While on- page SEO refers to the factors you can control on your own website, off - page SEO refers to the page ranking factors that occur off your website, such as backlinks from another site. It also includes your promotion methods, taking into account the amount of exposure something gets on social media, for example. On-page SEO describes the manipulations you make directly to a web page to facilitate higher ranking. It involves optimizing the HTML code, content quality, and content structure. Off-page SEO refers to all of the SEO practices that take place outside of your website such as backlinks, link relevancy, social signals, and others. If on-page SEO is a science, then off-page SEO is an art.
Whereas on-page SEO leaves you in full control and able to experiment, off-page techniques are finicky, indefinite and somewhat left to chance. This doesn’t mean that you can’t optimize your website using these techniques — it just means you might need to spend a bit more time networking and taking a trial-and-error approach to building out a web of links that refer back to your website. Off-page SEO refers to ranking factors that are outside of your website itself. While some of these elements are outside of your direct control, there are steps you can take to impact them if you’re focused. A good off-page SEO strategy will grow brand awareness, boost engagement with your content, and highlight how relevant your site is to SERP users. While on- page SEO refers to the factors you can control on your own website , off - page SEO refers to the page ranking factors that occur off your website , such as backlinks from another site.
On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. When describing SEO tactics as “on-page or “off-page , the term “page has always referred to your website pages. On-page SEO focuses on optimizing parts of your website that are within your control, while off-page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through content creation and earning backlinks from other websites. If you browse through forums or the Reddit SEO topic, you’ll often see people asking what the difference is between on-page and off-page SEO and which one has a more significant impact on website rankings. However, SEOs generally advise getting your on-page SEO ducks in a row before focusing too much on off-page SEO. Many of the choices you make in your on-page SEO strategy will also affect how well your off-page SEO is overall.
While search algorithms and ranking factors are constantly changing, the general consensus within the SEO community is that the relevance, trustworthiness, and authority that effective off-page SEO affords a website still play a major role in a page's ability to rank. On-page and off-page SEO work together to improve your search engine rankings in complementary fashion. On-page and off-page SEO are not the same things, let’s define what each is with a few examples and how to optimize each. Understanding what goes into nailing both on-page and off-page SEO will level up you content while increasing it’s ranking potential. On-page search engine optimization happens within the site, while off-page SEO happens outside the site. One of the primary drivers of a successful off-page SEO strategy is your backlink profile the quality and quantity of outside websites that link to your page.