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On Page and Off Page SEO
By Joe Cavell | August 20, 2008
On-page and off-page SEO can be the answer to higher page ranking. I have been asked many times by students “What does it take for me to get my product listed on the first page of the search engines?” This is a typical question most people that already have a product (or service) ask. The answer to this question is twofold; on-page and off-page SEO and Social Bookmarking. This article will address the on-page and off-page SEO portion and I will write another article that will address the Social Bookmarking aspect.
Let’s take a look at SEO or Search Engine Optimization. How does Google, for example, decide how to rank sites that are very similar and sometimes even offering the same thing? The key is to create demand for your site and make it an authority site so others will want to be a part of it.
There are basically two SEO areas we need to define; Off-page and On-page.
Off-page SEO is defined as those things that are not actually a part of the website but are more a part of and/or result of activities outside of the actual website.
Here are the top seven off-page criteria used by Google.
- Domain age – The older the domain the more emphasis it is given by Google. They assume that if it’s been around awhile it must be more relevant.
- Page rank – A page ranking of 5 or above creates the appearance of authority in Google’s estimation and could be difficult to out rank.
- Page back links – Links from other sites to a specific page on your site are considered to be very important because if others feel your site is worth linking to then it must be an authority site. The actual page rank of the back linked pages does have some impact on the effectiveness of the back link.
- Domain back links – Although many older sites may have a large number of back links, this may be the only reason it is ranked high. Page back links are much more important.
- Page .edu and .gov back links – Having back links from .edu (Education) and .gov (Government) sites tells Google that your site is important enough that educational and government sites point to it.
- DMOZ Directory – Having your site listed in the DMOZ Open Directory Project adds off page credibility to your site. The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast global community of volunteer editors.
- Yahoo Directory – The Yahoo Directory is the first large scale directory of the internet and lists sites categorized by topic and location. Google feels that if you are willing to pay the $300 annual fee to get listed here then you are most likely putting in the effort to make your site relevant.
So the off-page SEO factors are things that can happen independent of your website, such as page ranking, back linking and whether the site is listed in certain directories.
On-page SEO is defined as those things that are indeed a part of the website and whether they are favorable to search engine algorithms.
Here are the top five on-page criteria used by Google.
- Keyword in title – Is your keyword or phrase actually in the title of your website?
- Keyword in URL – Is your keyword or phrase actually in the website URL?
- Keyword in Description – Is your keyword or phrase actually in the web page description?
- Keyword in Header Tag – Is your keyword or phrase actually in the website header tag?
- Google cache age – This is the last date that Google visited the web page and entered it into their database.
As you can see, you are in complete control of four out of five on-page SEO criteria. I would strongly advise you to review these on-page and off-page SEO items on your site and optimize them as needed.
If you develop a website with content focused on your specific keywords and it has some off-page authority (via back links) you will improve your search engine ranking.
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