The difference between on-site SEO and off-site SEO is that they aim at two different sets of SEO factors. On-site SEO focuses on impacting SEO factors occurring on your website, while off-site SEO focuses on factors outside of your website.
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How to know which SEO your website needs more? Read on to learn:
- What is on-site SEO?
- What is off-site SEO?
- Why are on-site SEO and off-site SEO important?
- What factors impact on-site SEO?
- What factors impact off-site SEO?
What is on-Site SEO?
On-site SEO (also called on-page SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website and its contents to rank higher on search engines. It includes optimizations to visible content and the HTML source code.
If your page struggles to rank in the top 10, one of the reasons may be that it lacks the useful information that searchers are looking for. To find out if that is the case, you’ll need to compare topics covered by top-ranking pages against topics covered by you.
What is off-Site SEO?
Off-site SEO implies using several SEO techniques outside your website to improve its rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors. You can earn them organically, and you can also “build” them.
There are many link building techniques out there. One of them is looking for linking patterns among your competition so that you can get backlinks from the same websites. For that, you will need a backlink checking tool.
Since links from new websites are likely to move the ranking needle the most (i.e., websites that don’t link to your website yet), the best way to see linking patterns is to find websites that link to your competitors but not to you.
Why are On-Site SEO and Off-Site SEO important?
On-site SEO and off-site SEO are basically two sides of the same coin. SEO is most effective when practiced with both because search engines like Google uses ranking factors that occur on your pages and outside of them.
What factors impact on-site SEO?
In this section, we will cover some of the most important things you should look after to rank higher on the SERPs and attract more clicks to your website content.
Note: We’ll talk about known ranking factors and factors that can increase your SERP visibility and, consequently, attract more site visitors.
See On-site SEO: The Beginner’s Guide for more about on-site SEO.
Search intent
Search intent refers to the reason behind the search. It’s one of the most important ranking factors.
Utilizing search intent in SEO is about discovering what searchers want to get when they plug in a search query and then providing that relevant and useful information.
Search intent is arguably the strongest factor for on-site SEO. After all, providing searchers with high quality content is what search engines need to do every second.
Optimizing your content for search intent comes down to looking at the search result pages for a particular query and identifying the three Cs of search intent:
- Content type – What is the dominating type of content? Is it a product page, blog post, video, or something else?
- Content format – Some common content formats include how-to guides, listicles, reviews, comparisons, etc.
- Content angle – The unique selling point of the content piece, e.g., “best,” “cheapest,” and “for beginners.”
Once you identify the three Cs of search intent, you should have a pretty good idea of what type of content Google “recommends” to its users for particular search queries.
Content quality
Search intent is critical, but utilizing it won’t be enough to create “useful content.” You also need to take care of your content’s quality.
According to Google, high quality content is:
- Easy to read.
- Fresh.
- Clearly organized.
- Unique.
- Aligned with E-A-T guidelines.
- Focused on providing useful information to solve a searcher’s problem.
But in practice, you also need to create better content than your competition.
URLs
URLs are a small ranking factor and they bear so little weight in ranking websites.
However, Google’s SEO guidelines mention URLs as something you should optimize. But you should do it for the user and not for Google.
This is because the user can see the URL both in the address bar and on the SERPs. And based on that information, users:
- Can choose to click on some results over the others and
- Know where they are on the website.
So basically, this is what an unfriendly URL looks like:
http://contentinmarketing.com/folder1/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir422447478/x2/14032015.html
As you can see, the reliable blogger website doesn’t use HTTPS; also, the URL has an overly nested structure and doesn’t really indicate what the page is about:
And here is its user-friendly alternative:
https://contentinmarketing.com/seo/ranking-factors.html
Page Titles
Page titles are another small ranking factor. Search engines uses them to understand what your page is about to better match the intent behind a given search query.
Naturally, searches use page titles for similar reasons: to understand what they can expect from a web page. And so to “satisfy” both parties, you can consider these good practices:
- Make the title eye-catching and accurate – Write a line that piques users’ interest and accurately describes what’s unique about your offer.
- Insert the target keyword in your title – But you should remember to make it sound natural.
- Fit within 60 characters – Otherwise, your description may get truncated, and you’ll increase the chances of Google rewriting your page title.
Meta Description
Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor. But they do appear on the SERPs (right below the title of the page), so they can impact the click-through rate (CTR).
The way to optimize meta descriptions is to focus solely on the searcher. Here are some good SEO practices that matter:
- Make the description compelling enough to entice the user to click, as long as it’s not clickbait.
- Don’t make the description longer than 920 px.
- Keep the description relevant to the title of the page.
- Use a unique description for every page.
Outbound Links
An outbound link is a link that points to a web page that is not on your website.
Outbound links are most probably not a ranking signal. This means that you probably shouldn’t try to shoehorn outbound links in your content in hopes of ranking higher.
What you may want to do instead is to use outbound links to cite your sources. This will help to establish the legitimacy, transparency, and accuracy of your content. In other words, by citing your sources, you’ll be aligning with the E-A-T search quality guidelines.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is a code that helps search engines to understand your content and better represent it in the search results.
Schema markup is not a ranking factor, but applying it can help your content stand out on the SERPs.
Schema markup looks like programming, but it’s nowhere near the learning curve. Adding schema markup to a page is comparable to filling out meta tags. You can use a tool like the Schema Builder extension to help you with that.
