SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing a web page, website or digital property to improve its organic rankings on SERPs. In the early days of SEO, this largely meant optimizing the content, technical performance, and site structure of a web page. However, today, off-site elements such as backlinks from authoritative websites and customer reviews on third-party platforms play a big (if not a bigger) role in organic performance.
At Pedestal Search, we categorize SEO variables into three buckets:
On-Page: Any variable affecting a website’s organic performance that’s hosted on the website itself. For example, content and metadata.
Off-Page: Any variable affecting a website’s organic performance that’s hosted externally of the website. For example, backlinks and user reviews.
Technical: Any variable that affects the ability of search engines to crawl and/or index a website. Also, technical SEO usually encompasses user behavior metrics (now called Core Web Vitals) such as page speed.
What Is the Purpose of SEO?
The purpose of SEO is to increase the quantity and quality of inbound traffic to your website. It is beneficial to both the consumer and business because it connects searchers with content that is most relevant to them. This means that consumers get the information they are looking for. Meanwhile, companies get direct exposure to their desired target audience because they are providing useful information that helps the searcher make an informed decision during their consumer engagement cycle.
What Is Seo Strategy?
A search engine optimization marketing strategy aims to improve the search engine rankings of a website in order to gain more organic traffic. A solid search engine optimization plan should incorporate several sections, such as content strategy, technical SEO, on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
Why Do We Need Seo?
SEO is arguably the most effective inbound marketing strategy available in 2022. To whet your SEO whistle, we just performed a—wait for it—organic search to find a few tantalizing SEO statistics in 2022.
70% of digital marketing professionals believe SEO is more effective than PPC at generating sales.
68% of online experiences BEGIN on a search engine.
63% of all shopping experiences begin online, even if the transaction occurs offline.
61% of B2B marketers stated organic traffic resulted in more leads than any other initiative.
Inbound organic leads have an average 14.6% close rate vs outbound leads which average 1.7%
On-Page SEO vs Off-Page SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of optimizing your website to drive search engine results traffic to your site.
On-page SEO is all about optimizing the web pages of your website. In on-page SEO, your strategy is very much under your control. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is all about improving your SEO through other means, like creating content and earning backlinks from other websites. These tactics lend your website credibility. If you want to utilize SEO best practices, on-page and off-page SEO are great places to start.
How Do On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO Work?
In order to fully grasp the similarities and differences of on-page and off-page SEO, you need to learn how it is that search engines operate. When a search engine crawls and reads your website, it is looking at two things: what your site is about (on-page SEO) and how credible and authoritative your website is (off-page SEO.) Your on-page SEO will determine what subjects you rank for on search engines, while your off-page SEO will determine how high you rank on search engine results pages.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing all the pages of your website to positively affect your search engine rankings. There are several factors that affect how high your website ranks on search engine results pages, including your site’s accessibility, loading speed, how well your content is optimized, keywords, title tags, and more. These are all factors that you have control over because they are on your own website.
differences between on-page SEO and off-page SEO
On-Page SEO Factors
Next, let’s go over each factor that is part of your on-page SEO strategy.
Content
We have all heard the term “content is king.” This is especially true when it comes to SEO. Ultimately, your content needs to be useful to readers. If it does not answer the questions that searchers are looking for when they went to a search engine and found your site, nothing else will matter. Make sure your content is easy to read and understand and that it actually helps your readers. Google measures your content for usefulness in a few ways. First, they make sure you have at least 500 words in your article. Each web page on your site also needs to have unique content. Try to add your keyword to the content, but be aware of keyword stuffing.
Internal Links
Including internal links to other pages of your website is helpful both for visitors to your site and for search engines. The most important part of internal linking is to use relevant anchor text. Anchor text is the blue hyperlinked and underlined text you use to link to another web page. Make sure your anchor text is relevant to the web page you are linking to. As a general rule, try to include between one and three internal links per web page. This helps search engines navigate your website and learn more about your content.
Title Tags
First, make sure to include your target keywords in the title tag of each web page on your website. Here is how to write a title tag: first, limit your title tag to a maximum of 60 characters, including spaces. Make sure to have your keyword as close as possible to the beginning of the title, if you can accomplish this naturally. Don’t overstuff your keywords, however. Then, include your brand or company name at the end of the title tag. Separate it with a pipe bar.
Headings
Next, make sure to include headings on each of your web pages. Heading tags are an important step for on-page SEO. Your headings (the largest words on the page) should include your target keywords. It is also important to make sure that your headings tell your readers and search engines what they can expect to read about on that page. Only include one Heading 1 (H1) on each web page. All of your other headers should be Heading 2 (H2), Heading 3 (H3), and so on.
URLs
When you can, make sure to include your keywords into your URLs. But this is important: do not go back and change your old URLs to add keywords. You can only do so if you also redirect your old URLs to the new ones. If this is not handled correctly, you risk losing a lot of web traffic, which defeats the whole purpose. Website redirects are a complicated step and will probably require the assistance of a web developer.
Off-Page SEO
Now, let’s discuss off-page SEO. Off-page SEO is how you increase your search ranking by doing activities off or your own website. This mainly occurs by getting links from other websites. There is a reason why Wikipedia is one of the first results you see on any search engine results page, no matter what you are searching for. It’s because they have so many external links.
How Do You Get Backlinks?
So, now you know why backlinks are important. But how do you acquire links to your website? Here are some ways:
The best way to get backlinks is by creating important, valuable content that people will want to link to.
Try to get shares on social media that will lead to backlinks.
Send outreach emails to thought leaders in your industry who might end up linking to you.
Try guest blogging on websites that are similar to yours. Guest posts will ultimately link back to your site.
Top comments (1)
It is worth remembering that SEO is only one way of promotion. PCC can be just as effective. But to find out what is better for your company, I recommend this post: gamerseo.com/blog/seo-and-ppc-stra...