SEO, or search engine optimization, is a means of increasing your website’s visibility to search engines using a variety of tactics. When you employ SEO correctly to improve your site, search engines can read and understand what is contained on that website. They index the data from your website, so that when an internet user enters a query in the search box, search engines reference the indexed data and offer websites in search results that best match the query.

Two main SEO strategies assist with this: on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is a reference to tactics and methods that optimize a website that appear on the pages of the website. Off-page SEO refers to strategies that concentrate more on the promotion of the website in off-page settings, such as at other sites or blogs that are not the originating website.

On-Page Tactics

Here is a closer look at several on-page SEO strategies:

Content Quality

Content is the most important ranking factor of any website. Search engines evaluate content in many ways. To help them when they visit your website, ensure that your content is written for people and offers value. Your content can offer solutions and education about your products, and is unique to whatever else is already on the internet. Also, publish new content regularly.

Core Web Vitals

These are a collection of real-world metrics that search engines use to measure the user experience of a visitor to your website. They include such things as the load speed of pages, how much interactivity the site has, and the visual stability of a website. As the Core Web Vitals improve on your website, Google learns that your site offers a good user experience and ranks accordingly.

HTML Headers

HTML headers and HTML tags are the headlines and subheadings that appear in the content of a webpage. They break up the text to make it easier for visitors to understand what your content is about. They also help search engines determine what is on a webpage and how it matches a search query. HTML headers and tags help both search engines and visitors understand your content better.

Image Alt Text

This is a text description of an image that appears in the image HTML tag. The purpose of alt text in images is to assist screen readers and web browsers when images fail to load. The description text is a backup in these cases. Search engines use the information they find in alt text to determine the relevance of an image in matching a user’s query. This is why the more descriptive alt text can be, the better.

Internal Linking

This is a method where links go from new content to pages of existing content within the same website. This gives visitors additional content to see, and it keeps them on your website longer. Internal linking is also good for SEO because it gives search engines pathways to locate new content. The anchor text used for the internal link helps search engines learn more about how the destination page relates to the content being linked.

Meta Descriptions

These are HTML tags that are a short description of what a specific webpage is about. Meta descriptions are to help search engines but are primarily used to entice visitors to click through to the page to find out more about what was in the meta description.

Mobile Friendliness

This is a measurement of how well a website operates on mobile devices. When a website has been fully mobilized, it means that the elements on a webpage will move around and scale to fit the screen size of any handheld device. It also means that all the buttons and clickable parts also function from handheld devices.

Navigation

This is a reference to the accessibility of web pages. Search engines prefer to suggest pages that can be accessed by anyone, regardless of ability or browser type.

Page Speed

Digital Authority Partners says the faster the pages load on a website, the more Google likes it. The best times are under four seconds. Slow loading pages often result in visitors leaving before a page completely loads to find information elsewhere from a faster website.

Title Tags

These are HTML tags that contain the title of a specific page. They also describe what the page content is about.

Off-Page Tactics

Here are a few examples of off-page SEO tactics that are effective to help promote your content through third-party websites.

Backlinks

Backlinks are still an important ranking factor. The quality and quantity of those backlinks are vital as they determine the level of authority and trust your website has earned. However, backlinks take some time and effort to earn but are worth it.

Google My Business

This is your Google business page. The information you input into this, such as location, hours of operation, and contact details, all go directly to Google and show up as results for Google Maps searches.

Social Media

Although social media does not influence page ranking, social media offers multiple streams to share your content. Plus, social media offers exposure to audiences not normally available through just a website but provides the means to funnel traffic directly to a website. This makes social media an important part of any digital marketing program.

Unlinked Mentions

As the term implies, this is whenever a mention of your brand or business is made online but does not link to your website. Unlinked mentions have SEO value because they are considered citations verifying the trust and authority of your website.

Final Thoughts

There is quite a difference between on-page and off-page SEO But both work to help your website gain traffic and get noticed. Without these tactics, your website would be buried in a sea of other websites all trying to achieve the same goals. With these SEO tactics, you at least pull your website out of the pool so that search engines see it, visit it, and use it as a match to queries submitted by online users.