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On Page SEO versus Off Page SEO
What’s the Difference Between On Page and Off Page SEO
One of the best ways to increase your business’ online visibility is through using search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. SEO is the process used to improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages. Even if you’ve never heard of SEO, you’re probably already implementing a few promising strategies. To get the most out of your efforts and increase your ranking, it’s important to implement both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO (also referred to as offsite or off-site SEO). These strategies involve different tactics, but both of them aim to increase your website’s ranking, gain more traffic, and lead to more conversions. In this article, we’ll explore the main differences between On Page SEO and Off Page SEO and how to start using both to your advantage.
What is On Page SEO?
On Page SEO includes all of the search engine optimizations techniques that you can do yourself, to your own website. They’re the things you have control over—things you can consciously decide to do, or not to do. Generally speaking, On Page SEO covers everything that your website, and each individual webpage, is about—it’s descriptive and relevant. It let’s people know what you do, what you’re an expert in, and what you have to say about your niche. On Page SEO is used to optimize your website and each of its moving parts to positively affect your search engine rankings. On Page SEO also helps recognize competitive keywords your website can rank for. To better understand all of the moving parts of On Page SEO, let’s look at some of the most widely used tactics.Website Page Content
Any content that you add to your website needs to be relevant, useful, and accurate for your readers. If it’s not high quality content, it’s not going to help your SEO efforts. Make sure things are easy to digest and add value to your reader’s experience.Keywords
When creating new content, try to do so with keyword optimization in mind. It’s not as heavily weighed as it used to be, but it’s still important. Use a combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords that rank competitively and never over-stuff your pages.Title Tags
Title tags are the things that tell search engines what your web pages title is. It’s prominently displayed on all search engine results pages when your website comes up. Title tags are the hyperlinks you click on to visit a web page after making a search. Include your target keywords and try to create search engine friendly title tags.Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the small paragraph that appears underneath your title tag on a given search query. It’s the short description that let’s people know exactly what the content of the corresponding page will be. Use relevant keywords and try to be as straightforward as possible with your meta descriptions.
Internal Linking
Another good way to boost On Page SEO is to internally link your web pages together. This is not only useful to visitors; it boosts overall user experience. User experience plays a huge role in your website’s ranking and Google and other search engines will notice anything you do to improve it.Page Performance
How fast your page loads makes a huge difference in search engine rankings. More often than not, if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, people will leave—and Google will take notice. Run tests to ensure that everything is as fast as possible and if you can’t seem to beat 3 seconds, consider switching your hosting platform or optimizing your page’s speed using tried and true tactics.What is Off Page SEO?
Off Page SEO is a little more complicated. It encompasses everything that happens to your website rather than on it—things that happen off of your actual site. When your company, website, or brand is shown on other websites, that’s Off Page SEO. When an influencer decides to link back to a helpful article you wrote, that’s Off Page SEO. It’s not as clear cut as On Page SEO, but it revolves around making your website more authoritative. To clarify, let’s look at a few examples of popular Off Page SEO tactics.Backlinks
The most important Off Page SEO tactic is building strong backlinks. The more you have, the better your site will rank. There are a lot of paid backlink building approaches, but those are risky and can seriously damage your ranking. Instead, focus on organic approaches and continue to create high quality content that deserves to be shared. Try guest blogging on sites within your niche, reaching out to influencers, using other page’s broken links for your benefit, and getting involved in business directories the right way.Domain Authority
Search engines assign a number for your domain authority, which basically describes how strong your website is. The more authority you have, the better you rank. This is measured by the length of time your website has been up and running, how many backlinks you have, and how many technical problems your site runs into. Try to keep your authority as high as possible by using a stable domain name, generating good content, and making sure your page is running without any problems.Social Promotion
Another way you can work on your Off Page SEO is through social media. Sharing your website or web page on your social media profiles can lead to more website visits, more shares, and eventually more backlinks. It’s also a great way to connect with your audience and strengthen your brand.How to Maximize Your SEO Strategies
We get a lot of questions asking which type of SEO is better, On Page or Off Page. It’s a difficult question because the simple answer is always that it depends. It depends on your website status, your audience, your expertise, and even your niche. Both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO have extremely important factors and both play a huge role in the algorithm Google uses to rank a website.
