On-Site and Off-Site SEO Best Practices for Business

Have you ever wondered how to help people find your business online, via search engines- like Google? By paying particularly close attention to on-page and off-page SEO best practices, I’ll show you how.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is the practice and process of using digital, as well as, traditional marketing techniques to improve your website’s rankings in search engines – like Google – results pages.

First, a successful business search engine optimization (SEO) campaign plan starts with understanding your online marketing objectives. Do you want to provide your brand’s background, generate more leads, or sell more online? If you know what you want to achieve, you can then build an effective search engine marketing strategy aligned with your unique business goals.

Think “researching keywords and creating content”, “improving your websites functionality and building links” – even to “analyzing and tracking” – your business’ search engine optimization campaign plan involves bringing all these pieces together to create a complete picture that makes your brand’s website attractive to search engines and customers alike.

Before going into more details, let me show you a brief overview of how search engines work.

How Search Engines Work: An overview.

Sources that contain a lot of keywords or terms don’t necessarily mean they’re most relevant, what matters a lot more is whether those sources are cited often by others in related fields. This was discovered by 2 Stanford Ph.D. students, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, while researching academic papers back in the 90s.

Applying this citation concept to “web search”, they proposed that websites that were referred to often by other websites were more likely to be relevant. And Google came to be. that is search engines look at your keywords to know what your website is talking about, but then push you up the “search results ladder” based on the number and quality of connections you have to and from other websites.

So search engines basically work by looking at your websites’

• Keywords: to find you, know your brand and what it’s all about.
• BackLinks: to gauge the relevance and trust level of your website.

Unsurprisingly as there are these 2 aspects to how search engines find and rank pages there are also 2 corresponding components to SEO – the on-site and off-site.

1. On-site component.

Being the core element of your website, it’s used by search engines to determine the “quality” of your WebPages. The introduction of Google Panda – to lower the rank of “low-quality sites” or “thin sites”, in particular, “content farms”, and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results – has shown how critical optimizing for this component can be.

The onsite component focuses on your site well built and following the standards to improve the user experience, as well as the proficiency of search engines to review your site. On the other hand, this factor also looks at your content’s uniqueness, quality, and relevance to your chosen topic. It concerns all of Google’s ranking factors, that they determine by directly looking at your pages, such as your headlines, content, and page structure.

On-page SEO is all about creating or enhancing relevancy signals for a webpage with respect to the search query. The way your page is optimized has a huge impact on its ability to rank.

What Google judges on-site:

• Original Content: that does not exist in exactly the same from anywhere on the web.
• Content Quality: well-researched content that helps real people solve real-life problems. make your content original, worthwhile and value-adding.
• Mobile responsive: Can your website automatically change to fit the device your visitor is viewing it on? Build your site using a mobile-friendly framework.
• Social friendly: effectively linking to your social pages can not only create unity and ultimately a connection with your audience and customers, but a solid digital footprint for search engines to follow. Allow social signals and interaction.
• Security: Google definitely wants to offer safe websites to its users: Apply an HTTPS certificate to your site
• User-Friendliness: Build your site architecture, navigation, and content with your user in mind. Implement rich media.
• Trust Signals on-site: Testimonials, certificates, reviews, badges, etc will all be scanned by search engines. Apply trust signals and badges. Link to reviews.

For more on this step, check out: On-Page Ranking Factors- Moz

2. Off-site component:

Off-page optimization focuses on quality link building and all variables Google looks at that are not exclusively in your own hands. They depend on other sources, such as social networks, other blogs in your industry, and the personal history of the searcher.

“Trust” is the backbone of this ranking factor, made absolutely necessary by Google Penguin – an update aimed at better catching websites deemed to be spamming search results, in particular, those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings – as opposed to On-page SEO, this ranking metrics deals with external factors that influence the rankings of your website.

Taking almost 70% of SEO campaign activities, this is basically the main promotion part of your business’ search engine marketing plan. Making reasonable noise, garnering attention and lifting your brand to “super status” online has a lot to do with building backlinks to your web pages.

But keep this in mind, the more influential or legitimate the website is that links back to you, the more effect that backlink from the site is going to have on your search result ranking.

Backlinks to your website that originate from other sources, can be generated using almost any form of content – articles, social media, blog posts, discussion boards, to name a few. The more links you get, the more popular you become.

How to build links.

• Improve your content marketing and link building strategy.
• Build thought leadership; this is where you leverage your expertise
• Create compelling content that can be cited as a resource by other websites.
• Get your client’s business on relevant business listings, such as Yelp and YellowPages.
• Develop a social media strategy.
• Improve your brand mentions—not just as a keyword.
• Don’t buy links; get people to naturally link to your content
• Balance your digital footprint

Get more from this step: 25 Off Page SEO Strategies That Can Generate 1,000+ Links

Finally…

In summary, your website’s position in search results is determined by what is referred to as page-rank (named after Larry Page). Every website has a ranking for a particular search term or keyword.

SEO is super important because it helps you move your website – for business-relevant search terms and keywords – to the top of search results and since almost everyone relies heavily on search engines to find anything online.

When people search for something that is relevant to them and they see your website in the search results. They are going to click and visit your page. And these are not just any visitors, theses are people that are already interested in what you offer. So of anyone they are the most likely to convert to customers, subscribers, or whatever it is you are after online. But if your website isn’t showing up in search results, it’s almost like you don’t exist, no one can even find you.

SEO is the most effective way to increase traffic to your website – making up more than 50%. Good SEO takes time, the sooner you start the sooner you move up the results ladder.

This simple search engine optimization guide should get your campaign going in the right direction, I hope it helps.

Take care and don't hesitate to leave your opinions in the comments below.

Stay safe and regards.