Zeke Camusio says that unless you do this one thing, “you’re not going to rank for anything.”

Zeke, author of The Internet Marketing Bible and the founder of the Outsourcing Company, says the top 200 SEO experts in the world agree: you must do this to rank at the top of Google searches.

It’s so important it accounts for a big part of the ranking algorithm.

So what is it?

Leveraging off-page factors, such as links, retweets, and Facebook shares.

In fact, Zeke used off-page factors to help one site take their monthly traffic from 30,000 to 180,000 in just five months.

In his Mixergy course, he shows you how he does it. Here are three strategies you’ll learn in the course.

1. Start On a Solid Foundation

Poor content won’t build links. And shady SEO hacks won’t work long-term.

Sure, you can exploit loopholes for awhile, but Google will find you and hit you right in the page rank.

“Let’s face it,” says Zeke, “Google has the best engineers in the world. They’ll figure out what you’re doing, and they’re going to penalize you or move you down in the rankings.”

He says eventually, your house of cards will collapse: “If you fail at [the first] step, everything else will not work for you.”

So what’s the first step?

Build Links the Right Way

Focus on great content first.

“The only way to create sustainable growth is to do what Google wants,” says Zeke, “which is to create great content and get a lot of high quality links.”

Zeke recommends developing easy-to-create, creative, and linkable content like infographics, ebooks, tools, and interviews.

Creating quality content is definitely time-consuming, “but it’s absolutely worth it,” says Zeke. “I mean think about being the number one website on Google for your industry. That can do a lot of good things for you, for your business.”

2. Are You Invisible?

You’re not Internet-famous yet.

You have no reputation or following.

The standard advice is to reach out to the top influencers in your niche. But that’s easier said than done.

“These people are really busy,” says Zeke. “They get hundreds of emails every day.”

And if they get hundreds of emails every day, why would they care about a one-shot, canned email from you, asking them for a favor?

Nurture Relationships to Be Seen

To reach top influencers, you have to build a relationship.

Subscribe to their newsletters, comment on their blog posts, and retweet their stuff.

“If you can help promote them, they’ll be thankful for that,” says Zeke.

And once they link to you the first time, chances are they’ll do it again.

“It’s really important that once they’ve done something for you, you keep nurturing these relationships,” he says.

3. Piggyback the Right Way

Creating great content is hard work.

Whether you do it yourself or hire freelancers, you’re investing your time and money.

So imagine what it would feel like to create a beautiful infographic, only to realize that no one cares about it. You’re expecting tons of retweets and links, but it gets zilch, nada, nothing.

Ouch. That’s gotta sting.

Instead, how can you be sure you’re creating hot-topic content, and then use it to generate inbound links?

Hitch a Ride On Popular Content

First, find a popular piece of content in your niche and create content that complements it. Then, promote it to everyone who loved the original.

“That works extremely well because we can do this with anything,” says Zeke.

He points to a CNN article, “How Diamonds Fuel Africa’s Conflicts”, that got 3,400 links from 1,800 different websites. Zeke says one idea would be to design an infographic about where diamonds come from.

To promote it, email the writer, complimenting their article and mentioning your new piece of content. Then contact the 1,800 websites that linked to the original article. Share your infographic and invite them to link to it.

Written by April Dykman