On-Page vs Off-Page SEO: Your Quick Guide
Ever heard the phrase, “If it’s not on Google, it doesn’t exist”? The first thing most consumers do when they want to learn more about a product, brand or service, is turning to Google. This is why Google can be the single best way to increase your brand’s visibility, build higher trust among customers and ultimately, drive business results.
As the world continues to shift online, even traditional brick-and-mortar businesses will have to invest more in their digital presence. But how do you stand out among a sea of competitors who are also vying for the same consumers as you are? That’s where SEO optimization for websites comes in.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website for a search engine’s page ranking factors so it can rank higher in search results and drive more traffic to the website.
When you start creating an SEO strategy for your website, there are two aspects you need to focus on: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. As the names suggest, on-page SEO includes optimization done on the website that tells Google about the quality of your website, while off-page SEO is optimization done through links on external pages (using SEO link building) that tells Google about the authority of your content.
Let’s dive deeper into what on-page and off-page SEO cover and what they mean for your business.
Guide to on-page SEO
On-page SEO optimization for a website is something that you have complete control over. Google prioritizes the user experience over all else and therefore, it ranks websites higher that offer a smooth browsing experience. This is why when you’re optimizing your website, you aren’t just doing it for a higher search ranking, you’re also looking at website design to ensure a seamless experience for your website visitors. This can ultimately result in a longer time spent on the page per user and higher conversions. Google interprets the time a visitor spends on the page as an indication of how useful they found the content.
Get the on-page SEO checklist on my originally published article.
Google’s page ranking factors are constantly modified and expanded with every algorithm update, but there are many basic factors that remain constant. These include:
- Proper heading tags
- Page load speed
- Quality of page content
- Website mobile-friendliness
- Internal linking
- Schema markup
Apart from these essential on-page factors, Google has also started to prioritize two additional ranking factors: core web vitals and page experience.
Core web vitals are a set of features that Google believes are essential for a smooth user experience. These include Largest Contentful Paint (the time it takes for the initial content to load on a page), First Input Delay (how long it takes for the website to respond to an action by a user) and Cumulative Layout Shift (measures visual stability i.e. how much the layout of a page shifts as the page fully loads).
Page Experience is an umbrella term that includes several ranking factors that contribute towards a positive browsing experience. This includes page speed, mobile-friendliness and the HTTPS certificate.
All you need to know about off-page SEO
Off-page SEO involves boosting the authority of your own website using signals from external websites. Backlinks, or links from external websites pointing to your website, are the foundation of off-page SEO. Google views every backlink as a token of trust, the assumption being that if other websites cite your website as a reference, the content you offer must be authoritative. The more backlinks you have, therefore, the higher your website authority (known as Domain Authority or Domain Ranking) increases and the higher you rank.
Some of the ways to start SEO link building for your website:
- Posting high-quality content: Quality content is a great way to gain organic backlinks. Original research or authoritative content like whitepapers and infographics can be used as citations or examples when other websites cover a similar topic.
- Guest blogging: This is when you collaborate with other websites to publish an opinion piece or blog and then include a link to your website from the article.
- Unlinked brand mentions: Websites could already be mentioning your brand name without linking to your website. If you find instances of this, you can reach out to the website owner and request a backlink.
- Social media and influencer marketing: Creating social media posts that link to your website is a great way to gain backlinks. You can also collaborate with influencers who can post about your brand on their website and social handles.
