Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website. It basically involves making small changes to your website and its content in an effort to boost your search engine ranking.
However, SEO isn’t quite that simple. There are numerous types of SEO, including on-page, off-page, and technical. And to make things even more confusing, some things are completely out of your control, and the major search engines release huge SEO updates very regularly.
In this article, we explore the different types of SEO and how you should be using them.
On-Page SEO
In general, on-page SEO refers to the optimization of your site’s content and design. It’s actually a multi-faceted field with goals of both boosting search engine rankings and improving the user experience.
This should actually be quite easy to understand. Adding relevant keywords and ensuring you have well-written authority content that’s in line with the user intent will help you gain higher rankings.
In turn, this will boost the user experience and affect how long visitors spend on your website. Since things like bounce rate, visitor retention time, and returning visitors are analysed by the search engines, this will also help boost your SEO score.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is a slightly more complicated topic, as much of it is out of your hands. Basically, the search engines assign a level of authority to every website on the internet. The higher your authority, the higher your chances of ranking well.
One way authority is determined is by looking at how many other websites link back to yours and what sort of quality these websites have. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the easier it will be to rank well.
Because of this, off-page SEO largely involves link building. Many businesses decide to create guest posts that link back to their website. You can also use things like forum posting, reaching out to influential websites in your space, and social media sharing. Or, just focus on creating excellent content that people are going to naturally link back to.
Technical SEO
In theory, technical SEO can be placed under the same banner as on-page SEO, because it involves optimizing your website for the search engine crawler bots. However, it’s different because it involves back-end optimization rather than content and design optimization.
There are numerous things you might do to optimize technical SEO. Start by ensuring your code is tidy and free of bugs. Aim to achieve the best page speed and load times possible, and spend a little time ensuring your site loads well on all devices.
Ensure you have a high-quality XML sitemap, and use a logical URL structure. Add 301 redirects where possible, include structured data markup, and consider SEO siloing to make it easier for search engines to navigate your website.
Final Word
The three main types of SEO are technical, on-page, and off-page. All three are very important when it comes to boosting your search engine rankings, and it’s, therefore, crucial that you understand them.
In saying this, most SEO professionals recommend focusing on on-page and basic technical SEO before diving into the more complex off-page optimization tasks. Add high-quality content, focus on low competition, relevant keywords, and ensure your site is well-structured and has decent load times.