In today’s marketing landscape, the most effective way to attract new customers to your website is to rank at the top of Google’s search results. Since the early days of the Internet, search engine optimisation (SEO) has been a vital tool for driving traffic and growth by doing just that. Of course, that top spot is a highly contested one, and you need to constantly refine your approach to maintain your position.
SEO has evolved over the years, but it hasn’t become any less important. Organic search is the number one source of website traffic, and most web users never make it to the second page of Google results. Having the right tools and techniques is important to make it onto the first page.
There are two main categories of search engine optimisation—on-page and off-page SEO—used to describe the majority of SEO techniques. Both focus on enhancing your website in different ways. But if you’re new to search, you may wonder what the difference between on-page and off-page SEO is and which is best for building your brand.
A full-service creative marketing agency in Brisbane, Anchor Digital has had a lot of experience working with both on-page and off-page SEO techniques. We can help you achieve higher rankings and conversions and grow your brand with effective SEO, both on and off the page.
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is any technique focused on improving your page's structure or content to rank higher in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It includes all the measures you take to show both web users and search engines how easy a page is to use and how to use it. For example, the most common strategy is user-facing content.
What Is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO focuses on enhancing the reputation and credibility of your website by focusing on factors beyond the site itself. This includes factors like mentions and external links originating from other websites. Off-page SEO encompasses all the activities you do beyond your website to encourage web users to find your brand.
The Different Techniques of On-Page & Off-Page SEO
The differences between on-page and off-page SEO lie in the techniques used. Here are some of the most common SEO tactics you will likely employ in each category.
On-page SEO
Page speed
Over half of all web users abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Google rewards pages that are fast, and improving your website speed can help you get more of your own pages into Google’s search index. Good places to start are optimising your page's images, JavaScript files and caching.
Core web vitals
Core web vitals are a selection of metrics that help determine how user-friendly a website is and how highly it should rank in Google results. Metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), or how long it takes for the biggest element on the page to load.
Mobile-friendliness
Mobile-friendliness is how well a website performs on a portable device like a smartphone or tablet, and websites that are optimised for mobile look good on a screen of any size. Fast page speed, simple and easy navigation and easy-to-read content all help make a site more mobile-friendly.
Title tags
Title tags are HTML tags that describe the page's title and what the content is about. Google needs the keywords in title tags to determine whether a page fits a user’s query.
Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are short lines of HTML that, like title tags, Google uses to determine what a page is about. Their main purpose is to appear under your link on search results to encourage people to click through to your website.
Quality content
Google prioritises trustworthy, informative content from reputable sources. Google ranks well-written content that answers user questions highly and penalises spammy or duplicate content.
HTML headers
HTML headers are tags that outline the headlines and subheadings of a webpage’s content, and they help to better connect your site to a user’s search query.
Internal links
Using internal links improves your website’s crawlability, makes for a better user experience, helps to build page authority, and serves more keywords for Google.
Off-Page SEO
Backlinks
Building quality backlinks is fundamental to off-page SEO and one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your site. Backlinks signal to Google that others in your field find your content valuable enough to link to and help build your brand authority.
Mentions
Not every external mention of your site includes a backlink. But that’s fine because unlinked mentions also improve your credibility. Plus, they give you the opportunity to reach out and create a new backlink.
Social media
Social media won’t directly help your rankings, but it still provides the opportunity for a large audience of new people to find and interact with your site. Google also indexes pages on the biggest social media platforms.
Google Business Profile
Your Google Business profile allows you to provide important information like your business address and contact number directly into Google search results. This means these important pieces of information appear in zero-click searches like Google’s local pack results.
Is On-Page Or Off-Page SEO Better?
A successful SEO strategy isn’t a binary choice between on-page and off-page SEO. Both are essential and neglecting either one won’t get you where you want to be. SEO both on and off the page, is always designed to improve a user’s experience and boost search engine rankings. Both types of SEO aim to make your site a better experience for anybody who’s visiting.
How On-Page and Off-Page SEO Work Together
While SEO on and off-page approach your goal in different ways, they also have similarities, and only optimising both will bring you the results you’re looking for. Both strategies are focused on improving user experience, require the right choice of keywords, and need testing from time to time for continuous improvement.
However, most SEO experts recommend getting your on-page SEO sorted before addressing the off-page kind. An analogy is that while your house needs both a roof and a foundation, you need to build the foundation first. Start with a fast, responsive, mobile-friendly website, and you will have a stronger foundation to work on building external links and social media mentions.
On-page and off-page SEO techniques work together to improve user engagement, trust and credibility, and backlinks—three essential elements of a good SEO strategy.
But when you’ve done all you can and still haven’t achieved the results you were hoping for, it’s time to call in some outside help for your SEO tactics.
Create a Synergy of On-Page and Off-Page SEO with Anchor
Anchor Digital takes an integrated approach, with SEO services that incorporate both on and off-page SEO. Our SEO strategy involves figuring out what kind of questions your potential customers are asking and how you can provide them with answers. With knowledge of both recent developments and timelessly effective principles, we take an integrated and collaborative approach.
If you’re still in the early stage of figuring out what you want to communicate and how best to communicate it, our strategy services help you build a strategy from scratch. We help you identify your unique selling proposition (USP), collect data on target demographics and position your brand as an authority in your field. Our SEO and strategy work is designed to bridge the gap between on and off-page SEO, utilising everything from optimising core web vitals to backlink building.
Anchor Digital has helped many purpose-driven businesses get the results they want and become even greater at what they do, and we can do the same for you. Contact the Anchor team.
