The Complete Guide to On-Page and Off-Page SEO – Search engine optimization (SEO) has been approximately as long as the Internet has been public, and since its first days, corporations have been using it to reach new viewers, drive traffic to their websites, spread knowledge, and fuel growth.
On-Page Optimisation Technical Best Practices
Each title tag must be unique, descriptive of what the page is about, optimized with a keyword, and must be less than 60 characters long.
Titles are the titles that you give your content, and these should be in H1 format for best results. Headlines should focus on relevant and descriptive words, and while you can optimize them with keywords, don’t overdo them. You can also use subtitles (H2 to H6) to segment the content, following the same best practices, but don’t repeat keywords or phrases in a post.
URL structure is important when search engines determine how relevant a page is to a comparison query, and it should be descriptive of the page’s topic. You can also customize URLs with keywords, as long as they are relevant.
Search Engines
Alt text or alt text provides search engines with more information about an image, although it is more commonly used to describe images to web visitors who cannot see them. As such, alt text must be specific and descriptive of image content, 125 characters or less, and optimized with a keyword or phrase only when appropriate.
Page load speed is important because slow-loading pages tend to have high bounce rates: 47 per cent of people expect a site to load within two seconds, and 40 per cent will give up after three. As such, search engines penalize slow-loading pages with low rankings, so ensuring fast page load speeds is important.
Internal links make your site easier for visitors to navigate, but they also make it easier for search engines to understand your site and index your pages, and will result in a higher rank. At a minimum, every page on your site should link back to its category or subcategory page and homepage.
Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are short but vivid descriptions that expand on title tags, summarizing a page’s content and telling web users why they should read your content rather than someone else’s.
Responsiveness is a design element that ensures that your page will display properly on any device, including mobile devices and desktop ones. This will continue to be an important factor as more and more people around the world use mobile devices to search online.
Finally, a note about keywords. Keywords are the glue that holds your on-page SEO strategy together because they can be incorporated into all of these technical elements to help the right visitors find you at the right time.
The Power of Off-Page SEO and Quality Links
Just as keyword stuffing used to be an accepted practice that went the way of the dodo, so is the practice of buying or trading spammy backlinks in an effort to increase page rank.
Although search engines take into account both the number and quality of your backlinks (as well as the number of referring domains), quality is much more important than quantity.
Other Off-Page SEO Best Practices
Although ranked backlinks are the backbone of an off-page SEO strategy, there are other ways you can use to increase site power and support more links.
One is adding your business to neighbourhood listings and Internet records, including things like Google My Business, Yelp, Yellow Pages, and other local listings. Once added, make sure all data is correct, and that your name, address, and phone number are the same across platforms.
Another way you can get involved in off-page SEO (increasing trust and brand recognition) is by participating in discussions on sites like Quora and answering questions on other Q&A sites, especially if you have expertise. Can share with the community.
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization best practices are evolving all the time as web user and online consumer behavior changes, and the best approach for SEO right now is to have a solid strategy for addressing both on- and off-page elements.
Create a unique product or service that people want to talk about
This may not sound like an “SEO strategy,” and that’s probably because it’s largely just marketing 101. But it is also the most basic, groundbreaking element of all off-site SEO strategies.
Build incredible products and services that generate digital word of mouth (think Zappos, Nordstrom, and Slack). Give people a reason to mention (and link to) you on review sites, on social media, and in major digital news publications.
Partner with Industry Influencers
Influencers are trusted individuals in your industry with a massively engaged audience that shapes people’s opinions. In fact, Nielsen reports that 92% of people rely on what others say when choosing products and services.
Get published
You will generate powerful off-page SEO signals in a number of ways when you publish guest posts on trusted industry websites. One, you will signal to the search engines that you are an industry expert. Two, you can often earn a contextually relevant backlink to an important target page within the article.
An important rule of guest blogging is to provide as much value as possible. Never write a full piece or keyword-stuffed content just to get cheap backlinks. Publishers will jump to showcase your work if you write quality content that is actionable, useful, and unique.
Interview
Journalists are always on the lookout for reliable sources to quote in their articles. There’s no better way to build your brand’s topical expertise than being quoted in an article on a major news outlet.
Leverage Strategic Partnerships
Leverage living strategic partnerships with other brands to create valuable backlinks. Alternatively, you can work with a partner to co-produce content that resonates with both of your audiences.
At least you can share each other’s content on social media. Increased social reach can result in additional natural backlinks.
Do unique research and surveys
An extremely effective off-page SEO strategy is to conduct market research and then publish the results in an interesting way. What makes this strategy so effective? Your brand will be the exclusive owner of such content, and search engines love originality!
In addition, media outlets, influencers, and journalists are always on the lookout for unique research. Therefore, this strategy is important for both public relations and SEO opportunities.
Create shareable images
One simple practice is to produce an engaging infographic, post it on your site, and then place a small piece of HTML beneath it so that other organizations can embed it on their sites.
Conclusion
In the long run, search marketing is second only to email in terms of top online activities. Therefore, you should appear in the SERPs when queried by users.
One way is to write great content, make your website super-friendly and attractive, promote it properly, and link with traffic will follow naturally. Another is to build a reader-focused online presence and focus on the researcher’s intentions. This content is part of on-page SEO but do you remember what we said earlier about on-page and off-page SEO? This is how successful off-page SEO follows good on-page SEO. So make sure the page has good SEO – here’s Brian Dean’s guide on how to do it.
And remember that people only cite, share, like, and talk about the content they like or remember. So act accordingly.
You can turn both search engines, viewers and customers into enemies. You can get fines from Google, be blocked by viewers, or be blacklisted by customers. And no one wants that.
To end up on happy notes, just be nice and everything will be fine. Off-site SEO is here for help.