On-page SEO vs Off-page SEO

Many factors go into the success of a website. One of these is On-Page SEO. It's an important aspect to consider as you work to make your site successful online, but it can't do all the heavy lifting for you. Off-Page SEO is also essential if you want your site to rank high in search engines and get noticed by web spiders.

Now let's briefly look at how these two work. 🧐

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is more about what's on the page, or how you use metadata.

Keywords play a big role in this type of search engine optimization. For example, if your page is dedicated to information about orange cats, including "orange cat" in the title will help it rank higher for that term. You can also include the term in your H1 tags, meta descriptions, and alt image tags. This helps search engines better understand what your page is about and match it to the right search intent. We will talk more about it below.

Keywords

To start, use keywords in the title of your page. For example, "What Is On-Page SEO?" is a better option than "SEO," since it's more descriptive and specific to what the content on the page will be about. Including your target keyword phrase in your meta description can help Google find your site when users search for that topic.

Page Headings

Another place to put your keywords is in the H1 tag on your web page. This will tell Google and other search engines that this is the most important heading on the page.

Body Text

Including your target keyword phrase throughout the body of your text can also help it rank higher. Try to include it in the first sentence, and use it a couple of times throughout the content.

Alt-Text

When you upload images to your website, be sure to use alternate text (alt-text) to describe the image. This will help Google and other search engines understand what the photo is about. You can also include keywords in your title tags and file names to help with optimization.

Now that you know the basics of On-Page SEO, it's important to also understand how off-page SEO works. This is when other websites link to yours and tell search engines that it's important and worthy of a higher ranking within their SERPs.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO primarily helps with how search engines crawl and index websites. Search engine bots will follow links from one page to another on their way to indexing a website. They'll use keywords they find as part of the algorithm that goes into determining relevancy, so it's key for these pages to have relevant content.

Sharing on Social Media

The number of people who share your content on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram can tell search engines how popular you are with web users. The more shares you have, the higher your ranking will be.

Backlinks

One of the most important factors in Off-Page SEO is the quality of the links pointing to your website. Google uses a variety of metrics to determine the quality of a link, including the relevance of the site linking to yours, the authority of that site, and the number of other sites linking to it. You can find more info about different types of backlinks here.

Time on Site

Another factor that Google takes into account is how long people stay on your website. If they stay for a long time, it tells the search engine that your site is interesting and relevant to their search.

Bounce Rate

Google also looks at the bounce rate of your website. This is the percentage of people who leave your site after visiting only one page. If a high percentage of people are leaving your site after viewing only one page, it tells Google that your content is not relevant to their search.

In a nutshell

On-page SEO focuses on what your site is about, while Off-page SEO focuses on how popular and authoritative your site is; On-page SEO is mainly about your site’s content, while Off-page SEO is about other factors that tell search engines how relevant those contents are.

Now you might ask, which of the two is more important? 🤔

These two types of optimization go hand-in-hand. Both are important for getting your website noticed by as many people as possible. Use on-page SEO to get your site ranked for specific terms, and use off-page SEO to increase its visibility to web spiders. When used together, they can help you achieve the success you're looking for. 🚀

But it's recommended to focus on On-page SEO first before diving into Off-page SEO.

We hope this article gave you some clarity on On-page SEO vs Off-page SEO, if you got any inquiries, feel free to shoot us an email!