your site ranks. A normal link profile will have a mix of links that do follow and links that don't follow.
Number of Linking Domains: If everything else is the same, it's better to have 200 links from 200 different domains than 200 links from the same domain. A good link profile will have links from many different sites.
Domain Authority of Linking Domain: SEO experts like to use the term "domain authority" a lot. The term is basically SEO Moz's own ranking system for figuring out how strong a domain is. Whether you call it DA, DR, or something else, the strength of the site that links to you will affect how much the link is worth and how much weight it has.
Link Relevancy: Google and other search engines use link relevancy to figure out if the links that lead to your page are real and useful. In general, you want your links to come from people who work in the same field as your business.
Link Diversity: Where your links come from is important. Sites should try to get links from other pages in their business. Sites with a lot of links from junk sites or sites that don't have anything to do with what the site is about could be punished.
Anchor Text: Having a link that says "Click Here for more" is much less powerful than having a link that says the term of the page you want to rank for. Anchor text should be used in balance, just like everything else. Search engines can punish you if they see a lot of links that all use the same anchor text.
Some of the most important off-site SEO ranking factors are listed here. You can talk to us about how SEO can help your business grow if you want to learn more about the other parts of your site that are part of a holistic SEO plan.