A good SEO strategy does not stop at your website.
Think of your website like a restaurant off a busy interstate. You’re driving fast. You know there’s a hundred restaurants nearby and you’re hungry. How do you know where to go?
Citations and backlinks function like billboards and road signs showing that your website is right off the next exit. This is the foundation of off-site SEO.
Off-Site SEO: The World Beyond Your Website
Off-site SEO refers to the signals that happen outside your website, including citations, backlinks, directory listings, and brand mentions.
If on-page SEO tells search engines what your website is about, off-site SEO helps build authority and shows the rest of the internet that your business is real and legitimate.
What is a Local Citation?
A citation is any reference to your business’s name, address, or phone number somewhere online. That’s it. Citations establish your credibility, location, relevance, and trust with search engines.
For a local business, this can include:
- Local directories like your Google Business Profile, Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps, etc.
- Chamber of commerce directories
- Industry directories
- Local news articles
- Event pages
- And more!
If your business info appears one way on your website, another way on Google, and a third way in a local directory, that can create confusion for both searchers and search engines. Search engines want confidence. Consistent citations help build that confidence.
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is a link from another website to yours.
Search engines treat backlinks as votes of confidence. A link from a respected publication, partner organization, or industry directory generally carries more value than links from low-quality websites.
Common backlink sources include:
- A news article linking to your business
- A partner website linking to your project page
- A nonprofit sponsor page linking to your company
- A Reddit thread linking to your product pages
- A guest blog linking back to your site
- A directory listing specific to your industry
The goal isn’t to collect the most links. It’s to earn relevant links from trustworthy websites.
Google Business Profile
For local businesses, Google Business Profiles are not optional. If you want to get discovered locally, this is your most important and valuable directory.
For many people, your Google Business Profile may be their first interaction with your brand.
Users regularly check your reviews, look at your photos, confirm your hours, find you on Google Maps, and call directly from the search result.
If you are a restaurant, law firm, healthcare provider, contractor, retailer, or any other local service business, this matters a lot.
Off-Site SEO and the Bigger Picture
Think back to our restaurant off the interstate. The billboards and exit signs help people find you, but they only work if the destination is worth visiting.
Off-site SEO works best when the rest of your SEO foundation is already strong.
If your website is slow, confusing, thin on content, or hard to crawl, backlinks and citations can only do so much. But when your website is technically sound, your content is helpful, and your business information is consistent across the web, off-site SEO can strengthen the entire system.
Want to know how your business appears across the web? Posture Interactive can help with SEO audits, local SEO, content strategy, and ongoing optimization to improve your search visibility. Contact us today online or give us a call at 570.880.0855
This is part of our ongoing series on SEO. Read part 1 on SEO Terminology here.
