On-page opti­miza­tion is the process by which var­i­ous ele­ments on an indi­vid­ual web page are estab­lished and struc­tured so that the page can be found by the search engines for a given key­word or key phrase.  From my expe­ri­ence there are really five key ele­ments to on-page optimization:

1. Title Tags – still arguably the most impor­tant on-page ele­ment (other than your page copy)
2. Meta Data – the meta descrip­tion and meta key­words tags.  A well writ­ten descrip­tion can help with click-throughs and although deval­ued because of spam tech­niques, Google still looks at the key­words tag to get an idea of the top­i­cal­ity of the page.
3. Page Copy – this is really the key to your suc­cess.  Ensur­ing that your con­tent can be crawled by the search engines and is well opti­mized but not over opti­mized can deter­mine how much suc­cess your web­site may have from a search perspective.
4. Head­ing Tags – specif­i­cally H1 tags as they still carry some value with the engines.
5. Inter­link­ing – how pages are inter­linked is also a key fac­tor to con­sider when look­ing at on-page opti­miza­tion efforts.

On page Opti­miza­tion plays very impor­tant role in SEO.  It helps to make the off-page efforts easy.  With­out on-page opti­miza­tion in place, it becomes increas­ing dif­fi­cult to rank for the key­words that you are try­ing to be found for.  Just because you have one instance of “red wid­gets” on your page does not mean that you deserve to rank in the top spot in Google for “red wid­gets”.   So address­ing all of the key on-page ele­ments goes a long way in help­ing the engines deter­mine the top­i­cal­ity of your page and your site as a whole.  It is no secret that to per­form well in search you really need to pro­duce high qual­ity con­tent.  Ide­ally, if this con­tent is of value, the off page opti­miza­tion should take care of itself.  This is why on-page opti­miza­tion is so crit­i­cal and in my mind will con­tinue to be impor­tant in order to per­form well in the search engines.

Yet the fact remains that you still need peo­ple to find your con­tent.  This brings us to off-page optimization.

Off-Page Opti­miza­tion

Off-page opti­miza­tion really con­sists of:

1. Acquir­ing inbound links to your pages
2. Lever­ag­ing social inter­ac­tion with your web­pages – acquir­ing social links/mentions and buzz

Because the inter­net is based on, and con­sists of, a Web of links, tra­di­tion­ally link pop­u­lar­ity has been key to hav­ing high rank­ings within search results pages of the engines.  How­ever link acqui­si­tion is one of the most over-manipulated SEO tac­tics that has ulti­mately resulted in poorer search results in recent years. The fact that link pop­u­lar­ity can be eas­ily manip­u­lated has seen the search engines shift their algo­rithms to focus more on qual­ity of con­tent and site engage­ment and less on how many links your have point­ing to your pages.   It is true that sites with poor qual­ity con­tent that lack on-page opti­miza­tion have some­times sur­faced to the top of search results due to arti­fi­cial inflated link inven­to­ries.  How­ever Google’s recent algo­rithm updates (see: Panda) are really work­ing on address­ing web spam of which arti­fi­cially inflated linked sites may fall into.  Some black-hat SEO’s will argue that even in 2011 links are still the eas­i­est way to obtain a num­ber one rank­ing in Google but quite hon­estly these are not always the results that I, as a user of Search, want to see.  The days of link pop­u­lar­ity as the top rank­ing fac­tor are numbered.

Remem­ber search engines such as Google incor­po­rate hun­dreds of fac­tors in their rank­ing algo­rithms.  There are numer­ous fac­tors both from an on-page per­spec­tive and off-page per­spec­tive that get fac­tored in as to why page A ranks higher than page B in the search results.  These fac­tors con­tinue to change.  One trend that we are see­ing is the use of social met­rics or social engage­ment as a rank­ing fac­tor.  Both Bing and Google have com­mu­ni­cated that social and site engage­ment will con­tinue to play a key role in what we will see in future search results.

Herein lies the impor­tance of a key off-page fac­tor and that is social engage­ment.  Whether it is the num­ber of peo­ple who tweet your con­tent, Like your con­tent, social book­mark your con­tent or “vote” for your con­tent via Google +1, the impor­tance of social and site engage­ment can­not be understated.

So what comes first the chicken or the egg?

The next log­i­cal ques­tion becomes which do you focus on first?  Well it’s like this.  Let’s say that you are look­ing to sell your home and you will be hav­ing an open house.  Of course you are going to ensure that the inte­rior of your house is clean, tidied and de-cluttered.  You will prob­a­bly spend some time ensur­ing that your lawn is cut and that the hedges are trimmed.  Well on-page opti­miza­tion is a lot like house­keep­ing.  It is some­thing that you just do and then do it repeat­edly.  Off-page opti­miza­tion is like the exte­rior house chores, the cut­ting of the grass if you will.

When you are opti­miz­ing your site, you will want to take care of the house­keep­ing first.  That means ensur­ing that your tags are opti­mized, that you fea­ture unique and rel­e­vant con­tent, that your URLs are clean and can be found by the search engine spi­ders, that you have effec­tively inter­linked your site’s pages and have lever­aged both HTML and XML sitemaps to assist with the crawla­bil­ity of the site.  Once the major­ity of your house­keep­ing is down, then you can address the exter­nal stuff like:

• Build­ing qual­ity inbound links to your site
• Pro­mot­ing your con­tent via social chan­nels to obtain some social traction
• Adding social book­mark­ing options to let users share and pro­mote your con­tent for you

If you are lucky and have cre­ated some great con­tent that is well opti­mized (but not over opti­mized) some of the exte­rior off-page opti­miza­tion such as acquir­ing qual­ity links should take care of itself.  Of course you will want to mon­i­tor both your inter­nal and exter­nal opti­miza­tion efforts to ensure that you are per­form­ing as well as you should be and that your house… or in this case your web­site is clean and in fine work­ing order.

Down­load the On-Page Opti­miza­tion vs. Off-Page Opti­miza­tion Cheat Sheet to learn more!


Biography / Resume : Jody has been specializing in organic search for the better part of the past decade. Having spent seven years with Mediative (formerly Enquiro), Jody has dealt with some of the largest brands in the world reviewing sites, providing insightful analysis and mapping online strategies for our clients. Jody has contributed articles to leading industry resources such as Search Engine Guide, Web Pro News Canada, Search Engine Journal and his own blog Marketing-Jive.com. Jody has created and developed SEO for Website Redesign solutions, has prepared numerous SEO best practices and is an advocate of continuous improvement. Jody plays a key role in helping Mediative deliver cutting edge search strategies, assisting clients with adapting to the ever-changing online universe.