On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: Know the Differences for Best Results
On-page vs. Off-page SEO: in order to rank, you need to know the basics of both.
With Google’s latest ‘helpful content update’ many creators are sweating how to approach SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and keep their website traffic flowing. It’s never been more important to optimize your On-Page and Off-Page SEO, and ensure your website offers original and helpful content written by people, for people.
Traditional On-Page SEO best practices are tried and true. There are also important factors outside of your website that impact SEO as well.
Off-Page SEO gives your website more authority, trust, and relevance in the eyes of Google ‒ all key ingredients to better search rankings.
Your best results will come from incorporating both On-Page and Off-Page SEO. And to do that, you’ve got to understand how they work together.
Remember: Google is a business and searchers are their customers
SEO is hard. It takes consistent, meaningful efforts to get recognized by search engines and move up the rankings. Remember: Google is a business and searchers are their customers. They care deeply about what people think about their search engine, meaning they care about providing good search results.
If you can prove your website has useful, relevant, authoritative content that is easy to read and navigate, Google will reward you for it.
On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: What’s the Difference?
To put it simply, the difference between On-Page and Off-Page SEO is where the magic happens.
- On-Page SEO refers to things you can do on your website to boost its search engine ranking, like optimizing a page’s content, images, and meta tags. These are things you have control over.
- Off-Page SEO refers to things you can do outside of your website using external factors like social media and influencer marketing to boost its search engine ranking. These are things you typically have less control over.
Of course, that’s the short answer, and there’s a lot more to it! So, let’s dive deeper into the difference between On-Page and Off-Page SEO and how they work together to get you better SEO results.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO is a series of search engine optimization tactics that take place on your website.
Google’s mandate is to recommend the best web pages to searchers based on their search criteria. So, in essence, On-Page SEO is all about delivering an awesome user experience and making sure Google knows it.
This includes (but is not limited to) optimizations of various page aspects such as:
- Quality of content (like articles, videos, and images) on individual pages
- Behind-the-scenes code that helps Google read your website and understand it
- Overall navigation and structure of your site
- Page loading speed
- How your site loads on mobile devices
- Other on-page elements
Well-optimized pages provide a better experience to website visitors both in terms of performance and purpose. Since Google is more likely to recommend high-quality pages to its users, your SEO efforts pay off in the form of more visitors to your site.
If your website plays a significant role in your business, then it’s well worth the time and effort to make sure that your website delivers the best possible user experience.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-Page SEO is a collection of activities that happen off-site but pertain to your site pages. When these activities are beneficial, they help boost search engine rankings.
Generally, this part of SEO involves getting your brand or website mentioned in a positive light on other sites across the web.
Off-Site SEO includes, but is not limited to:
- Backlinks on other websites
- Social media shares and mentions
- Activity on your Google Business Profile
- Other off-site elements
Off-Page SEO is more difficult to control than On-Page SEO. Search engines are looking for ‘natural’ links and mentions, not ones you paid for, and they are excellent at spotting fakes.
That said, there are ways to do Off-Site SEO without going against the guidelines and risking a Google penalty.
Some Examples of On-Page and Off-Page SEO
To give you an overview of On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO tactics, here are a few examples of things that fall under On-Page and Off-Page SEO.
On-Page SEO examples:
- Making sure your website loads quickly and is easy to use on a mobile device.
- Publishing high-quality articles on your website’s blog.
- Creating a well-organized FAQ page that answers commonly searched questions about your company, industry, products, or services.
- Adding relevant and high-volume keywords to your page titles, descriptions, and headings, in a meaningful way. Keywords should not be used for the sake of being included, they should genuinely help explain the page’s content.
- Adding relevant alt text to images helps people who use screen readers navigate your website.
- Making it easy for people to get around your website with internal links and logical navigation.
Off-Page SEO examples:
- Answering questions on a discussion forum and linking to a relevant page on your website.
- Having social media users mention your website and share links to your content in relevant spaces.
- Growing a loyal social media following that engages with your content.
- Increasing the number of relevant links to your website on other high-quality websites, like reputable publishers and industry sources.
- Using your Google Business Page.
Want to know exactly how these activities affect your website’s search engine ranking? Our next section takes a deeper dive into On-Page and Off-Page SEO factors.
On-Page SEO Factors: Things on Your Website that Impact SEO
On-Page SEO has everything to do with what you control on your own website, everything from the content you publish to how it’s designed. If you were to spend any time or money on SEO, we would absolutely recommend you start with On-Page SEO.
Below is a list of a few key factors that play into On-Page SEO. You can use these as a basis for assessing your website’s SEO friendliness.
- Core Web Vitals: a set of metrics that quantify the user experience for the website. The user experience metrics include visual stability, interactivity, and load time. It is important to improve your core website vitals because it communicates to Google that you have a positive user experience.
- Page Speed: load time for a page is an important part of On-Page SEO because Google ranks pages that load faster for the user. Optimizing page speed can also help get your pages to Google’s search index.
- Mobile Friendliness: allowing users to easily navigate your website via mobile device will improve your rankings.
- Title Tags: including defining titles for each page that thoroughly describe the content is important. Google needs keywords to determine whether a page is related or not.
- Meta Descriptions: meta descriptions are HTML tags that assist in describing what the page is about in a sentence or two.
- Content Quality: On-Page SEO thrives on quality content. Quality content answers a question for the user, is easy to read, relevant, and has a unique approach to the problem. If you can check all four of these off the list, Google will love you.
- HTML headers: headers or tags that specify what the webpage’s content contains. HTML headers help your visitors understand your content and help search engines relate your content to a user’s search query.
- Image Alt Text: image alt text is an HTML tag that describes an image or what it conveys. Search engines use image alt text to determine if it is relevant to the user’s search query, and people with screen readers need it to understand an image’s content.
- Internal Linking: aside from linking related content to provide your readers with additional information, internal linking will benefit your website’s SEO by helping the search engines find new relevant content.
- Navigation: important for On-Page SEO because it ensures that all users can access the content on the web page equally. Google prioritizes web page accessibility no matter what browser is in use.
Off-Page SEO Factors: What Impacts SEO Outside of Your Website
Online information about your website, instead of what’s on your website, is what Off-Page SEO is all about. Signals from around the web have a significant impact on how high and where your website ranks on Google. Off-Page SEO is tough to do since so many factors are out of your control. That said, here are a few key factors that play into Off-Page SEO:
- Backlinks: create more authority and trust with search engines. Google takes backlinks seriously and has even implemented algorithm updates to attack spam links embedded in content. Building trustworthy and highly relevant backlinks should be done properly.
- Social Media: does not have a direct correlation to search engine ranking but having a presence on social media allows people to engage with your content and is an opportunity for you to reach new consumers.
- Unlinked mentions: occur when a third party, unaffiliated site mentions your company name or website and does not link to your site. Unlinked mentions hold some value when it comes to off-page SEO because they build authority and trust with your website.
- Google Business Page: formerly called Google My Business, this is a Google platform for businesses to display information like their type of business, location, service, contact, and hours. Google uses GBP to populate Google Maps search results and is a key SEO factor for local businesses that need traffic in specific locations.
On-Page and Off-Page SEO: Why You Need Both
There’s more to search rankings than what’s on your website.
Both On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO are integral parts of a successful SEO strategy.
With so many moving parts and strategies to follow, navigating SEO can be tricky. If you’re new to the process, it pays to consult with SEO specialists for guidance.
Get in touch with our team of expert digital marketers today for all your SEO needs!