This is a complex question. SEO is a continuously evolving subject. One strategy may work for your business but not for another. SEO is a continuous learning process – even experts have to recheck their SEO strategies when search engines update their SEO metrics.
Today SEO is all about Google ranking metrics as 80-90% of digital traffic comes from Google. So, whenever Google updates its SEO metrics, we need to revisit our optimisation campaigns.
To get the answer to ‘What is the best SEO practice – off-page or on-page? for your business, you need to look at the basics of on-page & off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is an SEO campaign that focuses on improving a website structure and content to make it search engines as well as user-friendly.
Keyword-rich content is the first thing that may come to your mind while starting on-page SEO. You have to be very careful while writing SEO content for a website. The evolving SEO metrics now accept a specific keyword density from 0.5 to 1% as natural. Artificial keyword stuffing becomes a negative factor for SEO.
Most people think On-Page SEO is all about keywords research and keyword placement. Keyword placement is an essential and founding pillar of an SEO strategy but there is a lot more to do to enjoy consistent higher rankings at SERPs.
Let’s have a look at essential on-page factors below:
- Headings
Title and headings are the first things noticed by search engine crawlers. Makes sure to use your primary keyword in the title/headings. If you’re looking to target two or three keywords for single webpage optimisation, you can use the main keyword in the H1 tag and other keywords in H2 and H3 tags.
- Meta Data
Metadata is like a synopsis of any web page; it is the first thing a user might see while scrolling a SERP or social media. Quality metadata can bring a notable increase in a webpage conversion rate.
Metadata is considered the essence of a webpage that makes or break users’ mind to visit a webpage.
Metadata includes meta title (50-60 characters) and meta description (150-160). The character limitation could vary from one search engine to another. Ideal metadata should have the primary keyword-focused snippet of the article/blog.
- UX Design
UX Design – user experience matters for both search engines and users. Keywords targeting is an important factor, but UX design is a way more significant factor for search engine optimisation.
But the question is ‘how Google finds a web design UX friendly?’ Google including other search engines look at the following two factors to look at sites UX design,
- Bounce Rate – Bounce rate is the percentage of users that visit a site single page and bounce back to your competitor’s site. An increasing bounce rate is considered a negative factor for SEO. Search engines consider such sites loaded with poor content & design and ultimately de-ranks such sites. Ensure to have your site bounce rate at least below 40%.
- Cross-Platform – In the last few years we have seen a massive surge of mobile users in the digital world. Mobile & operating systems friendly web design is essential for positive UX design. Google introduced the ‘Rolling out mobile-first indexing‘ policy in 2018 that announces prioritisation of mobile-friendly design sites for SERP ranking instead of desktop-friendly. That’s why it’s essential now to have a cross-platform design for your business sites. The cross-platform design will decrease the bounce rate and allow search engines to rank such sites.
- Website loading speed – Loading speed matters for getting a site ranked at top SERPs. Firefox in a recent study found a one-second increase in loading speed can cost your site a 2.7% decrease in conversion rates. You may like it or not, but loading speed has become the most crucial SEO factor. It does not matter, whether you have good quality & unique content with UI design or not if you don’t have ideal web loading speed.
Off-Page SEO
In the early years of digitalisation, the pure purpose of SEO was search engine indexing. For that, we have worked to improve sites for search engine crawlers as an SEO campaign. That means off-page SEO was considered irrelevant at that time. But over time, search engines including Google, have updated their SEO metrics and off-page SEO becomes another crucial factor for higher SERP ranking.
All the optimisation activities performed off the site come under the off-page SEO category. These activities are a bit more complex compared to on-page SEO. Because we don’t have control over off-page optimisation.
Why do we need off-page SEO? Search engines used an authority score system to choose a site with idea content against a similar keyword. A site with a higher authority score ultimately wins the top SERP ranking game. We need to implement off-page SEO to win search engine trust & raise our domain and page authority scores.
Off-page SEO revolves around tens of link-building strategies with the sole purpose to raise domain and page authority scores. However, social media links have changed the single goal scenario by causing a swift increase in organic traffic instead of authority score.
While link building with the other sites you have to follow the enlisted precautions:
- Get a link from a related niche site
- Get a link from a trustworthy site
- Avoid linking your site with any site that involves illegal activities
Link-Building Types
We have enlisted the reputed link building techniques below:
- Backlinks – Linking with relevant sites of higher domain authority.
- Social Media Links – Sharing web pages link on social media pages. It has a lower impact on the ranking score but causes a notable rise in conversion rates.
- Guest Post – Guest posting is a popular way to link a site with higher authority domains. It is a way to publish internally-linked content on another person’s site. Guest post brings traffic & causes an increase in domain authority simultaneously.
Final Words
You may get the answer for ‘What is the best SEO practice, off-page or on-page?’ now. Choosing one of them to win optimisation is like choosing from a boat and oar to survive in an ocean. Both SEO strategies are crucial to get consistent organic traffic.
