Confused as to the difference between on-page SEO and off-page seo? After reading this article we will make it clear so you have a good understanding of these two important aspects of any SEO strategy for your business or agency.
Marketing strategies for both big and small businesses have shifted with the growing advancement in the intuitive capabilities of search engines as well as their widespread use. The idea is no longer to have just a site that works, you need one that search engines view positively enough to show in their search rankings. And search engine optimization (SEO) is at the center of that presence. This article discuss both on-page SEO as well as off-page components of seo.
You can increase your organic traffic by implementing SEO on the various pages of your website.
There are over 40,000 queries made every second on Google and 3.5 billion online searches conducted in a single day. SEO is responsible for making your site rank higher in these searches.
Some of the top websites have a click-through-rate of 35%, which means both B2C and B2B companies can benefit by investing in a successful SEO campaign. Your business can increase leads by almost 60% with effective search engine optimization.
However, you need to understand the difference between on-page SEO and off-page SEO to maximize returns. Here is everything you need to know about these two types of SEO and how they can benefit your business.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO or on-site SEO is based on making your website more search engine friendly and makes the entire foundation of your business. These are the deliberate manipulations you make to your web pages to facilitate better search engine rankings.
These include things you have control over and can make changes in your website, such as content structure, content quality, and HTML code, among others. In fact, content and keyword placement is the main focus in on-page SEO.
Search engines look for particular signals on your page to discern whether it is relevant, useful, and trusted. You can easily streamline content effectively, when you know the algorithm optimization signals to look for.
Google is one of the major search engines used today, globally, drawing over 95% organic traffic. Hence, you need to familiarize yourself with Google’s algorithm to improve your search engine rankings.
Also, you need to make sure that you don’t just optimize for Google, since relying on a single search engine can result in instability at a later stage.
The intent behind your business site should be clear and the content should be recognizable by all search engine platforms. Things like using SSL are known to be a quick way to improve your SEO and sites performance.Â
How to Use On-Page SEO Effectively?
On-site SEO is easy to understand and implement since it is under your control. As long as you form a clear and straightforward strategy, you should not have any problem.
Best practices regarding on-page SEO techniques include:
- You should keep your titles crisp, relevant and short. They should not be longer than 60 characters.
- Your content should not be a huge wall of text. Learn to format correctly, using H1, H2, and H3 headings.
- Don’t miss out on optimizing your website for mobiles and tablets. Mobile searches are growing at an alarming rate and make the basis of most business searches. Talk to your website designer to optimize your website.
- Your content should be high-quality, easy to access, relevant, and trusted. It should also help satisfy a searcher’s query.
It is important to understand that almost all on-page SEO factors are under your control and you should make the most of the opportunity to optimize your website effectively.
Which Factors can Negatively Impact your On-Site SEO?
There are many pitfalls that accompany on-page SEO because no matter how you sell yourself to your audience, there are certain aspects that are beyond your control.
For instance, you cannot control the kind of engagement you receive. Writing relevant and engaging content with above typical blog post length certainly helps though. You can develop your content to suit a particular audience type, but end up engaging with a completely different set of audience.
There are no guaranteed results with on-page SEO either. You cannot expect to generate instant and quantifiable results. Whatever changes you make to your on-page SEO will have a 56% influence in search engine results, hence you need to make sure that you have a solid SEO strategy.
You also need to take into account updates and algorithm changes. Google is in a constant endeavor to enhance its searchbot’s abilities. There are more than 600 – 800 updates in a year, which are almost all game-changing.
For instance, Google’s Penguin update suddenly made the source of backlinks important. Now, it wasn’t just about getting linked out from a series of low-quality sites, but getting expert and authoritative sites to backlink to your page.
Link profile analysis was not even heard of in the previous Panda update. However, that is part of off-site SEO.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO extends beyond your webpages and allows you to build credibility in your business. It helps you reinforce your brand value beyond the capabilities of on-page SEO.
This includes backlinks, link relevancy, and social signals, among others. Your off-page SEO efforts are intended to focus on enhancing your domain authority by getting links from other websites and blogs.
The quality and quantity of backlinks is the biggest factor in off-page SEO. They are absolutely necessary to any SEO strategy.
These links work towards building mutually beneficial partnerships with other experts and businesses in your niche. They also help you strike up a conversation with potential customers.
However, link building is only one half of any successful off-page SEO campaign. The second half includes social media.
Social media has come up in a big way where business promotion and marketing is concerned. These platforms have become mini search engines unto themselves.
Statistics show that more than 50% businesses that used social media to promote their content, build brand value, and connect with targeted audience managed to significantly increase their sales within a 2-year timeframe.
Blogger outreach or influencer outreach is another major component of off-site SEO. Influencers are authoritative people or experts in a particular industry. These can be categorized into micro, macro, and mega influencers, depending upon the number of followers.
Compared to traditional marketing techniques, successful influencer outreach programs could result in an 11% increase in ROI.
