SEO
What’s the Difference: On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO
The approach to optimize your website for search engines can be broken into two parts. Elements on your website (on-page SEO) and elements outside of your website (off-page SEO). Both are essential for achieving successful search engine optimization, however they involve different methods and techniques.
On-page SEO deals with enhancing the internal aspects of your website that you have control over, while off-page SEO concentrates on boosting the credibility of your domain by creating content and obtaining links from other websites. To comprehend the contrast between the two, it’s important to have a fundamental comprehension of how search engine algorithms function. Let’s examine it in more detail.
What search engines look at when evaluating your site?
- On-page SEO looks at what your site (or your page) is about
- Off-page SEO looks at how authoritative and popular your site is
In simple terms, the keywords or phrases you want to rank for are mainly influenced by on-page elements, whereas the position of your website in the search engine results is mainly determined by off-page factors.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO, also referred to as “on-site” SEO, is the process of optimizing various elements of your website that have an impact on your search engine rankings. Your website’s position in search engine results pages (SERPs) is influenced by various ranking factors such as website accessibility, page loading speed, optimized content, keywords, title tags, etc. On-page SEO focuses on enhancing the aspects that you have control over and can modify on your website.
Here is a helpful checklist for on-site optimizations:
- Title Tags
- Headings
- URL Structure
- ALT text for images
- Fast-loading pages
- Mobile friendliness
- Page conent
- Internal linking
- Schema markup
- Social Tags
- Core web vitals
- Page Experience
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO concentrates on enhancing the credibility of your domain by obtaining links from other websites. A good way to understand how authority works is to think of it like a bathtub filled with rubber duckies (representing your website pages) and as you add water (links) to the tub, the duckies (your pages) will float to the top.
Here is a helpful checklist for off-site optimizations:
There are several factors that influence your off-page SEO rankings. While each one is tackled with different strategies, they share an overarching goal of building the trust and reputation of your website from the outside.
- Inbound links
- Social media marketing
- Guest blogging and guest posting
- Unlinked brand mentions
- Influencer marketing
The most important factor in off-page SEO is the quantity and quality of links pointing to your website. Some ways to acquire links for your website include:
- Generating exceptional content that people will want to link to because it is valuable.
- Promoting your content through social media channels resulting in links.
- Reaching out to industry influencers through email and obtaining links from them.
- Writing guest posts on related websites that include links back to your site.
Which Is More Important: On-Page SEO or Off-Page SEO?
It’s not a matter of selecting either on-page or off-page SEO. On-page and off-page SEO work together to enhance your search engine rankings in a complementary way. However, SEO experts typically recommend first taking care of on-page SEO before putting too much emphasis on off-page SEO.