Getting people to visit your business website, learn about your business, and buy from you is what business owners want. One of the ways to achieve that is through search engine optimization. This article will help you in getting started with your SEO campaigns.
There are plenty of activities involved in SEO, typically divided into two categories: Off-page and on-page. While the titles sound similar, the methods used to improve your rankings are totally different.
If you’ve experimented with search engine optimization in the past, you know that the basics involve both off page and on page. However, if you’re a novice to search engine optimization, you basically have two options: DIY or hire a digital marketing service that can help guiding you in understanding SEO, as well as improving the performance of your site. The choice is yours – but one thing for sure: Regardless of your choice, you still need to understand the basics.
The Differences Between On-Page Versus Off-Page
To put it simply, on page SEO focuses on making your web pages easy to read by providing the right keywords, good content, an easy sitemap and tags. Off page SEO is focused on leveraging other websites and platforms to achieve a shared objective: To get your website ranked higher in search engines.
In essence, you need to do both in order to maximize your business’ exposure on the web. There are specific actions you should take with both off-page and on-page SEO.
What is On Page SEO?
“On-page” refers to the various parts of a website that are affected by the ranking of your search engine. Internal linking, URL structure, headings, page content, meta-descriptions and fast loading pages are factors that you can change on your own.
On-page SEO involves optimizing your page layout, coding, and ratios (text-to-code ratio, keyword-to-text ratio, etc.) in such a way that your business website pages are get found easily by the search engine bots.
One of the most important aspects to on page SEO is providing your site with interesting content. In addition to information that your readers find interesting, it should also include the legs within the search engine. You can do this by incorporating blogs and forums into your content marketing strategy. When you’ve mastered this, you’re ready to concentrate on other off page techniques such as boosting your external links.
What is Off Page SEO?
Off-page SEO involves getting the words (and links) out to the web, which largely include content marketing campaigns. While on-page SEO is important, an emphasis should be put on off-page SEO, for one big reasons: You need to shift your attitude from “just build it and they will come” to “outreach and find brand evangelists.”
Developing the right content marketing strategies for a business is important to its success, if not crucial. There is an explosion of information today, which means that your content must be stellar if you want to get noticed. Not only stellar content, you need to post the right content that is platform-specific – meaning, you need to understand the characteristic of the platforms you use, and tailor your content to those platforms. The end goal is to gain inbound links from those platforms.
Generating exceptional content can allow other sites to find yours interesting – and may entice them to link out to your website. By optimizing your off-page SEO, you can get better results, faster.
Is One Technique More Important Than the Other?
There’s no clear-cut winner when it comes to on- or off-page SEO. Both work in tandem to improve the ranking of your search engine. However, most SEOs typically advise you to get the on-page techniques in order before you lay any focus on your off-page – which is a sound advice.
The analytics of your website can be helpful when it comes to deciphering your long and short term efforts. Balancing both techniques can also make your site easier for users and search engine bots to find.
Takeaway
Eventually, your SEO efforts are converging into one most-expected result: Getting reputable links from authoritative websites that will give you better search engine ranking and traffic, and brand reputation that will help you convert visits into buyers.
Learn as much as you can about on-page and off-page SEO, and don’t hesitate to seek help from the pros if you are not sure about what you are doing.