On-site and off-site SEO are two dif­fer­ent types of Search Engine Opti­miza­tion. They are both very impor­tant in the SEO process. On-site SEO is focused on web­site opti­miza­tion while off-site SEO relies on ele­ments out­side your website.

For search engines, the main dif­fer­ence between on-site and off-site SEO is in its pur­pose. The pur­pose of on-site SEO is to build trust, and make your con­tent easy to read and under­stand by search engine bots. On the oth­er hand, off-site SEO’s pur­pose is to give sig­nals, most­ly through links point­ing to your web­site, that the con­tent is worth show­ing in the search engine results.

On-site SEO factors

On-site SEO includes every­thing you do on your web­site to make your con­tent search engine friend­ly. Most­ly, on-site SEO fac­tors are under your con­trol and are rel­a­tive­ly easy to implement.

The foun­da­tion of on-site SEO is in tech­ni­cal activ­i­ties. Where­as the core of on-site SEO is con­tent cre­ation, based on a detailed key­word research. It is cru­cial to choose appro­pri­ate key­words that will draw the right audi­ence, and imple­ment them through­out your web­site’s con­tent. The process of key­word research and dis­tri­b­u­tion is usu­al­ly called on-page SEO because it is done on indi­vid­ual pages and posts level.

The most important on-site SEO factors

There are over 200 fac­tors of on-site and off-site SEO. They have dif­fer­ent impor­tance and weight, so you should focus your efforts first on the fac­tors that mat­ter the most.

For on-site SEO the most impor­tant fac­tors are:

• domain name
• key­word research and dis­tri­b­u­tion; title tags, meta descrip­tion, URL, sub­head­ings, content
• LSI key­words
• link struc­ture
• images opti­miza­tion
• anchor text and inter­nal link building
• web­site per­for­mance and load speed
• mobile ver­sion of your website
• build­ing trust; SSL encryp­tion, Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy and Terms of Use page
• error man­age­ment; bro­ken links, dupli­cate title tags, etc.
• bounce rate man­age­ment; qual­i­ty con­tent, read­abil­i­ty improve­ments, user-friend­ly 404 error page

Off-site SEO techniques

Off-site SEO includes every­thing you and oth­er peo­ple do, out­side your web­site, for your brand and web­site’s con­tent pro­mo­tion. The main goal of off-site SEO is cre­at­ing qual­i­ty, unique backlinks.

Off-site SEO is par­tial­ly under your con­trol but it most­ly relies on the opin­ion of oth­ers. Links point­ing to your web­site are of major impor­tance, but search engines also pay atten­tion to brand men­tions, dis­cus­sions, and rec­om­men­da­tions that do not specif­i­cal­ly include a link.

Here are some of the best tech­niques to increase your brand aware­ness and the num­ber of links rec­om­mend­ing your website.

• link build­ing
• pro­mot­ing your con­tent through social media
• video mar­ket­ing
• press releas­es
• link sub­mis­sion; SEO friend­ly websites
• online reviews
• doc­u­ment shar­ing; Slide Share, Google Docs, DocFoc
• pro­mo­tion and branding
• guest blog­ging
• paid adver­tis­ing
• harm­ful links man­age­ment

Is it possible to rank high on SERP with only one aspect of SEO optimization?

Yes! It is pos­si­ble to rank high on SERP if you decide to do only on-site or off-site SEO.

How­ev­er, your rank­ing sta­tus depends on your com­peti­tors, and how well they’ve opti­mized their con­tent for the same key­words as you. If your com­peti­tors opti­mized their con­tent bet­ter, their results will show up in front of yours. If you have many com­peti­tors, it is unlike­ly to expect high rank­ings, unless you work on both on-site and off-site SEO optimization.