Blogger outreach refers to reaching out to experts in your industry and asking them to give you some sort of promotion. These outreach campaigns can help build both backlinks and social media shares. There are a number of blogger outreach agencies or you can DIY.
Even though off-page SEO is worth its value in gold in terms of the search engine benefits, only 30% brands ever really invest in a good off-page SEO campaign.
How to Use Off-Page SEO Effectively?
Link building is a vital tool to off-page SEO. There has been a 112% increase in this marketing tool since 2005.
However, just like keyword stuffing is penalized by Google, so is the practice of buying and trading low-quality, spammy links in a bid to increase rankings. In fact, Penguin update penalizes blogs and websites which fill their pages with backlinks.
It isn’t always simple to find quality backlinks. Here are some easy ways to build quality backlinks for your website:
- You should create awesome content which delivers value to users and makes them want to link out to you. Make sure you devote enough time and research to creating relevant and reliable content.
- Links are also generated through social media, which again boils down to the type of content you have. If it’s of true value, then it is bound to go viral.
- You can consider blogger outreach strategies to reach out to other influencers and bloggers in the industry. These people can ultimately link back to your page through their posts.
- You could also consider including guest posts to your blogger outreach strategy. Guest blogging is an imperative part of link-building when done on sites relevant to your niche.
On-page vs Off-Page SEO
It is important to understand that both quality and quantity of links are taken into account by search engines.
In addition, the number of referring domains also plays a significant role in improving your rankings. However, when in a tight spot, always aim for quality backlinks over quantity.
A single quality backlink from an authoritative site (like Forbes) is worth more than a hundred low-quality backlinks.
However, you need to remember that authoritative websites are respected for both their age and engagement level. You cannot ignore the power of social media when it comes to building authority and getting your website ranked among the big guns.
It is important to create a strategy that involves all aspect of off-page SEO into account. Technical best practices regarding off-page SEO strategies include:
- Well-written content is the backbone of any SEO campaign. However, where off-page SEO is concerned, you need to make sure your content is developed to be engaging and interactive.
Your focus should be on involving customers and making them a part of the experience. You should also aim to create unique content which can result in better social media coverage.
- Don’t underestimate the power of social media and make sure your presence is felt on all major social media platforms. However, at the same time, you need to take into account the type of business you have. For instance, there are many businesses which don’t get any benefit from being active on Pinterest and Instagram.
- Use popular hashtags and current trend to your advantage. It is a well-known fact that over 70% customers believe or trust what brand promotions claim, but more than 65% are willing to place their trust in customer feedback.
By being active on social media platforms, you can improve your chances of engaging with past and present customers.
- Guest blog posts are an excellent way for you to get the word across. It opens doors to access a whole new target audience which may have been beyond your exposure before. It also provides the opportunity for you to create backlinks for your business.
If you’re working currently on blogger outreach, see here for examples of best opening emails for blogger outreach.
The right off-page SEO can make the difference in your whole digital marketing strategy. Even after following these tips, there are many deterring factors that will hamper the whole process.
What are the Major Hurdles in Off-Page SEO?
Link misuse is one of the major hurdles faced in off-site SEO. Inbound links and backlinks are the current internet currency, with everyone scrambling for more links. However, quality is more important over quantity where these links are concerned.
All backlinks will not result in the same link juice (link points). Duplicate content, spambots, and overstuffing should never form a part of your strategy and you should make a conscious effort to remove these from your content.
Use highly quality and authoritative sources to naturally integrate inbound links. You should consider using descriptive anchor texts, but avoid repeating duplicates, since that may raise suspicions. Make sure your links are natural. Guest posting links are considered by many to be high quality white hat links.
You may make use of automation services to create a solid network of inbound links without any hassle.
Professionals can take automated services a step further by using it to find multiple high DA websites. These services can also be used to trade, buy or sell links. Blogger outreach or a guest blogging service is a great way to help build exposure and authority for your site.
However, it is important not to confuse these sophisticated services with online backlink farms. They do not harvest links, but deliver a tailored link-building experience to a business.
Why Are They Both Necessary?
Both on-page and off-page SEO are important if you really want to see your website climb the ranks. They hold equal weightage in any successful SEO strategy.
You should contemplate beginning your SEO with on-page aspects since these are more in your control and can be easy to manipulate.
For instance, focus on your content and make sure your website is designed to be mobile responsive with a short load time. This is just two of many quick SEO fixes you can incorporate today.
It is vital that search engines can make sense of your content, for which you should focus on long form content and break the content into various subheadings. Google indexes each webpage thoroughly to check for quality and relevance.
Off-page SEO will automatically fit the bill once you take care of your on-page SEO in terms of content. Valuable and reliable content automatically gets inbound links.
You would also find it easier to promote social shares when you create useful and unique content. Also, don’t forget about the large number of SEO tools that are available to help you with this.
It is of utmost importance that you create a website which comes off as trusted and reliable if you want to form natural backlinks. Without coherent content, you would find it difficult to link to other authority sites as well.