Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. It helps businesses increase their visibility online and reach more potential customers. But with so many different SEO strategies available, it can be difficult to know which ones to use. By breaking down your strategy and thinking of SEO as three distinct categories - on-page, off-page, technical, and local - it will be much easier to organize and execute your optimization plans.
On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing the content of your website. This can include body text, keywords, headings, meta titles, meta descriptions, images and more. Incorporating on-page SEO into your marketing efforts is helpful for search engines to understand your site's content. And once Google understands your website, it can reward you by displaying your site for search queries it deems relevant.
Off-page SEO is pretty much everything that doesn't happen on your website. Off-page SEO is about building exposure and trust for your business, which can ultimately lead to more visitors and sales. Most off-page SEO work focuses on link building. If you don't know, link building is the practice of getting other reputable websites to link to your site.
Technical SEO refers to actions taken to help search engines crawl your website and improve the user experience (UX). As search engines and their algorithms become more complex, these requirements change, which means that this type of SEO is always evolving. To ensure that there are no crawl and UX issues, your technical SEO efforts must be efficient. Local SEO is a variation of SEO that focuses on a specific area, rather than a national approach.
It is about increasing your online presence in your community and promoting your products or services to local customers. Some ways to improve your local SEO include writing custom local landing pages, optimizing your local profiles, spamming Google Maps, building local links, and more. Effective on-page SEO relies on high-quality, informative content. And not just slightly informative content - that will actually rank well - has to solve problems that no other page is solving (or, at least, solve those problems better than other available resources). The information you share has to be top-notch.
Rand Fishkin, of Moz fame, says it has to be ten times better than the other content available. And that's no joke - if your content is absolutely better than everything else, it's going to rank very well. The most important part of on-page SEO is making sure your content is awesome. But there are many other factors that go into making a page rank well in search results. The example I gave earlier - keywords - is an important one.
If you're writing a detailed article on a topic, you're going to include a lot of relevant and related keywords. But making sure those keywords are fully optimized to meet your goals can provide a big boost to your SEO. But on-page SEO goes beyond keywords. Having a site that is easy for visitors to navigate is important; also if your visitors want additional information but it's hard to find out where it is, they're not likely to stick around to find out. Good design is also crucial. In short, focus on providing a good overall user experience.
If it seems like almost everything is included in on-page SEO, it's because it's a huge factor, and getting it right is very important. Much of this optimization is focused on the user - who is the one you are trying to attract - so it is very important to get it right. Defining off-page SEO is a bit more difficult. The first and arguably most important part of off-page optimization is link building. It is a very important part of SEO and also one of the most difficult.
Getting links to your site helps attract visitors and shows Google that others on the Internet value your content and that your site has authority. Establishing positive relationships with bloggers, journalists, social media personalities and the people behind websites similar to yours are positive off-page SEO practices. Commenting on other blogs can be helpful. Guest blogging remains a popular off-page SEO method. Hanging out on Reddit and relevant forums can also help. A lot of this may not seem like SEO but that's because you've focused on on-page signals.
SEO has a lot to do with your overall online presence, and off-page SEO focuses on that. It's often more about you as a content creator than your content itself. Some people classify technical SEO as a subset of on-page SEO but here we'll treat it as a unique type. Technical SEO, in short, is related to on-page factors but has to do with things that happen behind the scenes. App shop optimization is very similar to on-page SEO. While it's not always clear what factors are used in app shop search algorithms, there are fewer factors to influence so focus on those. For example: let's say I'm looking at two different websites for pool services - one optimized for mobile devices and one not optimized for mobile devices. The mobile site is optimized for the width of my screen and is easy to read; the non-mobile site looks cluttered and hard to read due to its small font size. See the difference? The first two sound natural and as if I can imagine them when I see them online; the last one looks spammy and like it's trying too hard. Mobile optimization is incredibly important as Google practices mobile-first indexing.
This means that instead of crawling a desktop site; the algorithm will use the mobile version of your site when indexing and ranking pages for SERPs. In addition 61% of search queries on Google in the US are mobile-first; so given all this; your SEO strategy would be ineffective without prioritizing mobile optimization. Keywords are at the heart of SEO but they are no longer the first step to achieving organic growth; instead; the first step is to make a list of topics you would like your content to address. To start; draw up a list of about 10 words and terms associated with your product or service; use an SEO tool (Google's Keyword Tool; Ahrefs; SEMRush or GrowthBar; to name a few) to research these words; identify their search volume and come up with variations that make sense for your business. Let's say a pool business wants their content topics related words such as 'pool maintenance', 'pool cleaning', 'pool repair', 'pool installation', 'pool supplies', 'pool chemicals', 'pool covers', 'pool liners' etc.
Conclusion
SEO can seem overwhelming at first but by breaking down into its three distinct categories - On-Page; Off-Page; Technical; Local - you can easily organize and execute an effective optimization plan for any business or website.Takeaways
- On-Page SEO involves optimizing the content of your website including body text; keywords; headings; meta titles; meta descriptions; images etc.
- Off-Page SEO focuses on building exposure and trust for your business through link building; guest blogging etc.
- Technical SEO involves actions taken behind the scenes such as improving crawlability or user experience (UX).
- Local SEO focuses on increasing online presence in specific areas rather than nationally.
