Building backlinks is at the core of off-page optimization. As search engines use backlinks as a measure of the quality of content on a site, a site with a large number of high value backlinks will usually rank higher than a site with fewer backlinks.

Links can be classified into three main types, depending on how they were acquired: natural links, manually constructed links, and self-created links.

• Natural links are links which are given by editorial action without any action on the part of the page owner. An example would be a food blogger adding a link to a post pointing toward their favorite produce farms.
• Manually constructed links are acquired through deliberate link-building activities. Such efforts may include getting customers to link to your website or asking influencers to share your content.
• Self-created links are created by adding backlinks to an online directory, forum, blog comment signature, or press release with optimized anchor text. Self-created link building tactics are frowned upon by search engines because they are considered black hat SEO.

Regardless of the method of obtaining the links, those that provide the greatest contribution to SEO are those that pass the greatest equity. Many factors contribute to the equity passed, including:

• Popularity of the linking site
• How closely related the topic of the linking site is to the site being linked to
• Freshness of the link
• Anchor text used on the linking site
• The trustworthiness of the linked site
• Number of other links on the linking page
• The authority of the linking domain and page

Although earning links from external websites is the most commonly used off-page SEO strategy, almost any activity that a) occurs outside of your own website and b) helps improve your search rankings may qualify as "off-page SEO." This includes activities such as:

• Marketing utilizing social media
• Guest blogging
• Linked and unlinked brand mentions
• Influencer marketing

Though it is important to note, each of these activities will result in some form of reference to your site elsewhere on the web - whether a link, a mention of your brand or website, or any other means. Therefore, the concept of "non-link-related" off-page SEO is actually a bit misleading.

Off-page SEO depends on human behavior (namely, people reference and share content they like). Thus, it applies to both organic and local SEO. A high-quality product is likely to receive a lot of word-of-mouth referrals from existing customers - the in-person equivalent of off-page SEO.

Basically, improving "off-page SEO" involves improving search engine and user perceptions of the quality of a website. This is achieved by getting links from other sites (particularly those that are well-known and trustworthy themselves), mentions of your brand, shares of your content, and "votes of confidence" from sources outside of your own.