Onsite vs. Offsite SEO
I had the thought today that some people may not know the difference between onsite and offsite search engine optimization (SEO). So, I figured I’d take a minute or two and do a quick summary of the difference between the two and why both are important to rankings.
Keep in mind that search engines want to give their users relevant content. In other words, if you go to the search engine and do a search for ‘fishing pole’, you want to get sites that are about or sell fishing poles right? That’s the whole basis of what search engines are trying to do. Keep that in mind when you’re picking out your keyword phrases and such.
Onsite SEO
Onsite SEO is anything that you do to your website to make it more relevant to your key phrases. Some of the strategies to use for onsite SEO include:
- Meta Tags
- Title Tags
- Keyword Density
- Use of Keywords in Alt Tags
- etc.
In other words, onsite SEO has to do with how you use keywords phrases on your site and make your site relevant to the phrases you are targeting.
Offsite SEO
Offsite SEO has to do with what you do out on the internet as a whole. Most of this has to do with link building and other such strategies. Here are a few of the common link building things you can do:
- Vary anchor text in links
- Different link types (two-way, one-way)
- Link locations (blogs, articles, directories, other websites, etc.)
- Social links (del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, etc.)
- etc.
Offsite SEO seems to be a more important factor than all of the onsite SEO stuff. I still recommend spending time doing the onsite stuff because it really does help the site to be more relevant to the terms you want rankings for. It’s the content that comes behind the link.
Both onsite and offsite SEO are important and you should spend time with each of them. Don’t worry so much about exact percentages and what not (for example, and exact 5% keyword density of every page of your site might be pushing it a bit…), just make the site relevant to the phrases you want. Then, build plenty of links using your keyword phrases.
That’s all for today!
Related Posts
Title Tag GuidelinesMeta Tag Guidelines
Don’t Forget to Vary Your Anchor Text!
Follow These Effective Link Building Principles
Researching Good Keyword Phrases
on August 28th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Could you explain to me what yhou mean by, “anchor text in links.” Thank you for the ecomm tips. They are very useful and help to explain confusing areas of ecommerce.
on August 28th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Hey Frank,
I’m glad you’re enjoying the site. Rather than re-explaining things here, please check out this post for more details about anchor text: Follow These Effective Link Building Principles.
on August 29th, 2007 at 4:27 am
I think in-page is more important, try promoting a site on a keyword that do not exist in the text. it needs constant work. you have to do a good inpage so the outpage will run.
on August 29th, 2007 at 5:32 am
jew,
They are both important. I agree with you that you need to have your keywords in the text for relevance to the terms that you are trying to get rankings for. Thanks for the comment!
on August 31st, 2007 at 3:20 am
I’ve noticed from my own experiments that offsite seo seems to carry alot more weight with Google, while onsite SEO, including content volume, density, etc. has a much better effect with Yahoo . . .
on August 31st, 2007 at 6:39 am
I have heard and read similar things and would agree with you for the most part on that one. That’s another reason why it is still important to do both.
on September 9th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Thanks For the great post….
SEO is very important for any website…
Thanks!! for the tips and I shall use them for promoting my sites..
THANKS
on September 10th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Derek,
Yes, SEO is definitely very important. I’m glad you found this post helpful!
on September 17th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I also agree.. I think both are very important. It’s good to know that as you begin to compete for the more competitive keyword phrases, the offsite seo becomes even more important (since by that time, almost all of your competitors are already doing everything they can as far as onsite seo goes).
on October 8th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Great post. SEO is important and it will help you to be more competitive.
on November 26th, 2007 at 8:51 am
The first is an on-site SEO. This relates to the content and html source of your site. It can be done by keyword, and key phase placements throughout the content of your site, or in the meta tags used for your site.
The second step to a good search engine rank is backlinks. Search engines rely much on external links to determine the worth of an actual site. More links the site gets, higher it is ranked in search engines. The quality of links does matter too. The higher quality of backlinks, you have the better.
The most effective way to get backlinks is to submit the site to web directories. By submitting the site to web directories you get one-way links to your site. And search engines consider one-way links to be more valuable than reciprocal links.
on November 26th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Good summary, but you need to do more than just directories!
on November 27th, 2007 at 4:39 am
I agree. Therefore you should be very careful when choosing which directories to get links from. You should also avoid letting your link building become overly dependent on directories. My advice is to keep directories under 15-20% of your overall link mix.
on June 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
I am doing both on and off line work on my site
on August 12th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
You are right, I discussed with some people from Internet marketing last days and indeed they did not know what onsite and offisite optimization is. Which is curious and amazing! Anyways offsite optimization is the most important factor in ranking. You can rank for terms that appears in the anchor text of the links and which are not used in the page. The difference is that onsite optimization helps you to get in top of SERP relatively fast, but offiste optimization takes long time.
on August 17th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
SEO is still a concept that not many businesses understand because most of the executives and important people who invest money into their sites are not that computer literate. Even if you ask someone who grew up with Myspace, they still don’t have an inkling about what SEO can achieve for a company.
The real effort is to reach them on a level they understand.
Still, a good post for a crashcourse.