What are On-page and Off-page SEO and Their Importance in Marketing a Business?

Do you know that you can get free traffic from Google? Do you know that people can recognize your business through organic searches in Google? Do you know that you can make your website appear on specific search terms in Google?

Yes,you’re right to think so! You can get free traffic for years on your business website or blog, but the question is, how can you do that? You can get free traffic for years on your website by optimizing your website for the search engine in a process called SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is categorized into two major parts, on-page SEO and off-page SEO, and today we are going to discuss both of them in detail.

On-Page SEO

On-pageSEO is a technique of optimizing web pages for search engines and users.We will discuss in detail some basic elements in on-page SEO, such as title tags, content, internal links, headings and URLs, among other things.

Title Tag

Whenever you write any kind of content on your page, you start with the title tag. Your title tag needs to be in an H1 tag, and most of the WordPress themes by default put the title tag in H1.

Your title needs to have your focused keyword in it, and it should be catchy so that it can get maximum clicks when it appears in Google’s search results.

Subheadings

Write down your headings and subheadings in H2 and H3 tags. Make sure that you use your targeted keyword atleast once in your H2 or H3 headings.

URLs

The URL of your page needs to be small, and it should only contain your focus keyword. For example, your domain is abc.com, and you have written an article about “Top 10 SEO factors to rank No.1 in Google”. This article has a focused keyword “SEO factors” therefore, the URL should be abc.com/seo-factors, and this is it. Your URL is optimised.

Content

Content is the most important on-page SEO factor. If your content is not engaging and high quality, then your page won’t rank for a long time. You have done everything to rank your page, but if your content is not worth reading, then people will bounce off your content. Eventually, Google will realize that people do not like it. So, Google will move it down and give someone else a chance.

Thus, quality content that makes the user stay and read the whole article is your priority. Make sure that you have used your main keyword in the first one hundred words of your article to let Google know what this page is about.

Always support your content with facts and figures, make it engaging and attractive. Do not confuse unique content with plagiarism-free content. Unique content means to bring something that is not already on the internet. It can be a case study, personal experience, or more in-depth material with better user experience (UX) and factual data.

Keyword Density

Keyword density, aka keyword frequency, requires a balancing act. Use your targeted keyword only once in your article, and Google will not understand what your page is about. Use it too much, and Google will penalize your site for keyword stuffing.

So how do you play safely? You need to use your targeted keyword several times on your page, but you also need to make sure that you do it naturally. Your focus should be user-friendly content, but you need to use your keywords too. With creativity, you will be able to use the necessary keywords optimally.

Practically, in any length of content, your focus keyword can be used up to 5-6 times naturally, and it will be good enough.

Meta Description

Google recommends that you write down your meta descriptions because you know your content better. In many cases, Google overrides the meta description that we write, but still, Google recommends adding it.

You can use plugins like Yoast to add meta title and meta description for your pages. Always include your main keyword in the meta description so that Google finds your content highly relevant and shows it in the search results.

On-Page UX

Adding images, tables, infographics, videos and designing the layout that grabs the attention of the reader are also essential factors.

Whenever you add any kind of image in your page, make sure that you write proper alt text, description, and caption to optimise the images. Always use images of similar size and make sure that it does not cover the entire screen. The content above and below of the image should be visible both in mobile and desktop.

You should use your own created/captured images and avoid stock photos to bring uniqueness to your page.

Infographics can be very handy as they provide the gist of your article in one image, and the reader can spend considerable time on your site reading infographics.

Add tables of the data that you have collected, embed videos, use text styles like font colours, italic and bold to beautify your content but don’t overdo it. Keep it nice and simple.

External Linking

Linking to external sources like Oxford studies, government websites and other high-authority sites, which are not your competitors but gives authentic information about what you are writing can boost your SEO. By doing this, your page becomes more authentic as your studies are being linked back tohigh-authority sites.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is an important strategy for on-page SEO. If you have written a new page or post, link that post to those pages of your site which have high authority, and you can find high-authority pages of your site using Google Analytics for free. All you need to do is find out the page which is getting the highest traffic and put a link of your new page into that page.

You can also use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to find out high-authority pages on your site and link those pages.

The SEO Pros do it because it helps your new page to get indexed in Google quickly as it passes some authority to your new page, which helps in ranking that page too.

Make sure that you link the article to a correct keyword. For example, you are writing a blog on “Tips to lose weight fast”, and you have another blog on “Keto diet for weight loss” which is already ranking in Google. What you should do is find a word like “lose weight” in your keto diet article and link your “Tips to lose weight fast” article on that keyword.

