Search Engine Optimization On page and Off page - A to Z

You can divide your search engine optimization strategy into two common groups; off-page SEO and on-page SEO. Although both are essential in any SEO campaign, they are worlds apart.

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The on-page SEO aspect is concerned with making the content of your website right while the off-page part is more about increasing domain authority by creating content and earning backlinks from other sites. To better understand these differences, you need to know how search engine algorithms work at a basic level. Let’s do it.

When comparing your site to others on the web, search engines consider two main buckets.

On page SEO looks at what your site or page is all about

Off page SEO checks out how authoritative and well-known your site is

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Contents: Search Engine Optimization On page and Off page

The Difference

On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: What’s the Difference?

Simply put, what you rank for depends largely on on-page factors whereas how high you rank in search results depends mainly on off-page factors.

How Do Different Types Of SEO Influence Rankings?

Keyword rankings correlate directly with the integration of on-page and off-page SEO. Competing for keywords requires strong performances in these areas.

Read more: How to Get Your Website on Top of Google Search

If either is weak, websites may only have rankings for less competitive keywords or no rankings at all. The bad performance in both cases does not result in any keyword ranking.

What Is On-Page SEO?

On-Page SEO (otherwise referred to as “on-site” SEO) can be described as optimizing various parts of a website that affect its search engine rankings.

Several ranking factors influence where your website appears on search engine results pages including site accessibility, page speed, optimized content, keywords, title tags etc.

On-page SEO refers to the stuff you can control and change within your own website.

On-Page SEO Checklist

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How Can You Ensure Your On-Site Tactics Are In Line With Quality? Here is an on-site optimization checklist which can help create a comprehensive strategy.

  • Title Tags
  • Headings
  • URL Structure
  • Alt text for images
  • Fast loading pages
  • Mobile friendly design
  • Page content
  • Internal links
  • Schema Markup
  • Social media tags
  • Core web vitals

Now let's delve into broad discussion of this checklist.

Search Engine Optimization (Title Tags)

Place the targeted keywords in the title tag of each page on your site. Writing an effective title tag is not a simple matter.

  • Don’t make them too long – 55-60 characters (including spaces) maximum
  • Move the keyword closer to the front of the title, but only if it sounds natural.
  • Avoid keyword stuffing in titles
  • Include brand at end of title tag separated by a pipe bar ( | )

For instance: Seattle SEO | Digital Third Coast

Search Engine Optimization (Headings, H1)

Headings are typically larger words which means search engines often assign them greater weight than other types of onsite content.

It would be a good idea to include your target keyword within your heading tags for each webpage, however it must also accurately represent the great content that is featured on the page.

Only have one H1 per page and use H2s and H3s for all other headers

Search Engine Optimization (URL structure)

Where possible use keywords in URLs, but do not change existing URLs to include keywords. Old URLs should not be changed unless you want to direct old URL traffic to new URLs. Seek professional advice before you do this.

  • Make directories and folders user friendly with logical labels.
  • Avoid repeated use of keywords in your URL
  • Overdoing it with the key words affects user experience.

Example: /best-socks-comparison-best-socks-best-socks?

Shorten URLs as much as possible

Search Engine Optimization (Alt text for images)

ncidentally the caption was on target. To be sure, your typical website visitor will not see this – it is, in fact, read by screen reader software so that blind users can understand what is in the picture. The process of image scanning by search engines is similar to this, and therefore adding relevant keywords that accurately describe the image makes the search engine able to understand better what you are talking about on your site.

Writing alt attributes for each image ensures that a company complies with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). The following applies when writing alternative text:

  • Describe the image very well using 8-10 words
  • Try to fit your keyword naturally into it
  • A geo-locator may be included if applicable (e.g., Chicago)

Fast-loading pages, or page load speed (SEO)

This is why Google wants to make it easy for its users to find what they need as quickly as possible. Hence, faster loading pages on your website will boost its search rankings.

Google has a tool known as PageSpeed Insights that can analyze your pages on mobile and desktop devices. It will tell you the best way to improve your page load time, e.g., by suggesting tips for optimizing page speed.

Also, there are few quick fixes that can fix whatever is dragging down your website and slowing down its page loading speed. Some of the key factors in site speed include:

  • Reduced HTTP requests
  • Server response time should be <200ms
  • Browser caching must be more than one week or longer
  • Enable Gzip compression
  • Ensure image sizes remain below 100kb (.jpg, .png, .gif)
  • Place all CSS in an external style sheet
  • Minify all JS, CSS and HTML
  • Above-the-fold content load first (prioritize)

Search Engine Optimization (Mobile Friendliness)

Recently Google has been ranking web pages based on their mobile page load speed.

How do I know if my website is mobile friendly? However, Google has recently stopped supporting some free public tools for this purpose, but now you can use Google Search Console to review such information.

Read more: 17 Best Search Engine Optimization Tools

Specifically, Core Web Vitals report can help you identify whether or not your mobile pages are loading slower than they should be.

Search Engine Optimization (Page Content)

The information mentioned on your pages must be helpful to individuals. If these people look at the web page of your site, and their search is too specific to find it, then they should be able to meet their goals as well. It has to be readable and useful for the final consumer. Google can tell whether or not your content is useful through various ways.

Write at least 500 words of copy. There is no definitive number of words that a page should have but Google seems to favor when a page has many other relevant and useful pieces around your subject.

All copy needs to be unique per page; it must not have been copied from another page within your website with each one speaking directly to keyword phrases that bring visitors here

If possible, put keywords near the beginning part of the title line.

Search Engine Optimization (Internal Linking)

Including internal links to other pages on your website is beneficial for both search engines and users. This helps users who are visiting other sites and search engines in accessing internal links on yours so link out when necessary. Here’s another blog pos on our site talking more about internal linking which you could use as an internal link. Very meta.

