So many times many people have asked me this question, which of On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO is more important? As much as I have tried to answer that question there don’t seem to be a satisfactory answer to it, so I decided to research about the subject and you will be marveled at what I have learnt. I will definitely be sharing the knowledge with you here, so maybe you can answer the question for me.
But before I proceed I want to say it here that both On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO are very important in building a successful blog/site/brand. While Off-Page SEO gets you in the top in search engine ranking, On-Page SEO will keep you there for long, you can’t succeed without one, the two goes hand in hand. So this article will be more like teaching you why both On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO both are important than a comparison between the two.
On-Page SEO:
On-Page SEO involves all the necessary SEO tricks we apply on our blog posts or web pages to get it to rank well on the search engines. On-Page SEO is very important and among the first steps to ranking well in SERP. On-Page SEO includes the following;
Keyword research – including identifying the most effective keywords.
Title optimization
Meta keywords and description
Internal linking structure within your own site
Keyword density
Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 …etc)
Use of bold/strong/italic for the main visible keywords on the page
Alt tags for images – ‘alternative’ text title added to the image files’
External linking structure to other websites
On-Page SEO will provide you with in-depth analysis of the keyword you are targeting to rank for, proper optimization of your posts, including image optimization, highlighting your keywords in post title, meta description, heading tagging, keyword density check, and many more. On-Page SEO is done first before Off-Page SEO, On-Page SEO gives you the first opportunity to get started in the Search engine ranking race while Off-Page SEO follows to add turbo to it. So does it mean that On-Page SEO is more important than Off-Page SEO?
Must Read: The Basic Onsite SEO Tips You Should Know
Off-Page SEO:
Off-Page SEO involves all other activities done outside your site to help improve its search engine rankings. Off-Page SEO is very important if your blog/site/brand is to succeed online. I have noticed that many big websites and blogs do not obey the rules of On-Page SEO yet they rank higher than sites with even better on-Page SEO, then why is that? When I read some posts from some renowned bloggers I try to monitor how they are applying SEO on their site and I have noticed that some of them don’t really care about On-Page SEO, for example some of them don’t bother about the heading tags or even their keywords appearing in the URL’s. Off-Page SEO includes the following;
Web 2.0 account creations (HubPages, Squidoo ect)
Article marketing
Directory submissions
Blog commenting
Forum posting
Social media
Profile page backlinks
Bookmarking
Press release submission
RSS Feed Aggregators
Remember like I said earlier, Off-Page SEO gets you in the top of the search engine rankings, while On-Page SEO keeps you there. How does Off-Page SEO actually do this? Google considers backlinks as a measure of your site’s relevance to a certain keyword and as such believes that any site with more quality backlinks pointing to it is more relevant than others. So before Google can begin to consider your site’s ranking based on bounce rate, time on site and other search engine ranking metrics, Off-Page SEO will have to push you to the top spot first. Only On-Page SEO cannot do it, except on a niche with low competition. Your site’s authority is a function of the number of links pointing back to it. If you check top ranking sites for any keyword on search engine results, you will notice that most top ranked sites have good number of backlinks. So does it mean that Off-Page SEO is more important?
Final Thoughts:
On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO are both important, if you have a well optimized post, fewer backlinks can shoot you into the top spot compared to when you have a poorly optimized site with same number of backlinks. You can’t use one without the other, each simply compliments the other. Remember Off-Page SEO gets you in the top, and On-Page SEO will keep you there and sustained. Learn both and use both to create a balance in your ranking technique and see your site succeed easily.
Must Read: Search Engine Optimization Tips for Images
Do you agree with me on this post? Do you have a different idea? Do you think one is more important than the other? If you were forced to choose one which will it be? Let me hear your views on this post, please use the comment form below to share your thoughts with me. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feeds.
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