Before comparing on-page and off-page SEO practices and determining which is the most important factor in ranking higher, it is necessary to first determine the importance of search engine optimization (SEO).
Why is SEO important?
In this digital era, 81% of the customers and 94% of B2B buyers will perform searches online before making a purchase. And these numbers are increasing rapidly. So, if your brand/product doesn’t have a solid online presence then be ready to fall behind the competition.
SEO is very important for the visibility you want from search engines for your brand. To attract customers for your business, your website or content should be positioned highly on the search engine results page or SERPs. And this can be achieved only by having a strong SEO strategy.
Now, we know how important to have a solid SEO strategy. These strategies can be divided into two different categories: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO. Both are equally important for the success of an SEO campaign, but they aim at two different side of the SEO factors. Let’s break it down.
What is on-page SEO?
In simple words, On-page SEO looks at what your site (or your page) is all about. It’s a technique that is used to optimize different parts of the website that affects your search engine results. Position in Search engine results pages or SERPs can be determined by a number of ranking factors like site accessibility, page speed, optimized content, keywords, title tags, etc. On-page is all about the optimize the stuff that you can control and can change on your website.
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO is much focused on increasing the authority of the domain by getting links from other websites. There are many factors that influence your off-page SEO rankings. While each is approached differently, they all have the same goal in mind: to increase the trust and reputation of your website from the outside.
- Inbound links
- Social media marketing
- Guest blogging and guest posting
- Unlinked brand mentions
- Influencer marketing
The biggest off-page SEO factor is the number and quality of backlinks to your website. We have already discussed the importance of backlinks for your website and also compared the best Backlink Tools to build an SEO strategy.
Is On-Page or Off-Page SEO More Important?
Both on-page and off-page SEO work together to improve your search engine rankings and are the foundation for any website/content. You can compare on-page and off-page SEO to having to decide whether your house needs a foundation or a roof. The importance of both is undeniable.
However, before focusing too much on off-page SEO, SEOs recommend getting your on-page SEO ducks in a row.
Below is a table of key differences between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO:
| S.No. | On-Page SEO | Off-Page SEO |
| 1 | Site Content | Link Building |
| 2 | Title tag & meta tag optimization | Content Marketing |
| 3 | H tag Optimization | Social Media |
| 4 | Internal Linking | |
| 5 | Image Optimization |
