Search engine optimization contains two things we need to do, a set of actions that we need to do on the website and another set of actions to perform outside our website. To correctly perform the full optimization of our pages, we will need to do both steps. On-site SEO can be a one-off or less frequent update, whereas off-site SEO can be thought of as a never-ending process that we need to follow repeatedly, not frequently necessarily but repeatedly for sure.
What is On-Site SEO?
On-Site SEO is the group of actions we need to perform on our website. Its mainly about content, structure, organization, user experience, terms density and relevancy. There are of course technical aspects of on-site SEO which we will not list here as this is a more entry-level guide. Such technical terms ( for further reading ) are : the code to text ratio, website’s speed, exposure of meta data to the engines, directive for the language of our content and more.
Think of on-site SEO as the factor of quality, relevancy and user experience of our website.
What is Off-site SEO?
Off-site SEO is the set of actions we need to perform outside our website for our website. How is that possible? It is because off-site SEO is ( in very short terms ) about linking our website to other websites. There is much strategy and caution to be considered here but in simple words, the more in numbers and the more in quality websites link to our website and website’s pages, plus the more relevant those websites are, the better for search engines. A simple example here is that if we have a t-shirt store and we can have our suppliers’ websites linking to our website, it will be good for us. But if we do this wrong, or overdo it, then we will lose much, instead of gaining from the off-site process.
Think of off-site SEO as the “word of mouth” on the web about our website, the more “important” people propose us, the better for us and the ones that ask.
