Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has been around since the popularity of the dot com wave. Ever since its early days, SEO has been used to improve the online visibility of a webpage to drive more organic traffic to the website. Over time, the practice has become more sophisticated and is significantly driven by user behavior.
Today, a Seo company in Vadodara uses both on-page and off-page SEO techniques to ensure that high-quality websites with authoritative solutions make it to the top of the SERP rankings. A reliable SEO agency will use multiple optimization techniques based on the specific needs of the website to drive its growth.
In the following post, we take a look at what on-page and off-page SEO is and how digital marketers can use them to help their clients rank higher on the SERPs.
A brief introduction to SEO
SEO or search engine optimisation refers to any and every practice that improves the quality and quantity of organic traffic to a website. It involves using various optimisation techniques to boost the rank of a website on the search engine results pages so that more people can click on the result and find their relevant information.
In its current iteration, SEO can be broadly categorised into on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO focuses on optimising the parts of your website that will be visible to the audience and is in your control. On the other hand, off-page SEO deals with increasing the authority of your website with the help of blogger outreach and content creation. Essentially, on-page SEO deals with what your page is about and off-page SEO deals with how authoritative your website is in your industry.
Introduction to on-page SEO
As discussed above, on-page SEO deals with optimising the various elements on your website to make it more relevant to the common user queries. These include using authoritative and informative content along with technical elements to improve the quality of a website so that it fulfils the user intent.
There are many technical aspects of on-page SEO and here is a brief discussion on the same.
- SEO Audit
One of the first and most important parts of on-page SEO is conducting a thorough SEO audit of the website. SEO agencies conduct such audits to help you recognise the gaps and issues in the website so that you can fix them at once. Some of the aspects measured during this phase include technical analysis, website health, competitive analysis, content analysis, etc.
- Keyword research and placement
Arguably the most important aspect of on-page SEO is the keywords you are going to use on a website. Optimising a website for the right keywords includes finding the most relevant ones and then placing them in the right position. The best practices for keyword placement include adding one in the heading and title tags, meta descriptions, image alt tags, URL, etc.
- Creating engaging content
Engaging visitors starts with creating quality content. An SEO agency will hire some of the best content writers to create informative and engaging content around relevant topics written with an authoritative voice, which makes an impression in the readers’ minds that you are a reliable source of information. Engaging content is one of the most important ranking factors alongside page experience.
- Internal linking
Internal linking is one of the easiest ways to supply more context to your visitors; it is good for both the user experience and SEO. Use keyword-rich anchor texts when linking to your website and avoid multiple links to the same page on one webpage. One of the best practices when it comes to interlinking is the three-click rule, which states that the most important pages on a website should be accessible within 2 to 3 clicks from the homepage.
- Making the website mobile friendly
Since most people today use smartphones for quickly accessing information, making the website mobile-friendly is another important ranking factor considered by search engines. Not only should the website be responsive on smaller screens, but it should also feature dynamic content with separate URLs for mobile sites.
Introduction to off-page SEO
While most people associate off-page with link building, it is much more than that. Just like keyword stuffing is not an accepted practice anymore, so is the practice of buying and trading spammy backlinks to increase the ranking of your website. Yes, backlinks are important to off-page SEO, but the authority of those backlinks plays an equally vital role in determining the domain authority and trust scores.
An SEO agency undertakes several other external signals other than building backlinks. Some of these include the following.
- Acquiring backlinks
One of the most important off-page SEO techniques is acquiring external backlinks from authoritative websites on the internet to improve the rank of your website. Unlike the olden days when only the number of backlinks determined the SEO ranking, search engines now use the quality of external backlinks too to decide SERP rankings.
- Omnichannel content promotion
Leveraging the power of other marketing channels like social media helps drive a lot of relevant traffic to your website. Social media marketing is an important part of SEO and helps websites build a community and trust among the target audience.
- Social bookmarking
While a relatively old technique, social bookmarking is still considered a relevant and important off-page SEO practice. As the name suggests, this process involves bookmarking your website on important and popular bookmarking sites and tagging the relevant keywords, thereby helping gather a substantial amount of traffic.
- Guest blogging
One of the best off-page SEO practices right now is link building service, which refers to writing and publishing blog posts with links to the landing pages of your website on third party websites. It exposes your brand to a wider audience and is an effective way to prove authority in your industry.
While this was a basic introduction to on-page and off-page SEO, note that SEO techniques change over time. With each new update to the Google algorithm, an SEO company will update the techniques it uses for search engine optimisation to ensure that the website holds or improves its position on the SERPs.
