When it comes to optimizing your website, many factors play an important role in helping your website perform its best.
Two strategies that are commonly used are on-page and off-page Search Engine Optimization. Which is the better strategy you ask? Well there isn’t an easy answer between the two because they are both equally essential and effective when it comes to strengthening your digital strategy.
You could think of on-page and off-page SEO as two items that should not be sold separately; like peanut butter and jelly, it just isn’t the same without both. You can try to use just on-page SEO or just off-page SEO, but if you’d like your website to perform to its maximum potential, using both strategies is the most effective method.
Off-page SEO
Think of off-page Search Engine Optimization as a way to get visitors to your website. Off-page SEO is the process of optimizing the pages on your website by getting links that will lead back to your site. As you increase your number of links and quality of links, you will in return increase your rank in search engine results.
For example, if you establish dozens of links that trail back to your website on “How to Get Organized” from a ton of quality authority sites related to organization topics, Google will realize you may be sharing very useful content and you will ultimately end up higher in search results.
Keep in-mind, link building is extremely important when it comes to off-page SEO, but without producing quality content that others will want share and link to, it will be difficult. That’s where on-page SEO comes in.
On-page SEO
On-page Search Optimization focuses on your actual website pages. Important components of on-page SEO consist of:
- Content: Original, quality content such as articles, blogs, infographics, images and other types of copy are important because they reflect the quality and individuality of your site and product. A website with poor content will NOT survive!
- Internal Linking: Internal linking is the process of linking to pages within your website. This is a way to let search engines know about your other pages and identify your site’s most important pages. Not only does internal linking help visitors navigate through your site, but will also increase the chances of keeping them on your site longer.
- Page Titles and Meta Descriptions: You wouldn’t write a 300 page unique novel without incorporating a title and description that distinguishes it from other novels or else no one would read yours. Just like that novel, every page you produced for your website is unique and required a lot of work, so why not make it worth clicking on? Having a unique title that sums up your description will distinguish your website from the millions of other results. Descriptions are what the site searcher will see in the search engine results page. Like the title, it is best it is unique and descriptive.
- Formatting: This is also very important when it comes to succeeding with on-page SEO. Image should be original and optimized by using ALT tags and the correct size or else the less important content will stick out over the important message your are trying to appeal to your customers.
- URL Structure: This is an extremely important part of on-page SEO. Make sure your permanent links (the URL of each page) are less than 255 characters and reflect on the main points of what the actual page is about.
Above all, on-page SEO and off-page SEO are like “Ying and Yang,” you just simply need both to fully succeed and receive maximum results.
All the best,
Tina
Tina DiSerafino is a Content Coordinator at Stream Companies, a Philadelphia-area advertising agency.{{cta(’48c43339-2c46-4595-afcb-782ccd32b000′)}}