On-Page versus Off-Page SEO

Written by: Gary Horsman

On-Page versus Off-Page SEO

What’s The Difference?

Google and the other major search engines use a large number of factors to determine both the relevance of a page and the value of a page. These factors can be divided into on-page and off-page SEO factors. The logic behind these factors becomes apparent with a little understanding about how a search engine may view your content.

Here is an article that will help you to understand the differences and the importance of each. You will rarely be successful in achieving a high position in search, in a competitive, market unless you do a good job in both of these areas. Focusing on only in one area may become a wasted effort as both sides need to be addressed.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to the text elements of a web page, including the page title, URL, text in the body, meta data, headers, image file names and alt text. Search engines use on-page elements to determine the web page relevance. The fundamental aspect they are trying to determine is what is your page about?

On-page SEO is driven by targeted keywords phrases that correspond both to the content on your site and to the queries you want to rank for. In order to score highly for relevance, the on-page elements need to be laser focused on a specific topic. For example, you have a better chance of ranking highly for a query about “black leather men’s shoes” than just “shoes.”

Moreover, if you try to make a page relevant for multiple topics you dilute the laser focus. The end result may be no focus at all. Say, for example you were a home cleaning service and wanted to be found for searches related to home cleaning in multiple towns. To have a single page with all of the towns listed in the meta data, page content, image files names and image alt text would be to dilute the focus on any single town. The result would be a lower position in search for all towns.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to the activity and influence your page has on others. It helps Google answer the question “Who finds your page useful and important?”. This is impacted by the quantity and authority of inbound links. The link relevance is also determined by the anchor text (the text used to make the link). Another factor is the relevance of the content on the website page providing the link around the specific link to your site.

Therefore, you want to acquire in-coming links from many different sites. You want links from relevant sites and links embedded within meaningful content. These sites need to be well built and respected by Google and the other major search engines. The in-coming links to your site should be surrounded by text content that is relevant to the content on your site. The anchor text should also be a keyword phrase for search phrases you want to be found for.

Search engines use off-page signals to determine web page authority (its trustworthiness and influence), which impacts rank in search results.

We can help with both the On-Site SEO and the Off-Site SEO. The first step may be a request from you to us to do a review of some of the basics. This can get the conversation started in a meaningful way.