Most companies tend to begin their SEO efforts with on-page SEO. Yet, one of the most important ranking factors on search engine rule pages isn't the efforts on a website, and instead, it's all of the backlinks that are generated from other websites pointing to the company's website. According to studies, some of the top results on Google tend to have an average of nearly 4 times more backlinks than the results that follow. However, on-page SEO isn't all about building backlinks, and it goes a lot deeper than that. Another essential element of on-page SEO is brand mentions, even if they're without a hyperlink. At the end of the day, off-page SEO is all about what search engines and other people think about a website.

Off-page SEO

Every activity that a company, as well as other people, do away from the company's website to increase the ranking of that website with search engines is what off-page SEO entails. While most people tend to associate off-page SEO with link building, there are plenty of other strategies that don't usually result in a standard hyperlink that is still important for off-page optimization.

Optimizing Content

For a company to put its target audience or the users first, the content that the business creates shouldn't primarily be focused on keywords. In fact, to really put the target audience first, when creating content companies should completely forget about mentioning any keywords, especially if those keywords don't flow naturally. Additionally, putting the audience first also means that companies should be creating valuable content instead of creating content that's only going to generate more sales for the business. For instance, companies can improve their content marketing efforts, and overall SEO by using the visuals that are going to convey the content’s message in a clear way, and by integrating different types of data into the content. By helping the audience with great content, they are going to be a lot more interested in the business and making purchases from it.

Infographics

In more recent years, infographics have been some of the most commonly produced forms of content from businesses, simply because they work. Although this type of content can generate impressions for companies, it's important to understand that not every infographic can do so. Creating high-quality and informative infographics for target audiences takes a lot of time, effort, and money. For companies that are just starting out, creating these types of infographics might not always be a viable option. Fortunately, there are various platforms where companies can find and work with professional infographic designers at lower costs, such as Visual.ly, or Dribble. This type of content tends to drive more engagement with the target audience and sometimes can even earn editorial backlinks for the business from the right outlets.

About the Author: Mike Paffmann is CEO of Virgo PR, a leading PR agency.