What do you know about on-page and off-page SEO?

Having an understanding of these two distinct branches of SEO will help you tune up your SEO strategy and give you an idea of what you can do to improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your website.

Here are some things you should know about the differences between on-page and off-page SEO.

On Page SEO

On-page SEO deals with elements of your website, including the copy, technical set-up, metadata, visual content, user-friendliness, and more. In essence, it refers to everything that you do directly on your website to improve its rankings.

There are many different on-page SEO factors. Here are some of them.

Keywords

Keyword optimization (using keywords in website copy) is considered on-page SEO. To rank for certain keywords, you should be strategically placing those keywords in the metadata and copy.

Meta Tags

Meta tags describe your page’s content, and appear in your page’s source code (meta title, meta description, etc). A meta description is the description that appears below a URL in the search results, directly below the title (meta title). The meta description describes the content on the webpage and should always have keywords in it.

URL Structure

A URL’s structure allows search engines to crawl pages on websites. It also makes navigation on a web page easier for users. This is why your URLs should contain keywords that are relevant to the page’s content.

Internal Linking

Linking your website pages to one another  makes it much easier for search engines to crawl your website. Internal links also help establish a hierarchy of the content on your website.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to ranking factors that occur off of your website, including:

Backlinks/Link Building

The act of link building occurs when one website links to your website. The quality and quantity of backlinks you have are some of the biggest elements of off-page SEO. Google prioritizes backlinks from reputable websites, which is why it is very important to acquire backlinks from websites Google trusts. Be sure to avoid any questionable link building tactics. Instead, focus on doing outreach to legitimate, credible websites that can link back to you. Remember: link quality is better than link quantity.

Social Media and Social Promotion

Social media marketing, social posts, and guest blogging can help drive traffic to your website. They can also create more link shares. Content that is shared on social media platforms can help bring more people to your website, which will drive traffic, improve link shares, and ultimately improve your SEO.