The ultimate aim of any off-page SEO tactic is to generate links, but how you go about this is largely up to you. There are a number of approaches available for off-page SEO. You can approach people directly for links, you can submit to linking schemes and directories, you can try to drum up press, you can start a viral campaign… the list goes on. One thing you shouldn’t do is put all of your off-page eggs in one basket. Most SEO campaigns benefit from a multi-pronged approach and the difficulty is to get each part of the campaign as effective as possible.

Putting too much concentration into one off-page search engine optimisation tactic is something surprisingly easy to do. It can be as simple as a lack of time management. When your business becomes involved in a particular social media network, for example, natural enthusiasm can lead to the neglect of other off-page avenues. It is important to keep your off-page SEO strategy as diverse as possible in order to garner links and references.

This is because every off-page technique has limitations. Take Twitter, for example. Although the micro-blog site has been gaining incredible popularity over the last few years, it is still far behind older established social media sites like YouTube and Facebook. It also has natural limitations, such as being restrictive in the messages you can get out to users and the paths you can take to contact users. As users have to follow other bloggers in order to get their updates, the value of being tweeted about by some Twitter users is greater than with others. Twitter information is also archived much more swiftly than a traditional blog, meaning your content doesn’t have the same exposure.

Similar limitations exist with building up a following in a forum in your niche. While participation in these forums can be extremely valuable in generating user attention for your site, such forums can have a very limited audience. The users you communicate with on these forums will fit your target user profile in a highly specific way, but ultimately will be a smaller group than that reached by some of your other off-page strategies.

Diversifying your off-page strategies has many more benefits than just concentrating on one, but it can be hard to figure out how much time to devote to each approach. For example, it’s important to comment regularly on blogs if you’re trying to work your way into the blogosphere, but Twitter requires daily, or even hourly, participation. The amount of time you allot to each approach will depend on your business needs and ultimate benefits of each scenario, and it is very helpful to talk to your SEO company when planning off-page work. You can discuss this subject with our experts at SEO Consult.

Every off-page strategy has its drawbacks, but most of them have bonuses that make pursuing them worthwhile. The trick is to know how much time and energy to devote to the different strategies, and to make room for more than one in your plan.

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