If you’ve invested time, energy, and money into a website for your business, you want people to be able to find it, right? But if you’re new to the SEO world, it can feel like a confusing topic.
You can’t take your eye off the ball in digital marketing.
Trying to reach the top of the SERP (search engine results page) is a huge endeavor. And it’s what all your competitors will be trying to do, too. So your SEO tactics need to be sharp if you want to get ahead of the competition on that results page.
The goal for all SEO strategies is for the search engine ranking of your website to lift. It’s critical that you don’t neglect off-site SEO in your toolkit of digital marketing tactics. Read on to learn more about the differences between on-site and off-site SEO and why you need both to achieve SEO dominance.
What’s the Difference Between On-Site and Off-Site SEO?
Good on-site SEO is about optimizing your website to enable search engines to understand the page content. Off-site SEO is more concerned with the reliability of your site and what others think of it. Let’s look a little more closely at the differences between on-site and off-site SEO
On-Site SEO
On-page SEO is influenced by the technical specification of your own website. It also relates to the content you post. Therefore, it’s within your own control. It’s important to create a user-friendly site with sound architecture and excellent optimization for mobiles.
You should also ensure that you are using relevant keywords in appropriate places on the page. This includes careful planning of title tags and meta descriptions. You should avoid key-words stuffing though, as this will make your page hard to read.
On-site SEO is primarily focused on the experience of the user, so you should be producing engaging content that is relevant to your customers. Always consider the problem you’re trying to solve for your clients or the question that they want an answer to. This is how they will have found your page, after all!
Off-Site SEO
While what happens away from your website is harder to control, it does form a critical element of Google’s algorithm. Whenever your brand is mentioned elsewhere on the internet, it has an impact on your website’s position on the SERP (search engine results page).
Your Off-Site SEO Checklist
For improved rankings, you need to pay as much attention to off-site SEO as you do to your own website. Read on for a handy checklist of things to consider to maximize your brand’s potential through off-page SEO.
Link Building
Google prioritizes links from authority websites very highly in its algorithm. But don’t forget that quality is much more important than quantity. Gone are the days when it was effective to post spammy backlinks all over every business directory you could find.
You should be aiming to establish backlinks from quality websites that cover the same or similar subject matter to your own. Contextual links in the main body of an article on a respected webpage will help your site to rank higher.
You can use a backlink profile tool such as Google Search Console to search which domains link to your site the most. Or you might consider engaging specialist off-site SEO services to help you with this.
Fix Your Broken Links
Broken links lead to pages that don’t exist. These are also known as 404 errors, as they lead to a page called a 404 error page. This is usually caused by a deleted page or a mistyped URL.
Broken links affect your user experience and make visitors less likely to stay on your page. They also have a negative impact on off-page SEO.
You should prioritize fixing any broken links and also set up regular checks to keep on top of these. This is an easy win in your off-site SEO toolkit.
Local SEO
Local SEO is critical in bringing customers to your website, then through your front door. Google continues to dominate local SEO, so you must be sure to understand how the system works and try to maximize your local digital presence.
If you neglect your local SEO, you risk your customers heading to your competitors’ websites and premises, rather than yours. There are two major areas on which you need to focus.
You should familiarize yourself with Google My Business (which used to be known as Google Local) and ensure that all the listing details and contact information are correct. Make sure your listing stays up-to-date and includes your opening hours.
Also, investigate other trusted local citation sites and directories and ensure that you have a listing on these pages. Make sure you avoid spammy directories, as this will harm your SEO rather than build your rankings.
Social Media
Love it or hate it, social media is part of the digital marketing landscape, and you need to get to grips with it as part of your off-page SEO strategy. Social media platforms offer you a free outlet for sharing content about your brand, and also feature in Google’s search algorithms.
If you have limited resources, it makes sense to focus on just a few platforms, rather than scatter-gunning across every single social media site. LinkedIn is probably best for B2B companies, whereas Instagram is a must of any company where your customers are interested in the visuals of your products.
By creating high-quality content on a regular basis, you can generate a community around your brand. You should ensure that you’re responsive to any comments or negative feedback, as complaints can go viral quickly, especially on Twitter.
The Value of Off-Site SEO
If you feel that your digital marketing strategy has gone awry, it may well be that you’ve been neglecting off-site SEO. The checklist above demonstrates that off-page SEO is about much more than just backlinks and content.
You need a streamlined strategy to ensure that your on-page and off-page SEO tactics complement each other. For a free website audit and to discuss any of your digital marketing needs, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.