Hope I am not confusing things for you J

Page Speed

Page speed is a very important factor in ranking, as confirmed by Google. If your page does not load under 3-5 seconds, then you are going to lose half of your traffic because people do not want to wait long enough to see your content.

Therefore, optimising your page speed is a very crucial thing, and if you are using WordPress, then you can optimise your site’s speed by using various free and paid plugins.

Implement Schema

The schema does not directly help in ranking. What it does is help you in rich snippets, which can help you get more clicks.

The two best schemas are review schema and FAQs schema. Implement whichever suits you better.

We are very much done with ON-PAGE SEO, and it is time to start off-page SEO. 

Off-Page SEO

Off-page is a technique in which we do activities off the website so that we can increase the site’s visibility and rankings. The standard practices include creating backlinks, social sharing and encouraging branded searches.

Why is Off-Page SEO Important?

Google determines the authority of your site based on the number of other websites linking to your site. Thus, the more backlinks you have, the higher rankings you can get, but the backlinks need to be quality backlinks.

Your site’s ranking also gets increased if some experts have recommended your site. Also, positive reviews from users increase your rankings.

If a well-known news site has added an article about your website or if there is a Wikipedia page about your business or website, then this also gives a considerable ranking boost.

Backlinks

When someone links your site’s page to theirs, it creates a backlink for your website. There are various ways to make backlinks, and we will discuss all of them.

Write Stats in Your Content

Writing statistical information in your content leads people linking to your site automatically. You can create tables for this purpose or simply mention the data that you have collected.

Broken Link Building

This is a technique in which you build backlinks on broken pages. Let’s say a site in your niche is linking to a page which does not exist and you reach out to the site’s owner and tell him that your website is linking to that particular page which does not exist and it is causing harm to your SEO. You can offer your link as alternative to that broken link.

This process is a bit complicated because it is difficult to find broken links in your niche, and if you do find them, there’s no assurance that the site owners will give you a backlink.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is a charm, but you need to be smart to be able to do it. What you need to do is write good content, reach out to sites that allow people to post their articles, and get your content published on their website. You can then directly add a link to any anchor text as well as mention your brand name which will later bring traffic from branded searches.

Finding sites in your niche that allow guest posts can be quite challenging, but many allow paid guest posts, and you know how to do it.

Invest in Youtube

Youtube is exploding these days. You can do two things to increase your backlinks.

  1. Create your channel around your niche.
  2. Reach out to the other channels in your niche and ask them to mention you.

Creating your niche YouTube channel can give you a constant amount of traffic as well as daily new traffic,but it needs time and effort. You need regular content on your channeland should keep sending them to your website.

On the other hand, asking a well-knownYouTuber in your niche to give you a shoutout may result in massive instant traffic and will increase your branded search too, but it will not be permanent.

Improve your EAT

EAT stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. EAT has become very crucial, especially for the health niche. It is more than just having an about page and authors page. You need to build your authority as a brand so that Google and people will trust the information you provide.

Therefore, getting links from high authority sites and your brand mentioned on high-authority sites are the keys to strong EAT.

Partner with Bigger Brands

Don’t think that prominent brands will not partner with you because many actually do. If they see that you bring value to them, they can send some traffic to your blog or website.

Create Usable Visuals

As I mentioned earlier, you should not use stock photos; instead, you should create your own images. Another benefit of creating your own visuals is that other blogs will use your photos and give you credit which means a backlink. Therefore, every visual is an opportunity for a backlink.

Emails

Build your mailing list from your site and whenever you have any kind of new page, send bulk emails to your subscribers and bring a burst of traffic to your page.

How and Why Off-page and On-Page SEO are Important for Your Business Marketing?

If you are building a business online, then you should not only rely on paid ads because paid ads will do their charm only when you have the money to spend. Once you stop running the advertisements, your traffic will vanish.

Therefore, creating an SEO’d website is what you need for your business to survive longer online, and both on-page and off-page SEO are important. Your website will fail on a lot of things without on-page SEO and many other things without off-page SEO. Hence, they both go hand in hand to build your business.

How Do You Start to SEO Your Site?

We have explained how SEO works. There’s one crucial step to take, though, before you start. You need to know your targeted audience so that you can adopt the approach that fits your audience’s taste. If you want to target people living in a specific city, then you need to know their thoughts and their way of acquiring information.

If you are trying to build an online shoe store, then you need to present yourself as a trusted shoe company. You need to have a clear picture of the people who will be interested in the shoes you’re going to sell. Will they be females or males, kids or teenagers? Where are you selling your products or services? Your article will be useless if it says ‘the whole of Australia’, but you’re selling shoes in Sydney. If you have a well-defined audience, you will be able to provide the proper context to your content and hit your target bullseye.

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