How to Optimize Your Website On-Page & Off-Page

Whiteboard: SEO Crash Course Series Part 1 – Website Optimization

When you’re aiming to improve your company’s SEO, one of the terms you’ll hear most about is “optimization.” In fact, you’ll probably get pretty tired of that word after a while. But, optimizing your website for search engines is all about creating a streamlined product that gets noticed. You can harness the power of Google, Bing, and friends by applying some basic principles to your digital marketing strategy. One of the most important of these is website optimization, both on-page and off-page.

On-page optimization is all about improving your website from the inside. Checking elements such as URL structure, keywords, and content length and quality. Off-page optimization is about building improved metrics for your website externally. This covers factors such as sitemap submission, A/B testing, and building external links to point to your website and raise your SERP ranking. Don’t worry if you didn’t catch all that! Check out our simple whiteboard video below to find out how to apply website optimization techniques on-page and off-page.

Video Transcription

Welcome to part 1 of our SEO Crash Course Series! We’re going to answer some of your most burning questions about SEO, starting from the beginning. What’s the difference between on-page and off-page optimization?

In a nutshell, on-page optimization is the process of improving your website from within, while off-page optimization includes tactics you can use to improve your website externally.

On-Page Optimization Covers

• URL Structure – Do your URLs contain keywords? Are they short and easy to remember?
• Meta Titles – Should have unique titles, less than 70 characters with keywords at the front.
• Meta Descriptions – Unique descriptions, under 156 characters, with keywords but without stuffing.
• Headers – Use H1 headers for titles, H2 and H3 for subheadings.
• Images – Add a keyword in the image name and optimize for speed.
• Content – Unique content, avoid duplicate content, add keywords without stuffing, should be less than 3 keywords per 100 words. The preferred length is 400 words minimum.
• Social Media Buttons – Make sure they are correctly integrated into your site.

Off-Page Optimization Covers

• Site speed – This affects your ranking, so get your programmers to test your speed. Your site should load in under 2 seconds.
• Incoming links – The more trustworthy and popular websites that link to your website the better, each link counts as a vote to raise your ranking.
• Sitemap creation and submission – This is very important as it will serve as a path for search engines to follow when analyzing your site.
• txt submission – Make sure that your programmers submit this correctly as it informs search engines what their bots should crawl.
• A/B Testing – Always look for continued improvement. Trying different versions of specific pages to see which one is more popular.

Did you get all that? Don’t worry if you’re feeling confused. We’ll talk about each element in detail throughout the rest of the series. Thank you for watching and be sure to contact us if you’d like to know more about website optimization, both on-page and off-page.