Difference Between On-Page And Off-Page SEO

On-Page and Off-Page SEO are integral components of good SEO practice, In this article, we will walk you through the difference between On-Page and Off-Page SEO.

Want to understand what SEO is and how it works? Read our article on the ultimate guide to SEO for beginners

Difference Between On-Page And Off-Page SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technique used by web developers or designers to increase the ranking of their websites and thus enhance the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.

It helps to increase the quality of the website which automatically increases the traffic to it.

SEO strategy can be divided into two types –

1. On-page SEO
2. Off-page SEO

On-Page and Off-Page SEO are entirely different from each other, but they both play crucial roles in a successful SEO practice

What is On-Page SEO?

Another name of on-page SEO is on-site SEO.

This technique helps in optimizing the different pages of a website, which increases its rankings.

There are many factors and techniques involved in on-page SEO and we will discuss them below;

On-Page SEO techniques

1. Title Tags

Your title tag gives your audience and search engines a hint about what the content on your blog is all about.

Most importantly, your title tag should include each keyword you are targeting. People need to think about an effective title tag, which must include the keyword for a popular page.

For instance, the keyword in this content is “content marketing”, the title tag contains the targeted keyword “content marketing”  

2. Headings

H1 is the tag, which is used to give the largest headings for a topic on a page. Search engines focus on these headings and people need to target the keywords in these headings. These headings must also target the content written under them.

Most CMS software like WordPress automatically adds the H1 tag to the title tag.

To check if your title tag is wrapped up in the H1 tag, click on the ‘Text’ icon.

However, apart from ensuring that your keyword appears in your title tag, you should also make sure it appears on one of your subheadings 

3. URL Structure

The URL of your content should contain your targeted keyword.

For instance, take a look at the illustration below;

The keyword here is “content marketing” and it is contained in the URL

4. Alt text for images

Alt text can be added to a URL or image. This text is not visible to a user unless he hovers the mouse cursor on it. The text helps the users to understand the purpose of the image.

Search engines also use the same technique by going through the description mentioned in the alt text. It is a good technique to include keywords in the alt text, which will help the search engines to understand the content of the page.

5. Keywords and phrases

Keywords are an integral part of SEO. They are words, phrases that internet users type into the search query on search engines.

They give internet users and search engines a clue as to what your content is all about.

For On-Page SEO practice, your keywords should appear in the first 100 words of your content, that is your keywords should appear in the first paragraph of your content.

In addition to this, include your keywords naturally into your content, you don’t want to do keyword surfing, Just ensure your keyword is evenly distributed in your content.

want to know more about what keywords are? read our article on what are keywords and it’s SEO factor

6. Meta description

A Meta description is a summary of not more than 156 characters that gives visitors and search engines a clue of what your content is about.

It is a part of on-page SEO practice and it involves wrapping up your whole content in a few words.

Your meta description should contain your keyword, the Yoast SEO plugin comes with a meta description feature that allows you to type in your meta description in its excerpt box.

Read our article on how to set up Yoast SEO on your WordPress site

One thing to note is this, if your meta description is missing, Google will create one for you.

For more illustration, check the image below;

The word represented in bold letters is the keyword 

7. Speed of page loading

SEO depends so much on the site’s performance.

Google on the other hand is very keen at ranking websites that offer a great user experience to users.

Page speed is a key factor for ranking. in 2010, Google announced that site speed was going to be a ranking factor in their algorithm and it still is.

A slow website harms your site’s SEO and user experience.

For instance, most people will abandon a site that takes seconds to load.

Apart from page speed, you should also ensure that your site is responsive to mobile devices, this is because in 2016,

Google announced that were experimenting with mobile-first indexing which means that Google will look at the mobile version of a site to see if it is relevant to what searchers type into the search query.  

You can check your page loading speed with GTmetrix, Google page speed tool, and Pingdom.

8. Content of the page

The content available on the page must be useful for the people who visit it. People can search for general as well as specific topics and if they visit a page that has relevant information, they will like to see it.

Another thing is that the content should be free from plagiarism and any spelling or grammatical mistake.

9. Internal linking

Internal linking is also a good thing for on-page SEO. People can visit various parts of the website through those links. If various topics on a page are also linked, people can click that link to reach the desired topic on the same page.

Importance of on-page SEO

on-page SEO is a technique due to which people and the search engine can reach a website. The WebPages are easily indexed by the search engines and navigation also becomes easy. This helps in increasing the ranking of the website.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO refers to the SEO techniques outside your website. While you do not have total control of these techniques, there are steps you can take to boost your authority if you remain focused.

 

The following are basic off-page SEO techniques and they include;

Backlinks

Backlinks are one of the main focuses of off-page SEO techniques. It involves reaching out to other sites requesting that they link back to your website.

Gaining backlinks from authoritative sites increases your domain authority as well as your ranking ability on search engines.

This is because links from an authoritative site to yours give Google the impression that you are providing valuable content to users.

When a website gets a lot of links from other websites, its ranking increases automatically.

The main factor that leads to the increase in the ranking is the presence of backlinks on the website. Here are some of the ways of creating backlinks.

• The content available on the website should be accurate and to the point, as it increases the value of the website.
• Links can be generated if the content is shared on various social media websites.
• Another way is email marketing where an owner of a website can send emails to the influencing people and this may help in increasing the ranking.
• Guest blogging will also provide backlinks for the websites.

The quantity of links is very important but another thing that can increase the ranking is the presence of valuable content. After getting enough links for the website, the SEO professionals think about the quality of the links.

The first step, in this case, is to create content that can be shared among the users. The quantity of links depends upon the number of competitors for a website.

However, there are a few factors to consider while considering link building

1. Domain authority of the site
2. The Relevance of the domain to the content on your site
3. The Anchored text

 Domain Authority

Domain authority as the name implies is a measure of how powerful or authoritative your site is to search engines.

It’s on a scale of 0-100 and it tells search engines how much they can trust your site.

However, domain authority is dependent on a few factors

1. Number of referring domains
2. Total site traffic
3. User Experience

The importance of off-page SEO

off-page SEO is important because it tells search engines that your contents are important to other websites.

In simple terms, others like your content and link to your website. Backlinks are always an important factor for ranking in search engines. That way google rank your articles.

This technique is used to increase the authority of the domain. In this, the website gets a lot of links from other websites and compiles them together.

The presence of backlinks on the website is the main and foremost factor responsible for increasing the ranking of the webpage.

Although the quantity of the backlinks matter but the quality of the content should never be compromised.

Off-page SEO is important because it tells search engines that your content is valuable to other websites which in hand increases the engagement to your Content.

Wrapping Up

On-page and off-page SEO techniques are very useful for increasing the rankings of a website. Both of them need valuable content.

Off-page SEO needs backlinks while on-page SEO is based on keywords, which can be provided in the links, URLs, and text.

However, Both techniques are helpful to increase the ranking of a website. But content is of utmost importance. “A good content gives out a good connect”.

Off-page SEO is based on backlinks while On-page SEO is based on keywords that can be provided in links, URLs, or texts. So, the main focus should be to check out demanding keywords and add them up in your work.

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