Posted by When you start working on your SEO strategy, each sub-category, from on-page to technical SEO, has its own rules and character. This can be confusing for small business owners who might not be sure where to start or what types of initiatives fall under each category. In this blog, we’ll dive into the different types of SEO and what initiatives are typically included under each, ensuring you’re equipped to thrive in each area.
On-page SEO
This is where the magic happens: right on your own website. Picture each paragraph as a building block that constructs your digital presence. It’s your stage, and every word you publish plays a part in the grand performance for both search engines and live audiences. When it comes to on-page SEO, below are the core areas where digital marketers should focus their attention:
- Crafting compelling text: Write with precision and passion, ensuring each sentence serves a purpose and resonates with your readers.
- Choosing the right images: Select visuals that complement and enhance your message. Images should capture your narrative and invite visitors to linger a little longer on your pages.
- Optimizing meta tags: Think of meta titles and descriptions as your storefront window. They should be clear, engaging, and reflective of the content that awaits inside, enticing passersby to step through the door.
- Internal linking: Connect your content with internal links, creating a network of paths that lead visitors through your site.
Remember that on-page SEO isn’t a one-time show. It’s an ongoing performance that requires continual refinement and updates. Businesses should keep their content fresh, keywords relevant, and meta tags sparkling. If you notice a decrease in clicks or traffic to a specific page, it might be time to refresh your meta title and description to try to entice users to click through to your site from the SERPs.
A well-thought-out on-page SEO strategy can be crucial for organically bringing small businesses closer to the first page of Google’s results. After all, only a small fraction of users actually go to the second page — less than 1%, to be precise.
HubSpot’s guide to on-page SEO is an excellent place for smaller businesses to get started.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the foundation that supports your online presence, seldom seen but always essential. It looks at the “behind the scenes” parts of a site that users can’t see. Without a strong technical foundation, your on-page or content optimizations won’t perform as well as they could be. Here are just a few of the things technical SEOs look at when they optimize your website:
- Site speed: Your website’s speed entices visitors to stay and explore. Optimizing loading times keeps them engaged, and Google incorporates that into its ranking algorithm. A slow site can hold you back from prime rankings.
- Mobile responsiveness: With more people browsing on the go than ever before, a mobile-friendly website opens the door to a wider audience.
- Secure browsing: Secure your site with HTTPS, a seal of trust that assures visitors their journey through your site is safe.
Remember, technical SEO is the bedrock upon which user experience and search engine trust are built. Keep it solid, and your site will stand tall in the search landscape. Businesses that are hoping to optimize their sites for user experience should aim to arrange their site with architecture that suits the user journey, getting them to the pages they’re looking for with ease.
A potential use case for a small business is optimizing product categories in ways that point users to what they want. An apparel business might categorize by broad product type, like tops, and then sort those further into categories like tee shirts, button-downs, sweatshirts, and the like.
Off-Page SEO
If on-page SEO looks at everything that’s on your site, then off-page SEO concentrates on things that occur off of your website. Many new marketers are unaware that things that don’t even occur on your own website can have a positive (or negative!) impact on your site’s rankings. Here are a few things that are usually focused on by off-page SEOs:
- Building backlinks: Building backlinks helps forge connections with reputable sites. Each backlink is a nod of respect, a signal that you’re a player on the global stage. There’s a lot more to it, though. You need to make sure the site has a good reputation and domain authority.
- Engaging on social media: Social media is the best way for marketers to interact directly with users, sometimes in real-time. Use the various social media platforms to engage with your audience and share your site’s content, broadening your influence.
- Guest blogging: Contribute valuable insights on other platforms to demonstrate thought leadership and earn trust within your industry. Guest blogging is one of the best ways to build white-hat backlinks, which effectively increases a site’s authority and trustworthiness.
In off-page SEO, relationships are currency. Invest in them wisely, and the dividends will enhance your site’s authority and reach.
Local SEO
Local SEO is a highly targeted strategy for helping businesses that offer location-specific services rank highly on SERPs for local keywords. This is usually applied to businesses that have a physical location that they want to drive people toward — think of retail stores, legal services, and services that go right to the consumer’s home, like for plumbing or repairs.
If you’ve ever searched for ‘good food near me,’ you’ve likely been greeted with Google’s Local Pack. This feature shows the top local listings for a given area and search query, along with a map to allow users to find what they’re looking for closer to their own location more easily.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘near me’ needs to be included as part of the query for it to drum up local results. If Google’s algorithm has determined that a specific search is location-based, it will still turn up local search results.
Optimizing for local search involves trying to net those location-specific keywords using three pivotal factors:
- Relevance — how ‘relevant’ does the algorithm consider a business to a given search query?
- Prominence — Does Google believe that this business is important to potential customers?
- Distance — How close is the business to where the user is searching from?
Optimizing content, like a Google Business Profile, and leveraging customer reviews will help a brick-and-mortar business lay the foundation for landing in Google’s local pack. Don’t skip the Google Business Profile, either — according to a study by Google, consumers are 2.7x more likely to find a business of any size to be more reputable when they’re greeted with a full Business Profile in their search.
Turning back to reviews, small as part of a local SEO strategy. Encouraging customers to leave their Google reviews, such as by offering an incentive to do so, can help drive a conversion — 98% of people read online reviews for local businesses, after all. Having plenty for them to browse through will help promote social proof and encourage their decision to stop by.
Content
Content is the bread and butter of a site, especially regarding SERPs. While some consider ‘content’ to only address blog posts, the term is actually much more broad. In the world of digital marketing, ‘content’ refers to everything from blog posts, to the text on About Us pages to news articles, white papers, infographics, case studies, and more. It’s not just the written word, either; videos and podcasts are considered content as well.
Content is for everyone, and no matter what your brand’s niche or business model looks like, there is a content strategy that can be adapted to fit your site. Content marketing is rich with benefits, from providing online visibility to proving to Google’s algorithm that your site has the authority to speak on whatever it is your niche captures. For example, small businesses can
Navigating SEO with Confidence
Understanding the differences between each type of SEO is important to finding the right angle for marketing your business online. When you understand one, you will begin to form a better grasp of the rest, as they tend to overlap in a number of different ways.
Remember that optimizing your site for organic traffic and growth is not a race, and that there’s no precise, one-size-fits-all approach to SEO. The most important principles to keep in mind when navigating the various types of SEO are to operate under best practices, be original, and remember to optimize for the user, not the search engine.