Instead of focusing your energy on how to cut corners and get the best results with the least effort, you should prioritize both on your website. This way, you will work on bettering your website as a whole and simultaneously reap the benefits by rising in the rankings.
With that being said, there are a few instances when you should put more of an emphasis on one tactic over the other.
New Website Launch
If you’re new to the website game, you’ll need to build up your content before you can start to get legitimate backlinks. With no content, people aren’t ever going to link to your site. If you don’t add content that will never change. In this situation, you need to focus your efforts on building up your On Page SEO and overall content. Once you start developing content that carries value, people will take notice. Once people take notice, you’ll start to earn natural backlinks and people will be more likely to link your website if asked. Another benefit of prioritizing content and On Page SEO with a new website launch is that you have a chance to build strong keywords from the beginning. Keywords are what Google uses to connect search queries with your website and are very important when it comes to indexing your site. Choose your keywords wisely and use them strategically to get the best results. Continue developing strong content and always double-check your information for accuracy and relevancy. Publishing low quality content will have an adverse effect on your efforts, so put in the time needed to make sure it’s high quality and targeted towards your audience.Seamless Websites With Strong Content
If you’ve had your website for a while, are producing strong content, and rarely, if ever, experience performance issues, then you should focus more on Off Page SEO. Be advised, when we say strong content we mean it—you need long, unique posts that go into depth about a specific topic to rank well. When you produce content that can be found anywhere, why would someone choose your website over the others for a backlink? Chances are, they wouldn’t. Once you are producing high quality content, you can reach out to experts and share your information with them. If they like it, they’ll probably use it. If not, hopefully someone else will. The more authoritative the websites are that are giving you backlinks, the better your results will be. You can also use directories and guest posting websites, but they won’t be as strong as backlinks that are truly earned.At the end of the day, SEO is an important tactic to implement as a whole. To see the best results, you need both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. However, SEO can be tough and determining where to focus your efforts can get overwhelming. If you need help, or want to see if your SEO efforts have been paid off, get in contact with us today. SEO Fuel Marketing is always happy to help with any or all of your digital marketing needs.
Local Search Engine Optimization Tips For Small Businesses
One of the most difficult things about owning and operating a small business is making sure that you are marketing efficiently and effectively. It is probably the best, and arguable only, way of ensuring that your business will see growth. However, marketing can be a big task for a small business and a lot of start-ups just don’t have the resources to hire someone full-time. This is where search engine optimization comes in.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a way of positively affecting your web page rankings on multiple different search engines. It is a process that works with the algorithms used by sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo in order to boost your business to the top of the results pages. Essentially, SEO helps to show search engines that your company’s website is legitimate and worthy of being on the first page of results. This is extremely beneficial for businesses, especially those in a saturated market. Websites who are ranked on the first page of search engines see more traffic, which leads to more profits. However, if you’re not an expert it can be difficult to get started. That’s why we’ve taken the time to put together a comprehensive list of SEO tips for small businesses. If you want to make your company standout from the competition, you’ve come to the right place.
#1: Master Your Keywords
The first thing you’re going to need to do is get an understanding of some of the basics in small business SEO. It’s imperative that you understand the target keywords and phrases that you’ll need to utilize in order to successfully target your audience. Think about what words or phrases people will enter into search engines in order to find products, services or content like yours. Keyword research is important because it is the first building block in order to be successful. After you’ve completed the research, you’ll want to work on optimizing your sites to include the specific keywords throughout – including content, titles, descriptions, etc. If you don’t know where to start with keyword researching check out sites like SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner and KWFinder.SEMrush
SEMrush assists in day-to-day tasks, provides in-depth keyword analysis helps improve website performance.
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner helps you find new keyword ideas for your website that are relevant to your product, service, and target customers.
