When it comes to optimizing your website for search engine rankings, it's important to understand the difference between on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is the foundation, while off-page SEO is the superstructure. On-page SEO involves all of the visibility optimization techniques that are implemented on the website you are trying to rank for, such as keywords, HTML tags, page titles, and mobile compatibility. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, often has to do with your PR and brand efforts and how well you and your company are seen as an authority.
If on-page SEO is a science, then off-page SEO is an art. While on-page SEO leaves you in total control and you're able to experiment, off-page techniques are delicate, undefined and somehow left to chance. This doesn't mean that you can't optimize your website using these techniques, it just means that you might need to spend a little more time networking and taking a trial and error approach to creating a network of links that reference your website. On-page and off-page SEO work together to improve your search engine rankings in a complementary way.
When designing a website and creating content that complies with SEO best practices, it's a good idea to consult the search engines themselves. Speaking of links, internally linking related pages on your website is another important factor in on-page SEO. In other words, SEO doesn't involve buying ads or paid placements at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). There are dozens of on-page SEO factors that search engines like Google and Bing take into account when indexing and ranking a website.
Even in a traditional business, high-quality products receive a lot of word-of-mouth referrals from current customers, the in-person equivalent of off-page SEO. When you think of most of the “basic parts of search engine optimization”, such as keywords, HTML tags, page titles, and mobile compatibility, you're thinking about on-page SEO. Therefore, it's crucial to understand the key differences between the two types of SEO that will help you improve your website's ranking. On-page or on-site SEO encompasses all of the visibility optimization techniques that are implemented on the website you are trying to rank for. As Google's search algorithm has been refined and the ranking environment has become more competitive, off-page SEO best practices have become equally important.
