VerriBerri are an SEO agency in Maldon, Essex. We are situated at the bottom of market hill and work with clients, across the UK, offering incredible results on an ongoing basis. VerriBerri was established eleven years ago, in January 2009, and have gone from strength to strength since.
We work with a variety of clients, from start-ups to nationally-recognised brands. The very fact you are here, reading this blogs means you found us through search (showing our SEO works!)
We know this means you are interested in helping your own website to rank. Today we are going to offer some tips and trick on how you can utilise off-site SEO to your benefit.
It is possible you don’t have the time or expertise to carry out your own SEO; if this is the case, our Maldon SEO agency would absolutely love to hear from you. Just click below to get in touch! If you are going to try your hand, however, read on for some advice…
Link Building
There are many elements to SEO, with the most discussed possibly being link-building techniques.
Essentially, search engines use links to your website from external sources as a positive indicator that your site has relevancy, expertise, and that you’re knowledgeable!
As such, a site with high-value backlinks will rank better than a site of, otherwise, equal value. There are three different types of links however, which have very different results.
- Self-created links are when you go onto blogs, forums, or directories, for example, and register your site there. Although a handful of these are fine – it’s natural to want to feature on yell.com for example – if you have too many, then this can have a negative impact on your site.
- Manually built links are those created with specific intent. This could include asking influencers to share your content, or asking for reviews.
- Natural links refer to editorial given to your page. Usually, this is by the media. It could be a blogger, newspaper, or magazine who are talking about your brand and what it does. This is why our PR team are so heavily entwined with our SEO team!
The most important thing about your links is the equity that they pass through to your website. There are multiple signals that Google uses to assess positive links. These are as follows:
- The popularity of the site (which is why natural PR links work so well).
- How new the link is.
- How trustworthy the linking site is.
- The authority of the linking site.
- How closely connected the sites are, with regards to industry.
- The anchor text used for the link.
There’s also much discussion surrounding Dofollow and Nofollow links. They both hold value, they’re just very different. Contrary to popular belief, Nofollow links do still influence your SEO. This is a huge discussion, and best saved for another day!
Non-Link Related Off-Page SEO
Whilst earning links tends to be the most common off-page SEO tactic, our Maldon SEO agency strongly recommend implementing other techniques too. It’s important to remember that practically any other positive activity that takes place outside of your domain can be helpful!
Take traffic, for example, there’s a clear correlation between the top-ranking pages and the amount of organic traffic they receive. I.e. – the more people like you, the more Google will rank you – ad infinitum.
Local Search
NAP citations are said to be one of the best off-page local factors, meaning if you wish to appear on local search results, having your business names, address, and phone number is crucial. Our team , for example, would want to rank for ‘Marketing in Maldon Essex,’ You can easily find out what citations you already have by Googling something like “VerriBerri” ”CM9 4LE” – www.verriberri.co.uk. (Just replace our details with yours).
Furthermore, you can find out where your competitors are cited by following the same principle, which will help you build on your NAP strategy, as and where appropriate. Along the same vein, it’s absolutely essential that you have a ‘Google My Business’ page. This is an entirely free business profile from Google, you can click here to see ours as an example. This serves to provide people with local searches with your company as a suggestion. From here people can see your reviews, your location, and any photos you have. Claiming the profile isn’t quite enough though, so make sure you optimise the profile and fill out every element of it. As mentioned, you’ll be able to get reviews from ‘Google My Business’, and this does connect with link building to a certain extent. The more positive reviews you have, the higher you can rank in the ‘snack pack’. Of course, negative reviews have the opposite effect.
Social Media
Officially, Google says that social signals are not a direct linking factor. There are a significant number of SEO experts who do not believe this, however. So, who is right? Personally, I’d err on the side of Google. Realistically it’s not that difficult to manipulate social signals. You could, if you were so inclined, set up multiple social accounts and use them to reshare your content. As such, Google are going to be aware of that.
That being said, there’s still value in putting your content out on social channels. Real social shares lead to more visits to your site which can then have an effect on your rankings. Yet again, however, it’s all about doing it well and doing it right.
A Few Final Words.
Off-site factors seem a little more transient than the on-site work you can carry out. This is purely because you have complete and utter control with regards to your on-site work, but very little control when it comes to off-site work. This is exactly the point, though!
If you want a solid strategy, you have to either work extremely hard or know exactly what you’re doing. Take link building, for example. You will find it painfully hard to get your brand in the links of Forbes and The Guardian. However, that’s something our PR team do, quite literally, every day.
There will naturally be elements you can and cannot carry out, and we are happy to work with you on chosen tasks to complement your own SEO work.
Click here to get in touch with our Maldon SEO agency and find out how we can help you increase your Google rankings, and essentially, make more money! You can come and visits in our Essex offices, in Maldon, or we can have a call over the phone or Zoom; whatever suits you best!