When doing Search engine optimization, a webmaster must know what SEO tools and methods are most effective to be able to focus his or her attention on these methods and tools. Knowing which methods will help a website the most to get to its desired ranking in search engine results for selected keywords will help the webmaster or the SEO specialist in prioritizing the techniques that yield the best results.
If you are new to the SEO industry, you may be wondering why SEO is getting a lot of attention. SEO or search engine optimization is the practice of increasing the online presence of a website or a blog by making it rank higher in search engine results. In the past, many websites have been practicing the type of SEO that is not favorable for the readers; also known as black-hat SEO. Google made some changes in the past year to improve its service to people who are using their search engine. That decreased the effectiveness of black-hat SEO and has made the industry change for the better.
To know what types of SEO software and techniques are effective, you should be familiar with the classification of search engine optimization techniques. The two classifications of SEO are on-page and off-page SEO.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO consists of the techniques that are used in the target website itself. If you have a website and you want it to rank higher in the search results of your selected keywords, you should begin working with making your website easy to use for the visitors. Some of the techniques that you should do include adding of relevant contents with highly targeted keywords, improving of website navigation and addition of the different types of meta tags. There are other things that you can do to improve the usefulness of your website but these three are the ones most commonly used for SEO.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO on the other hand, includes the techniques that are employed using outside influence to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results. The most controversial of the off-page search engine optimization techniques is the farming of inbound links. In the past, having many links leading to your website and contents, received a lot of weight in search result ranking. The recent updates however, changed all that and those who have abused this type of SEO have been penalized by getting ranked lower. Other types of off page SEO are building up your Google authorship in selected niches and doing guest blogging.
Which One Should You Focus On?
In the beginning, you should first establish your website’s usefulness. Search engines generally want to recommend websites that are genuinely useful to their users. This means doing a lot of on-page SEO in the beginning. If you are doing your, on-page SEO right, people will begin to notice your content and you will begin to get some genuine off-page SEO. You should enhance your off-page SEO when you are completely satisfied with the usefulness of your website.