Is on-page SEO compulsory for off-page SEO? In short, the answer is no; there is no need to do on-page SEO to initiate an off-page SEO campaign. You can enjoy traffic with merely off-page SEO too. But we find a link between on-page and off-page SEO campaigns while diving deep into SEO concepts and search engine ranking metrics.
This blog will unravel the dependency of off-page SEO on on-page SEO and vice versa. Let’s look at the definition of SEO to find the root cause of doing optimisation.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is an organic marketing strategy. Its core purpose is to get organic, unpaid, relative, and consistent traffic flow.
Any move on or off the site that helps you meet one of the above goals comes under SEO tactics. An off-page SEO strategy may bring traffic to your site without depending on on-page SEO. But will it meet all of the above four SEO goals?
Yes, this is the actual question one should ask. Will off-page SEO alone meet all SEO goals? The answer is no; you can’t compete with your digital business rivals by choosing only off-page SEO because off-page SEO needs on-page SEO support for an ideal optimisation strategy.
We need to look at the on-page & off-page SEO basics to get the dependency links b/w on-page & off-page SEO strategies for an ideal optimisation campaign.
On-Page SEO
All the SEO tactics we do on our website come under on-page SEO. On-page is more than keyword stuffing. Keywords placement is important without any doubt, but there is plenty more to do for on-page optimisation. It has two major parts:
- Content optimisation
- Web structure optimisation
Content Optimisation
Plagiarism-free, grammatically perfect, high-quality, and unique content is essential to lay the foundation of content optimisation. We have listed down the vital ingredients for content optimisation and their benefits:
Ideal Keyword
The whole content optimisation process revolves around your chosen keywords. A Keyword can make or break any SEO campaign. Choose an ideal keyword with the following characteristics to lay the foundation of a successful SEO campaign,
- Higher search volume
- Related to your niche
- Relates to users search intent
- Long-tail keyword
- Avoid single-word keywords
Keyword Placement
Keyword placement is an art; you have to stuff your targeted keyword in a quite natural way. The artificial look of content because of improper keyword stuffing is considered a drawback for SEO. Google and all top search engines demote such web pages. Follow the enlisted tricks for the ideal keyword placement:
- Keyword-rich Tittle – Place your main keyword in the targeted web page title.
- Keyword-rich H1 Tag – Place a targeted keyword in max H1 tags. Remember, it should not look like artificial stuffing. It isn’t easy to naturally adjust long-tail keywords in all H1 headings; in that case, you can use keywords in a few H1 tags instead of all.
- URL – Implant your targeted keyword in the relative web page URL. Besides that, ensure to have simple & short URLs.
- First & Last Paragraph – In the body tag, ensure to place your keywords in the first & last paragraphs.
A perfectly keyword-optimised content helps search engines to trigger a webpage against a specific keyword-rich search query.
Image Optimisation
Image optimisation is another crucial part of on-page SEO, especially for large websites. Using keywords in alt tags is not enough to optimise images. Follow the enlisted tricks to optimise images:
- Use high-quality images with small sizes
- Use compressed images (You can use plugins to compress pictures for WordPress like CMS sites)
- Use original photos (copyrighted or free stock photos)
Image optimisation helps you increase the loading speed of your site and ultimately impacts site ranking.
Website Loading Speed
Website loading speed matters to both search engines & viewers of your site. You have to ensure that your site doesn’t take more than a second to load. It’s a 5G era; no one will wait a few seconds to load a site properly. You may follow the enlisted tricks to optimise site loading time,
- Optimise Images – Use compressed images to minimise files size.
- Enable Cache – Enable Cache browsing for your site. It will decrease the loading time for your frequent site users.
Website Structure Optimisation
Website structure optimisation is a technical part of on-page SEO. A properly optimised web structure helps Google & other search engines to index all the web pages, including isolated pages. For an ideal optimised web structure, you need to focus during web development as it could be complex to restructure a site, later on, especially larger ones. Use the following tips to optimise the web structure,
- Use Internal links to connect all the web pages. It helps search engine crawlers to crawl a complete site for indexing.
- Ensure that no web page is more than three links away from the landing page.
- Avoid isolated pages. Search engines crawlers may not find such pages for indexing, especially for larger & continuously growing sites.
Off-Page SEO
All the SEO activities one may do off the site to rank higher on SERP comes under off-page SEO. You can’t control off-page completely as a website admin compared to on-page SEO.
Off-page SEO revolves around link building, generally known as back-linking. We need to build links with other sites to increase domain and page authority.
Every domain & web page has a specific authority known as domain authority and page authority. Search engines consider such higher authority sites’ information trustworthy and pick such sites for top SERPs. We need to raise our site authority score to gain organic traffic and higher search engine ranking. On-page SEO helps achieve a higher ranking, but it takes too much time. In comparison, link building is a quick way to increase our site’s authority score.
Ensure to get a backlink from a website of the same niche with a higher domain authority score. Off-page is like icing a cake. No matter how tasty a cake is, you will not choose it for a birthday celebration if it’s not beautiful. That’s why off-page is crucial to rank a site for SERPs.
Final Words
On-page SEO enables a site to gain a digital presence by helping search engine crawlers in its indexing and trigger its web pages against specific keywords.
In comparison, Off-page SEO helps a site gain the authority/trust of search engines for having fresh and quality information. As far as the question ‘Is on-page SEO compulsory for off-page SEO?’ matters; Off-page SEO can bring high-quality, related, & organic but not consistent traffic for a site without on-page SEO.
An off-page dependent site is like a Facebook shop that can lose all of its business in no time if FB blocks the account. A third-party site can cancel the backlinks at any time to disturb your site authority and, ultimately, organic traffic flow. In Contrast, a website with on-page & off-page optimisation is like Amazon that is independent & has consistent organic traffic because of brand building.
