In today’s modern world, we all highly depend on the Internet for our daily professional and personal tasks. Search engines play a huge role in ensuring that we obtain relevant information on a variety of topics each time we enter a search query. And to rank high on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), website owners perform Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
SEO consists of two important elements that benefit from each other: On Page Optimisation or On Site Optimisation and Off Page Optimisation or Off Site Optimisation. One element is as crucial as the other. In fact, these two parts should be both implemented to achieve maximum results of your SEO goals. While they complement each other, On Page Optimisation must always be performed first and not the other way around.
On Page Optimisation is the process of optimising your entire website so users can easily find it in various search engines. Relevant keywords/phrases must be included in the web page URL, title tags, Meta tags and descriptions, headlines, sub headlines, ALT tags and body text. You must be careful, though, not to overdo your On Page Optimisation methods, as you risk being marked as a spammy website. On Page Optimisation also deals with the overall site structure and navigation to make the website user-friendly, enhancing user experience. As mentioned above, On Page Optimisation is just half of the SEO process and does not guarantee a good ranking unless Off Page Optimisation is also executed.
Off Page Optimisation, on the other hand, is basically performing SEO techniques outside the website being optimised. It’s all about generating buzz and increasing the website’s credibility and popularity. This usually involves link building activities, like social bookmarking, blogging, forum posting, submitting article directories and many others. The more authoritative the back links obtained, the higher the rankings.
Again, both On and Off Page Optimisation have to take place at tandem to maximize the impact of your SEO efforts. SEO is an ongoing process, so once you get high rankings, your website needs to continuously offer relevant and useful information to search engines to secure your position.