On Page and Off Page Optimization
May 3, 2007
Recently, I wrote about creating an SEO plan and if you are running a website or a group of websites then you are either doing this or perhaps you haven’t even heard of it. For those of you that are new to the SEO game you may need to come up to speed on the terminology. Two such terms that are useful to understand their meanings are “On Page Optimization” and “Off Page Optimization”. If you frequent the tech forums and you are interested in doing SEO for your business site then you’ve probably heard the terms “On Page Optimization” and “Off Page Optimization” otherwise you are scratching your head right now.
On Page Optimization
“On Page Optimization” refers to factors and influences that you build into web pages like content and the structure of the site. The “Meat” of your site needs to be optimizing keyword frequency in the URL, Title, Headings, Body and Hyperlinks.
Because dynamic sites are becoming all the rage these days with PHP and ASP it makes sense that people are looking for ways to optimize linking structures to enable organic search traffic. In PHP when you deploy a WordPress site for instance it defaults to a dynamic linking structure that search engines cannot read because it is just gibberish but when you add permalink structures into a PHP site that can correct the problem quickly and easily. The ASP language also has a server feature that can be set to control this problem… you’ve just got to look for the answer.
Meta Tags are considered old school SEO but search engines like Yahoo! Do still use them so it doesn’t hurt to add them into your web pages.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) should be used to design as opposed to HTML frame web layouts if you are doing SEO because the search engines can find it tough to traverse framed HTML pages.
Off Page Optimization
“Off Page Optimization” refers to factors that have more to do with eternal factors to optimize the ways a web site is found and weighted. Naturally everyone has heard of Google’s Page Rank which has to do with the quality of back links (incoming links) coming into a site which is why people pay for advertising from established sites. There are more Off Page Strategies when it comes to site optimization but mastering one when you build your site makes more sense than doing 5 half-assed techniques.
Hopefully I cleared up any thoughts that you may have had about On Page Optimization and Off Page Optimization. Now that you understand the basics of On and Off Page Optimization the next step is to start putting some of them into practice through link building strategies, partnerships, keyword density and frequency just to name a few on your site.
Luc
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