Internal Links
An internal link is a link from another page on the same website.
Internal links are a ranking factor. Google utilizes internal links in a number of ways:
- To pass link equity between your web pages – Internal linking can boost other pages on your website.
- To discover new web pages – Internal links provide a crawl path to target web pages.
- To understand what a web page is about – Understanding the content of your web pages helps search engines rank them. That’s why the anchor text of the internal link matters too.
And let’s not forget internal links help users discover content and navigate your website.
For all of the reasons above, you shouldn’t neglect internal linking. It’s best if you add internal links as you create new blog content. And remember, it’s never too late to add internal links to your existing website content.
Page UX
The user experience (UX) of a website can mean different things to different people. To UX designers, it means the overall impression of a website. But in SEO, the UX of a page or website refers especially to its usability. It basically means maintaining a clutter-free, distraction-free, and easy-to-use user interface.
Usually, UX improvements should be applied to the entire website, not just web pages. However, if you want to keep pages with unique layouts, keep in mind that a different design means a different experience.
So here’s what to look out for:
- Avoid intrusive pop-ups – These include sign-up forms, exit forms, etc. Do the same for any banners that shift the layout (refer to Google’s guidelines on interstitials).
- Make sure your website’s layout is clear, consistent, and usable – Try your best not to overload the user’s cognitive capacity.
- Make sure your important pages aren’t sluggish – You should optimize for Core Web Vitals.
- Optimize your website for mobile devices – Website traffic coming from mobile devices accounts for slightly more than 50%. On top of that, Google indexes and ranks content based on mobile versions of the websites.
Is UX a ranking factor? It seems that there are two factors that can impact your rankings here: Core Web Vitals and mobile-friendliness.
When web pages have similar content, Google can use page experience signals to rank them—but those won’t be drastic ranking changes. Pages not optimized for mobile or slow pages can still rank.
What factors impact off-Site SEO?
As with on-site SEO, we will talk about factors that are known to impact rankings directly and factors that don’t but otherwise can get you more visibility and organic clicks.
For a detailed guide about off-site SEO, see Off-site SEO: What It Is and Why It’s Important.
Backlinks
Backlinks are the foundation of Google’s PageRank, a mathematical formula that judges the “value of a page” by looking at the quantity and quality of other web pages that link to the said page. Along with search intent, backlinks are one of the most critical ranking factors.
The more backlinks (links from unique websites) a page has, the higher its chances of outranking its competitors on the SERPs.
And also, the more backlinks a page has, the more the amount of organic search traffic that lands on that page.
But not all backlinks will impact your rankings equally. You can judge a backlink by these six traits:
- Authority – If we think of links as votes, then web pages with more votes will pass a stronger vote to other web pages.
- Relevance – Here’s how Google puts it: “If other prominent websites on the subject link to the page, that’s a good sign that the information is of high quality.”
- Anchor text – Like internal links, the anchor texts of backlinks help search engines understand the context of the target web page.
- Placement – Links that have a higher chance of being clicked (e.g., links in the content, links placed higher on a web page) will likely pass more authority.
- Follow vs. nofollow – “Nofollow” is an attribute that tells Google not to take a link into account for ranking purposes. The “follow” attribute is its opposite. Generally, the “followed” links will have more impact. All links are “follow” by default unless specified differently.
- Destination – Links can increase the ranking of the specific page that they link to. But you can pass some of that link equity to other web pages through internal linking.
NAP citations
NAP (name, address, phone) citations are mentions of your online business that display your business name, address, and phone number.
NAP citations are probably a ranking factor that counts for localized organic search results. However, they may not carry a lot of weight.
Apart from the possibility of helping your website rank on the SERPs, NAP citations will definitely help users find your local business. So here’s a quick list of good practices you can follow:
- Get listed with big data aggregators – For example, Foursquare. That’s where a lot of local data providers get their data.
- Submit to the big players – These are Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, etc.
- Submit to other popular directories in your local area and industry
- Keep your citations consistent – You should also align them with the guidelines (like this one from Google).
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Whether a Google Business Profile (previously known as Google My Business) is a ranking factor is not even the right question here. The GBP is simply the requirement for getting featured in Google’s map pack.
For the record, a map pack shows GBPs close to the area relating to your search query or based on your location. Search results located below the map pack are called localized organic results.
Does a GBP affect rankings of the results found below the map pack? Most SEO professionals say “no.”
But on the whole, if your business operates locally, you will definitely want to get a GBP. It allows Google to display your business in the map pack, and it makes it easier for customers to find you and get in touch.
On top of that, a GBP helps with getting reviews from customers, which is next on our list.
Reviews
Let’s look at another factor that impacts the map pack: customer reviews and ratings.
Here’s probably the most accurate way of explaining this: Customer reviews are a ranking factor impacting the order of results in the map pack, but they probably bear little importance for localized organic results.
Does Google take into account every piece of customer feedback on a business? Hard to say. Your best bet here is to pay special attention to reviews on your GBP and trusted third-party websites (G2, Capterra, etc.).
As in life, positive reviews will have a positive effect, and negative reviews will have a negative effect on your ranking.
Let’s not forget that rankings and ratings are clearly visible on the SERPs and will definitely leave an impression on the searchers.
On-site SEO and off-site SEO already seem like a lot to take in, but it’s not the entire landscape of SEO. You will probably come across other types of SEO, such as technical SEO, local SEO, ecommerce SEO, etc.