Creating backlinks is the foundation of off-page SEO. Search engines use backlinks as indicators of the quality of the linked content, so a site with a lot of high-value backlinks usually ranks better than an equal site with fewer backlinks. As SEOs, content marketers and bloggers know, backlinks are currently the most important off-page SEO factor. Off-page SEO involves all the actions you take to affect your ranking in search engines outside your website.
This can include creating backlinks, being active on social media, and guest blogging. For this reason, when it comes to off-page SEO, the dominant aspect of your strategy should be creating good quality backlinks. These are good indicators of content quality, the more powerful your backlinks are, the higher your search engine rankings. For example, if I contact someone and ask someone to link to me, it's off-page SEO.
Why? Because I didn't change anything on my website during that process. On the other hand, if I improve my page speed by optimizing some images, then it's the SEO of the page because I made that change directly on my website. Backlinks are perhaps the most important part of off-page SEO. This is probably why we see such a clear correlation between the number of referring domains (unique websites) that point to a web page and its ranking.
Let me explain why with an analogy. That said, there's no doubt that genuine social actions have a positive influence on rankings, even if it's indirect. Why? Because sharing content in a real way on social media leads to more attention, and more views will result in more links, mentions and all those other off-page SEO factors that we know have a direct effect on rankings.
