SEO has become a powerful tool to get a website higher rankings in the search engine search results, and it is through both On-Page and Off-Page techniques that this is all possible.
Optimizing your website to increase organic traffic and get higher search rankings should be done using a holistic approach, and that is why Oviond is here to tell you how to implement both On and Off-Page SEO techniques to be used for your website.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-Page SEO refers to the efforts done outside of a website to improve its ranking across various search engines. Link building is the main method for effective Off-Page SEO, but there are many ways to provide internet users with the means to be directed to your website and improve its ranking.
Off-Page SEO Techniques
1. External Link Building
External Link Building, or backlinking is a great way to increase the reach of a website by leaving bread crumbs all over the internet for internet users to find and then be directed to your website. Backlinking is usually seen where a link to a certain website is displayed on a partner website or other referring websites.
The general rule is that the more quality referring links a website has to its web pages, the more it will be rewarded by search engines like Google, who have expressed that this is the number one way of improving your SEO ranking.
2. Social Media
Social media is a tool that marketers have fallen in love with because of the opportunities it provides for internet users to discover any content posted by a company on the various social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc), and be directed to the company’s website.
3.Influencer Outreach
Going hand-in-hand with social media, influencers have the ability to reach a large audience because of their following on the various social media platforms. Marketers have realized that influencers can be commissioned to promote products, services, and companies to their followers, who then will be directed to the company’s website if they would like to find out more about what was promoted.
Promotions from influencers are a great way to build trust in a website, which brings us to the next point.
4. Building Trust
An important part of getting a website to rank higher is to improve its trust or credibility. This is important because there are many websites on the internet that either contains harmful information and content or simply do not offer anything of value or usefulness.
Getting a website to be reviewed on platforms such as Capterra or Google Reviews allows marketers to build the credibility of their website, provided that they can actually get good user reviews.
Implementing links to other credible websites, and getting credible websites to include links to your website is also an effective way to build trust and credibility.
5. Forums Posting
Forums posting has become a very popular way for companies to improve their website SEO and build organic traffic. Many companies use this technique by answering questions on websites like Quora or even just commenting on posts from different websites across the internet.
Usually, when commenting and answering questions across these websites, a marketer will provide a link to their website and try to make it seem as natural as possible, for example, if someone on Quora asks what the best pizza shop in Sydney is, a marketer can answer the question by providing a list of 3 pizza places with URLs, one of which will be their own pizza shop.
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO focuses on optimizing the webpages of a website to improve the SEO ranking on various search engines. There are multiple elements in the website and HTML source code that can be tweaked in order to maximize website searchability.
Ultimately, optimizing a website’s On-Page SEO elements allows for the search engine bots to understand what the website is about so that it can deliver the correct content to a user who is searching for that type of content.
On-Page SEO Techniques
1. Good Content
Providing content that is actually useful to visitors and is related to the page title and headings is the best starting point for optimizing your website using On-Page methods.
Therefore, visitors should be able to receive exactly what they expect to receive in the content of a website, based on the page title they saw that made them click into the website in the first place.
To elaborate further on this, providing the right keywords in the copy and headings will allow the search engine to scan through the website and identify these keywords that can be used to help rank the website in the top search results.
2. Optimize Page Title and Meta Descriptions
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords! This is so important when creating page titles. Not only do these page titles need to be a good indication of the content that is present on that page, but it is also an opportunity to place more important keywords that can be used to rank the web page higher in the search results. Good Page Title keywords will also grab the attention of viewers looking for a solution to their search query. With that being said, in order to make the Page Titles attractive and increase CTR, try creating short titles that use powerful words like “amazing”, “perfect” and “solution”.
To build on this, when the title for your web page appears in the search results, there is also a little description added below the Page Title that gives a little summary about the content of the webpage. Once again, this is the perfect place to add a couple more keywords relating to the page content.
3. Images and Video
Using multimedia is a good way to present the content of a website in an interesting and entertaining manner, however multimedia itself is not always useful for improving search ranking. Images and videos are elements that should be considered crucial in complementing the content on a website, one way to make them directly useful towards search ranking is by including alt text below each image or other form of media.
Alt text is a little description of what the image or video above it is showing, and can often have keywords included in it that search engine bots can use to rank a webpage and present it to viewers who are searching for the relevant keywords.
4. URL Optimization
While URLs are not necessarily the first thing that will be seen by viewers who are looking for a website to solve their searching needs, it is still visible and should be considered when you are looking to improve your website ranking and user experience.
First of all, it is important to create a URL that is not too long and contains short clear keywords relating to the content of the specific web page it links to. Keywords can be separated by hyphens.
A good URL structure and content can also aid the trustworthiness of a website.
5. Internal Links
Providing website visitors with good website navigation links to the different web pages present on your website is a must when trying to improve your website ranking. The Google bots have learned to pick up that good website navigation is crucial to a good website experience, and should be rewarded by delivering the website to a visitor’s search efforts.
Which Should You Be Using?
Well, both!
On-Page and Off-Page SEO are both powerful methods for optimizing your website and improving its searchability. But, where they really become powerful is when they are used together.
A website needs a combination of high-quality, trustworthy content and links to the website in order to maximize its effectiveness at drawing in organic traffic and ultimately improve its Search Engine Ranking. Often both the On-Page and Off-Page techniques work hand in hand together to take the website searchability to new heights.
While neither of these methods is more important than the other, it is generally accepted that a marketer should look at making sure their On-Page SEO is top-notch before they start to look at Off-Page methods. I mean, you wouldn’t attract some great viewers who are looking to make a purchase by backlinking them to your website and have them discover your website has zero navigation control between pages, and, the content refers to nothing of what they were expecting when following the link in the first place.
Where To Next?
Time to start ramping up your On-Page SEO! Or maybe you’re ready to start building some backlinks and just occasionally fine-tune the good work you have done to optimize your On-Page content.
Feel like you need a little more support in getting your website into that top search result spot? Take a look at our blog post for The Best SEO Tools In 2020.
Happy Optimizing!
