On-Page Vs Off-Page SEO Optimization
Most people nowadays expect to find whatever they need at the top of Google search results. It is much easier to attract new customers to your business if your website ranks at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). Developing an effective search engine optimization strategy is one of the most beneficial investments you can make for your company.
On-page SEO and off-page SEO are the two types of effective SEO strategies.
On-page SEO
Refers to SEO factors and techniques that focus on optimizing aspects of your website that you have control over.
Off-page SEO
Refers to SEO factors and strategies that are aimed at promoting your site or brand across the internet.
On-page SEO is essentially about creating a website that appeals to users and, thus, search engines, whereas off-page SEO is about increasing exposure for a website while building trust and authority for your content.
On-Page SEO Factors
On-page SEO refers to everything you do to your own website to improve its ranking in search engine results. On-page SEO encompasses the majority of the "basic" aspects of search engine optimization, such as keywords, HTML tags, page titles, and mobile friendliness.
This aspect of SEO is all about ensuring that the content on your website can be crawled, indexed, and understood by search engines. It is, however, much, much more than that.
On-page SEO also includes techniques that improve the user experience when they visit your website. Because search engines like Google want to recommend the best websites to their users, making your site "delectable" for humans to visit is also an important part of on-page SEO.
On-page SEO can be influenced by a variety of factors, including:
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is a set of real-world metrics that quantify a website's user experience and are one of the newest Google on-page ranking factors. They track critical parameters like visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift), interactivity (First Input Delay), and load time (Largest Contentful Paint). Improving your website's Core Web Vitals communicates to Google that your site provides a positive user experience. The Core Web Vitals hub has all the details on these new ranking factors.
Page Speed (also known as Load Time)
An important aspect of on-page SEO because Google ranks faster pages higher than slower ones, and optimizing page speed can also help you get more of your pages into Google's search index. There are numerous techniques for increasing page speed, but images, JavaScript files, caching, and compression are good places to start. Our comprehensive guide to optimizing page speed for SEO explains how to improve your site for this on-page SEO factor.
Mobile-friendliness
In a nutshell, mobile friendliness is a measure of how well a site performs when accessed and used via a mobile device. Mobile-friendly pages can be shrunk to fit any device's screen while still allowing users to navigate around the page to achieve their objectives. They also prioritize the mobile user experience by using responsive design, simple and easy navigation, and fast page loading times.
Title Tags
Title tags, also known as "page titles," are HTML tags that define the title of the page and describe what the content on the page will be about. For example, "On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: What's the Difference?" is the title of this article. " As a result, the page's title tag is 'title>On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: What's the Difference? </title>`. Google uses keywords in title tags (among other things) to determine whether or not a page is topically related when searching for content that is relevant to a user's query. When optimizing your title tags, stick to SEO best practices.
Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are HTML tags that, like title tags, help describe what the page is about. While Google uses descriptions to determine whether a page is relevant to a query, their primary SEO function is to encourage people to click through from search results to your site. Our guide to using meta descriptions for SEO explains how to use this on-page SEO factor to increase the click-through rate of your page in search results.
Content Quality
Content quality is king when it comes to on-page SEO. There are numerous ways for search engines to evaluate content quality, but it all boils down to answering A) Is it useful to the user? B) Is it simple to read? C) Is it one-of-a-kind? and D)Is it pertinent to the user's query? If you can honestly say "yes" to all four questions, your content is in good shape.
HTML Headers
HTML headers: HTML headers are HTML tags that specify headlines and subheadings within the content of a webpage. They assist your website's visitors in reading and comprehending your content. These tags aid search engines in understanding what the content on a page is about and how it relates to a person's search query. Using our HTML headers guide, you can learn how to use headers as part of your on-page SEO strategy.
Image alt text
An attribute within an image's HTML tag that contains a text description of the image. When an image fails to load on a page, assistive technologies such as screen readers and browsers use alt text as a backup. Search engines use alt text to determine how relevant an image is to a user's query. As a result, alt text is a critical on-page SEO factor for both image searches and traditional web searches.
Internal linking
Linking to other pages on your site from within your own content is beneficial because it helps visitors find related content with additional context or background. This is something we do several times in this article, linking to more in-depth guides to explain important details about on-page and off-page SEO. Internal linking also helps search engines find new content, which improves your site's SEO. Furthermore, the anchor text you use for internal links informs search engines about what to expect from the destination page and how it relates to the linking content.
Navigation
In the context of on-page SEO, "navigation" refers to ensuring that all users can access and consume the content on a web page. We're not talking about how your pages are organized or linked together (which is referred to as "site structure"). Google is concerned with the type of page it recommends to searchers, and they want whatever they recommend to be accessible to everyone, regardless of disability or browser.
Off-Page SEO Factors
Off-page SEO refers to the strategies, tactics, and efforts you use to promote your content on third-party websites across the internet. This aspect of SEO is concerned with getting your website, company, and/or brand mentioned on another website.
Off-page SEO is most likely something you've heard of in the context of building links to your website. Backlinks are important, and we'll go over them briefly below, but there's a lot more to off-page SEO than just links.
A Quick Overview of Off-Page Factors:
Backlinks: The quantity and quality of backlinks are still two of the most important factors in off-page SEO. Because backlinks are so important, Google has dedicated several algorithm updates to combating link schemes and spam. Links are important for off-page SEO because they pass "link juice" to your site, which helps it appear more authoritative and trustworthy to search engines. Backlinks are complicated, so we recommend our in-depth guides to build links, evaluate backlink quality, and conduct a link audit.
Social Media
While the number of shares, likes, or comments on a page does not directly influence its ranking, social media is still an important channel for promoting your site online. Social media allows people to find and interact with your company online, as well as reach out to new and existing customers. Furthermore, Google indexes pages on the major social media platforms, so posting to these sites on a regular basis helps you control your brand's SERP.
Unlinked Mentions
Unlinked mentions occur when an unaffiliated website mentions your company name or website online without linking back to your site. Every online mention of your site or brand that includes a backlink is extremely rare, if not impossible. In fact, if that were the case, Google would most likely find it suspicious and penalize your site. However, this does not imply that unlinked brand mentions have no value for off-page SEO. They can still serve as citations for the authority and trustworthiness of your site. Furthermore, mentions providing an excellent opportunity to build new backlinks.
Google My Business (GMB)
Google My Business (GMB) enables businesses to easily and quickly provide important information to Google. This information includes the business's location and/or service area, type of business, contact information, and hours of operation. Google also uses GMB to populate results for Google local pack and Google Maps searches. As a result, it's an important off-page SEO factor for any local business that relies on traffic from a specific geographic location. Set up your company's GMB listing to be added to Google Maps and benefit from this important off-page and local SEO technique.
Begin Optimizing Your On-Page and Off-Page SEO Today.
Remember that a good SEO strategy does not require you to choose between on-page and off-page SEO. That's like trying to decide whether to put tires or an engine in your car - you need both to get anywhere.
However, SEO works best if you have good on-page SEO before you spend too much time and effort (not to mention money) on link building or social media promotion.
Need Further Help?
You can also seek assistance from or hire BizzDesign, a team of North Brisbane On-Page and Off-Page SEO Experts, to assist you in taking your business to the next level. You can reach us at