Search engine optimization can be done in three ways. We usually refer to these ways as types of SEO, but in reality, they are more accurately described as aspects of SEO because all three work together to achieve a holistic approach to SEO. This doesn’t mean that they are ineffective on their own, on the contrary, each of these types of SEO produces significant effects when done well. Here are the types:
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO involves making changes to the content on a webpage to increase its ranking to make it better understood by crawlers. That’s not all, however, as this involves several other activities.
Keyword Research
Keywords are words, phrases or terms people use in search queries when they search for a particular product, service, or anything on a search engine. Search engines are programmed to find the most relevant webpage for any search query. Thus, webpages containing these keywords are considered more relevant to the query than webpages that do not contain them.
Keyword research involves finding out trending keywords or the keywords that generate the highest ROI (this is usually the most searched for) and including them in your webpage content. There are several tools that you can use to conduct keyword research, one of the most popular free ones is trends by Google that shows you the keyword search volume.
Content Optimization
Content is king, even in the world of SEO. Google loves high-quality content—high quality meaning that it is useful, expert, and authoritative. The more valuable your content is the higher it’s chances of being ranked prominently; especially when keywords are strategically inserted. Low-quality content does not rank well no matter how many keywords you insert. You may be penalized for adding too many keywords—it’s called keyword stuffing. The best way to optimize content is to create quality content.
HTML Tags
HTML tags classify text, and this tells crawlers what each piece of text is. For example, H1 tags tell crawlers that the text is a heading. This helps with information hierarchy and this can be used for SEO purposes, e.g. inserting a keyword into a heading. Note that H tags are not title tags, and the H1 tag, although used for the title of your content, is not a title (we call it a heading).
The title of your webpage is what shows up on a search engine result page, which is different from what appears as the heading on the webpage. Both tags could contain the same text if you wish, but the H1 and title tags are not the same.
The meta description tag is also part of on-page SEO. A meta description is a summary of what a piece of content is about. It is what appears below the title on the SERP. It also helps crawlers better understand what your webpage is about.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO involves activities that are done outside a website to improve rankings. This mostly involves local SEO and link building. Off-page SEO is done to build a website’s popularity and authority by building relationships with other high-quality sites via backlinks. Backlinks are links that run from other sites to yours, and, according to Google, links are one of the top two factors that influence a website’s ranking. Any website that seeks to improve its ranking must invest in backlinks.
The most common method of building links is by guest posting on high authority websites—the backlinks from these sites give yours a rank boost. However, high authority websites require quality content and a prior relationship with them, both of which may be inaccessible to some.
Most business owners or webmasters work their way around that by employing the services of professional link builders like linklaboratory to fill in the gaps. These services have built relationships with high authority sites that they can leverage at any time, and they also have access to a team of quality content writers.
Off-page SEO also involves using social media to drive traffic to your website.
Technical SEO
This involves the technical aspects of SEO. Things like site speed, backend structure, backlink management, UX, and security, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability comprise technical SEO. These factors affect the ease with which crawlers understand and index your website. The easier your website is to understand and index, the better your ranking. Technical SEO also deals with in-depth SEO audits, adapting to changes in Google’s algorithms, and rectifying the effects of negative SEO.
These three types of SEO work together for full optimization. They complement each other, and websites cannot reach their full potential without all three.