#2: Make Sure Your Website is Optimized
After your keyword research is completed, the next step will be to make sure that your website is optimized correctly. If you haven’t already created a domain name, you can either use your business’ name or something that represents your business or overall niche. Regardless of if you create a domain name or already had one in use, make sure that your website is properly categorized. This tells search engines what type of content you will be publishing along with what niche your website falls under.Include your business name, address and phone number (also referred to as NAP), on all of the pages of your site. You can do this at the bottom so it’s not overpowering more pressing information, but it compliments algorithms and verifies credibility. Including relevant local information also helps to improve the validity of your company. Try publishing area specific content and keywords. Connecting with other local businesses and organizations is also helpful. Link building is another way to help improve small business SEO. Link building is the process of including internal and external links to relevant and high quality content.
External links help to boost the credibility of your business because they connect your website to trusted sites. It also increases user experience, which has recently taken more weight in search engine algorithms. This is only beneficial when the external links are related to the content that you are writing about. If you continually link to websites that are unrelated, it will actually damage your search results over time. Internal links can keep users on your website for longer. The longer someone is on and the more they click around, the better it is for your SEO. Finally, you’ll want to make sure you account for all of your mobile users trying to access your site. This is something to pay special attention to because most people who browse the web use their mobile devices to do so. This is why you need to make sure that your website has a mobile-friendly version. If people aren’t able to access your content on the go, they might not return to your site on a desktop. You’d be surprised at how much this influences traffic.
#3: Have Creative Tags
A very powerful tool to include this list of local business SEO tips is making sure that you take full advantage of Title tags. A Title tag and meta description are the things that show up on the search engine results page describing your web page. It involves the title of your content (either web page or article) along with a brief description of what it is about. Usually, these are limited to about 70 characters for a title tag and 160 characters for a meta description tag. Take advantage of this space so that your target audience will click on your links more often. It helps to include target keywords in both the title and description.
#4: Create Local Business Listings
Local business listings are online entries that contain all of the relevant information of your business in a local page. They include your company’s NAP (name, address, phone number) along with any other details that may be important to your audience. You can create local business listings across all the major platforms including Yelp, Google, Bing, Foursquare, Google and even Yellow Pages. This ensures that each of these search engines has your company’s information in their databases and that you are searchable to their users. If you go to register your business and already see a listing, you can claim ownership of it. Just make sure that it is listed accurately. If your information is not listed accurately across all of the platforms then search engines may get confused about which information is true. This leads to lower rankings and a decreased chance of getting contacted. This is one of the most powerful local business SEO tips available since it helps to associate your company with your local area.
In addition to the major platforms, you can also see if there are any local specific directories that will list your business. Think about organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, newsletters, etc. and reach out to them directly. Some associations require you to be a member, but others will at list your business free of charge.
Two very important directories to register with are Google My Business (GMB) and Bing Place for Business. When you’re registered and verified through both of these, your company has the potential to rank higher and potentially receive a spot in the “top 3” that include physical locations on their maps. After you verify your business, optimize your listing with as much information and as many pictures as you can. Taking this step will bring your small business SEO to the next level.#5: Reviews are Important
Not surprisingly, the reviews you and your business receive actually make a big difference. The biggest impact you can see these from are Facebook, GMB and Yelp. When you have bad reviews, people tend to try and find a place that doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately, sometimes circumstances and negative attitudes combine for an unavoidable review. In these cases, take the time to reply and show your concern for your customers. Tailor to them and how you want their next experience to be the best. Remember, the customer is always right… even if they’re wrong. When you engage with your customers, on both good and bad reviews, you are more likely to attract new customers and retain your current ones.#6: Stay Engaged
In a world where most of human interaction is done online, you can’t forget about social media. It is one of the most relevant local business SEO tips around. When you have a strong social media engagement, people start talking about you and linking back to your sites. The more back links you have, the more authentic your site will be to search engines and the higher you will appear on the results pages. It all comes full circle eventually, so take some time each day to engage with your audience.
Tying it All Together
In order for small businesses to stand out from their competition, they need to pay special attention to local SEO. It increases visibility, helps tie you to your target audience and creates an online presence that generates authenticity and credibility. SEO is an art and it is constantly evolving. In order to take advantage of these benefits, start with making sure that your company has successfully mastered the items on this list. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. It may be confusing or frustrating at first, but if you continue to research strategies and develop your website, you will see results.