A well designed, customized website is the bedrock of any savvy digital marketing strategy. Though, that new site won’t catapult your business to the top of Google’s ubiquitous search results on its own. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play — and why our friends at BuildThis asked us, Digital Third Coast, to guest author this blog post.
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At Digital Third Coast, we focus on increasing organic traffic, driving qualified leads and bolstering sales for our clients. We’re SEO experts, with more than 10 years of experience in digital marketing.
Let’s talk about SEO — and how adding it to your digital marketing strategy will make a measurable revenue difference for your company. It’s important to understand the two categories of SEO — on-page and off-page. Google looks at both of these categories to determine your site’s rank.
What’s the difference between on-page and off-page SEO?
With on-page SEO, Google looks specifically at your content. What is your website about? What is this specific page about? How about this blog or landing page? Google finds its answers in the text on the page and other on-page elements like H1 tags, meta descriptions and page titles. Ensuring these on-page elements are included and functioning is critical to the success of all off-page SEO efforts.
With off-page SEO, Google looks at the authority of you site. Are reputable sites linking to it? Which ones and to which pages? Google assembles a backlink profile for all websites and is more focused on link quality rather than quantity. This link assessment determines your rank position far more than any other factor in its ranking algorithm.
Put more simply, on-page factors determine what you rank for and off-page factors determines how high you rank in search results.
Executing an Off-Page Strategy
So how do you get reputable sites to link to your site? Digital Third Coast is obsessed with creating informative content on behalf of our clients. We package our content in shareable visual narratives and have a dedicated in-house outreach team with extensive media contacts. Our clients’ content is regularly featured on reputable websites, sending signals to Google that our clients’ sites are worthy of a high ranking. For an off-page strategy to work, you’ll need to create content that others on the internet find appealing. There’s no shortcut.
On-page factors determine what you rank for and off-page factors determines how high you rank in search results.
Can I do one without the other?
No. It’s critical that on-page elements are properly set-up when building and maintaining your site. Without this set-up, any off-page efforts won’t work. On-page efforts without a robust and strategic off-page plan won’t pay off much. Here’s a baseball metaphor: on-site SEO gets you to first base. You can’t score a run without touching first base, but just getting to first base doesn’t score runs — or win games.
Final thoughts:
It’s best to think of SEO as an outgrowth of your website efforts. A strong website is the first step to better search engine results. If you have any additional questions about SEO strategy, please let us (or BuildThis!) know. We love seeing our clients succeed.
Mike Theodore, Digital Marketing Manager at Digital Third Coast
Questions? Get in touch with us!