A large percentage of your customers begin their purchase with a search, using a search engine. Not only B2C, even B2B businesses have found that SEO has the biggest impact on generating leads (57 percent – Mindjumpers). And not only that, leads generated from search are 8 times more likely to close into a sale ( State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot).
We all know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the optimization of the website content, tags, structure, links, natural link-building, directory listings, social media, blogs, etc. to get traffic on the website through organic search results. So what part of SEO is On-page SEO?
On-page SEO
On-page optimization is the part of SEO that is done on the page, or on the site – these are intrinsic to the website; and are typically done when the website is being developed to avoid redesign again. The usual on-page optimization activities are:
- Writing quality content, original and relevant content
- Keyword research and selection
- Ensure Keyword density
- LSI keywords (synonyms) inclusion
- Use Meta tags – Title & Description tags
- Including images & writing image ALT tags
- Making sure header tags are given and include keywords – H1, H2, H3 tags
- Good Site structure to ensure good usability
- Friendly URL structure
- Implementing an internal linking strategy
- Site maps, both XML and user facing
- Robots.txt
- Accessibility
- Optimize site for speed in loading
The objective of on-page SEO
The objective of on-page SEO is to ensure that your website gets found, gets a good rank in search results and is pleasing to the visitor. On-page guidelines, if followed correctly, lead you to laying a strong foundation of good quality content, site structure and interlinking which is essential to any website. Your visitors will find the site loads quickly, they will receive quality information that informs and fulfills their information needs or solves their problem. They will experience easy navigation and discover links to other related information. Hence they will stay longer and visit many pages. In short, on-page SEO is useful and pleasing to the customer, and as a result, such websites achieve higher ranking in the SERPs.
Off-page SEO
And what is Off-Page SEO? Off-page activities include relevant and genuine link building, directory listings, building authority, trust and social media activities. Please click here to see the difference between on-page and off-page SEO.
Benefits of organic search results
We quoted some research to drive home the lead generation capability of organic SEO search results; we now want to establish what part On-page SEO plays in this process.
- On-page SEO ensures search engine bots recognize and index a website and bring it up in the search results.
- It ensures accessibility – provides access to tags and relevant pages
- On-page SEO gets higher rankings (and if your competition is not much, that alone can get you top rankings.)
- If on-page SEO is well done, content is written well, it goes a long way and you don’t have to worry about Google changing its algorithm.
- Well written content, inclusion of images and videos, can increase time on site and reduce bounce rate – and this leads to higher ranking.
- Optimized page loading time leads to less site abandonment. Data shows that one second delay causes 7% drop in conversions (Source KissMetrics)
- Since Content is original and relevant, it solves the customer’s problem, and therefore takes him/her to the next stage of the selling cycle, thus helping with lead generation
The cost-benefit angle
While Off-page SEO, SEM and Content Marketing get you visitors and traffic quickly, they require a large and constant investment and do not work in optimal ways when your On-page optimization is deficient. Also, on-page SEO is done only once, but generates long term benefits.
This is not to say that On-page SEO is everything. Off-page SEO and Content marketing play a very big role in driving traffic to the website and achieving a high rank on a continuous basis. However, on-page is an essential and a pre-requisite to doing these activities.
The difference between On-page SEO and Off-page SEO
| Definition | |
On-page SEO involves those activities that can be done on the pages of the website to get indexed and ranked on search engines. | Off-Page SEO is what can be done off the pages of a website to maximize its performance in the search engines for target keywords related to the on-page content and keywords in off-page direct-links. |
| Time of implementation | |
Advisable to implement on-page SEO during the design and development phase of a website to avoid any redesign later. | Off-page SEO can be implemented only after the website goes live. |
| Effects on indexation and ranking | |
At the basic level, on-page SEO ensures Google and Bing bots/crawlers index the pages, and the site comes up in search results. It gets a page rank and traffic. | Off-page SEO helps in getting more traffic and higher page rank. |
| Activities | |
On-Page SEO:
| Off-Page SEO:
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