Always ensure that relevant anchor text is used when inserting internal links. Anchor text refers to the clickable words in a hyperlink which are commonly blue and underlined. To optimize your anchor text, the selected phrase or word should relate to the page you’re linking to.

By using on-page SEO, you can make sure that search engine robots and prospective clients can both understand your website. Effective on-page SEO makes it simple for search engines to index your web pages, comprehend the purpose of your website, and navigate its content and structure, which helps them rank your website appropriately. Make sure your page content has one to three pertinent internal links as a best practice.

Search Engine Optimization (Schema Markup)

Google’s understanding of page content improves with the addition of structured data. A recipe accompanied by star ratings or a step-by-step guide with image carousel is an example of rich results that appears in SERPs.

Normally, these rich results appear near or at the top of SERPs and they generally have a higher click-through-rates than traditional organic listings.

Google prefers schema.org vocabulary for structured data and recommends JSON-LD format. They also provide a useful Rich Results Test tool to check your code.

Although there are several methods you can use to add structured data on your site (for instance, plugins, Google Tag Manager etc.), it is always advisable to get assistance from an experienced person if you are not comfortable coding.

Search Engine Optimization (Social media tags)

When content is shared on social media it tells Google that this information is valuable to people’s search queries.

However, not every page on your website is shareable but some tips can help optimize such pages:

Make sure Open Graph tags and Twitter Cards are installed.

“Tweet this quote”, “social share” or “share this post” links make it easy to share.

Search Engine Optimization (Core Web Vitals)

The success of any website depends on user experience in the long run. In spring 2020, Google introduced Core Web Vitals which represent common signals they consider “essential” for all web experiences users undertake.

These signals are used to measure user experience on websites such as visual stability of pages and loading times for interactive experiences.

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): LCP is a performance metric that examines the speed at which a page loads and identifies the time when most of its content has been downloaded.
  • First Input Delay (FID): this measures how users are experiencing or feeling their first interaction point with any webpage.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift: assesses the visual stability of a page by quantifying the amount of layout shift on visible content. Usually, it's caused by dimensions-only images, dynamically injected material, online fonts that produce FOIT/FOUT, and other dimensions-free embeds.

Go to your Google PageSpeed Insights and make sure your page reaches LCP in 2.5 seconds or less to see your LCP score. This can be achieved by disabling any unused third-party scripts, updating your web server, turning on "lazy loading," which causes page elements to load only when users scroll down the page, and removing any huge elements from the page that might be causing it to load slowly.

A straightforward method of optimizing cumulative layout shift is to give every new site element height and width dimensions. Additionally, unless you are responding to user input, refrain from placing new content above current content on a page.

Search Engine Optimization (Page Experience)

The “page experience signal” will be a combination of Core Web Vitals along with mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security and intrusive interstitial guidelines.

As per Google, “Optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile.

We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction.”

What is Off-Page SEO?

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Off-page SEO refers to the activities that can be done outside of your website in order to get it higher search engine rankings.

A good analogy of how authority works is this. If you have a bathtub full of rubber duckies (the ducks are your pages) and you add water (links), all of your duckies are going to float up.

That’s how Wikipedia ranks for virtually everything. The bathtub is so full of water that if you put another rubber duck in, it would float to the top without even trying harder.

There is a metric called Domain Authority which measures how authoritative your site is relative to others. You just type in your domain name Click Here

How to optimize for off-page SEO

Many variables impact off-page SEO rankings. Nonetheless, each of them is handled differently but has the common purpose of creating trust and reputation for a website from external sources.

  • Inbound links
  • Social media marketing
  • Guest blogging and guest posting to other blogs
  • Unlinked brand mentions
  • Influencer marketing

The biggest off page SEO factor is the number and quality of back links pointing to your website. A few examples of how you can build links to your website are as follows:

Developing great content that people will want to link to because it is useful. For instance, this fantastic blog post about improving about us pages. It gives loads of actionable suggestions. People usually like linking with helpful information.

Another powerful type of content is building an online tool for your niche. Out of all content types, things like calculators tend to get the highest number of backlinks since they assist people in achieving something.

Read more: Search Engine Optimization Meaning or Important 9 Topic

The social media shares on your content that ultimately make it go viral by generating linkages. These outreach e-mails eventually result in links directed at you from industry influencers. Guest blogging on sites related to yours. These guest posts also come with a link back to your site.

Although the quantity of links is still significant, content producers and SEO experts are beginning to recognize that link quality has surpassed link quantity in importance. Therefore, the first step to obtaining worthwhile links and enhancing your off-page SEO is to provide shareable content.

How many links are necessary for off-page SEO success?This is a challenging question that will depend on the domain authority of your rivals because you want to make sure you're in the same sandbox.

SEOs used to think that purchasing links was a legitimate strategy for establishing links, however Google will now penalize you if you do so in an effort to manipulate page rank. If you provide links to link directories whose major objective is to raise your domain authority, you may also face penalties. Once more, when it comes to developing links, quality is more important than number.

Is On-Page or Off-Page SEO More Important?

It's not a matter of choose between on-page and off-page SEO; that would be like having to decide between your home's roof and foundation. Together, off-page and on-page SEO raise your search engine ranks in a way that is mutually beneficial.

But before concentrating too much on off-page SEO, SEO experts usually advise getting your on-page SEO act together.

Similar to building a house, you should lay the foundation before constructing the remaining walls.Similar to a foundation, you might occasionally need to return and perform some on-page SEO maintenance.

Maintaining a balance between the two can help your website become "bilingual," meaning that both search engine robots and users can understand it, which will raise your rankings.

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