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Last updated on April 18th, 2024 at 11:05 am
If you’re not a search engine optimization (SEO) expert, you may be confused about the difference between on-page and off-page SEO. But don’t worry! We’ll help break down what each of these terms means so that you can get started improving your website’s SEO right away.
What is on-page optimization?
On-page optimization refers to the process of optimizing your website content so that it is more search engine friendly. You can do this by making sure that your website has the right keywords, meta tags, and descriptions to make it show up in search engines.
It’s important to note that on-page optimization doesn’t refer only to the content on your site but also to how you structure that content and how you present it. H1 headings are a key part of on-page SEO optimization. Choose target keywords for your page that are relevant and can be easily integrated into your content naturally. Trust me, if you choose a keyword just for the sake of its popularity and you cram it into your content, people can tell! It doesn’t look good for business.
What is off-page optimization?
Off-page optimization refers to all the SEO activities done, you guessed it… off the page. The main purpose of off-page optimization is to gain traffic. A common off-page task is getting other sites to link to your site. This is called link building or backlinking. Search engines value links from highly authoritative websites, so the more links you have pointing to your website, the better your search ranking will be. The most common way for a search engine bot to find out about off-page optimization is through inbound links on trusted websites or blogs.
To get those inbound links, it’s important that your content is engaging and provides valuable information for readers—if people find it useful, they may link back to it on their own blog or website! You can also get inbound links by utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (though these don’t tend to carry as much weight as other sites).
Other off-page SEO activities include site speed, sitemaps, fixing broken links, blog commenting, directory listings and more.
How are they different?
On-page optimization is all about optimizing your website content so that it will rank well in search engine results. Off-page optimization is the focus of increasing traffic and involves getting links back to your site from other sites.
You shouldn’t do just one and not the other. Both on-page and off-page optimization are required to help your SEO ranking.
Where to start?
When you’re just getting started with SEO, it’s a good idea to start with on-page optimization. This is the process of optimizing your website so that it meets search engines’ standards and provides useful content. The steps below will help you get started:
- Use keywords in the title, body, and URL. If a user searches for something specific, they expect to find that result at the top of their search results page (SERP). Search engines take ranking factors into consideration when they determine which results come up first, so using relevant keywords in these areas helps ensure that your site will be shown at the top of SERPs if someone searches for those terms.
- Create unique meta descriptions for each page/post/product etc., but use common themes throughout all pages across all categories where possible. Meta descriptions are short snippets of text under each link; they tell users what content lies behind each link before they click through to visit the site.For example, when you search “pizza delivery cape town”, all the blue titles you see are called the meta titles. The short description underneath is the meta description. And the URL is the link to the page on the website. You will also notice that words from the search term you typed in are shown in bold in the meta description. This is what optimizing for a keyword looks like.
Before you can understand the difference between on-page and off-page SEO, you need to understand how search engines work
Search engines are programmed to look for keywords in a web page that match what a user searches. Keywords are the words or phrases that people search for online (as we showed you above).
Keywords are connected to content on the page and also connected to the website itself. When someone types a keyword into a search engine, they’re looking for specific information related to that keyword. The sad truth is, they don’t care how many other websites have that same piece of information if it’s on another site that’s shown first! So it’s important to optimize your site and get ranking in the top search results.
Conclusion
The difference between on-page and off-page SEO optimization is the activities included for each. On-page SEO focuses on optimizing the page content for the target keyword. Off-page optimization refers to all the work done off the site to help improve the ranking and get more traffic.
If you have any questions about these topics or want to learn more about how we can help your business grow online, please contact us today!