Key Takeaways
- There are many ‘types’ of SEO, but four primary subtypes: on-page, off-page, technical, and local.
- On-page SEO is the most ‘traditional’ sort, and the one most people tend to think of. Creating helpful content that is optimized for specific target keywords is the name of the game.
- Off-page, meanwhile, is what other sites are doing – this one boils down to the importance of backlinks.
- Technical SEO makes your site tick. When your site runs well, and user experience is optimized, favorable rankings will follow.
- Finally, local SEO ensures that businesses that offer in-person services are seen by the right people in the right locations.
If you’re doing any form of online marketing and you want your website to succeed, you have to understand search engine optimization, or SEO. Even if you’ve already learned the basics of SEO, you’re probably wondering how to maximize your traffic growth by optimizing your website even more. Enter: the different types of SEO.
Now, SEO can be a complicated beast on its own, so if you cringed upon reading that there’s more than one type of SEO to be learned, we understand. However, figuring out the different types of SEO and how to best employ each of them can be crucial to maintaining the health of your digital marketing strategies. In this article, we will discuss four types of SEO: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and local SEO.
1. On-page SEO
On-page SEO is the “standard” SEO. You probably think of This type of SEO when you imagine SEO in general: maximizing keywords, web content, and site rankings to promote your search engine performance.
To maximize your on-page SEO, you not only want a solid page when you first create it — which means content that is helpful and targets keywords — but you also want to keep it updated. Google’s algorithm changes frequently. If you want certain pages on your website to continue to promote growth and perform well in search engine rankings, you’ll have to hit the ground running with high quality content.
Maintenance is also key. Part of on-page SEO upkeep involves updating your site on a consistent schedule, with additional attention as needed. A site with well-maintained on-page SEO has a better chance of ranking highly.
Optimize your content out of the gate, check on its search engine performance occasionally and reoptimize as necessary. When content starts to decay, it’s time to recycle. Then, you’ll have solid on-page SEO throughout your site and digital marketing campaigns.
2. Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is a little more complicated than on-page SEO because you have less control over it. Essentially, off-page SEO is everything going on outside of your website that helps boost its search engine performance. This is mainly achieved through backlinks.
You may want to run link building campaigns that will boost traffic to and from your website. The more people coming through on links from or to your website, the better your website will perform in off-site SEO.
Remember, though, that some strategies for gaining backlinks might be easy, but the quality of that link will suffer. White-hat link building takes time, but it will help ensure that toxic backlinks don’t wind up tanking your SERP in the end.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is, as the name implies, all of the technical stuff going on in the background on your website that makes it safer and easier for search engine bots to crawl through your content and rank it all. Improving your technical SEO is all about improving your website’s coding, security, and speed.
There are a few different common tactics for increasing your technical SEO health.
For one, you will always want to speed your site up so that search engine bots can crawl through each page faster and more efficiently. You can also use a fast hosting service that ranks highly on response times, or ensure that your images are smaller without becoming pixelated. Whichever strategy you try first, you’re looking for new ways to minimize load and response times.
Two, you should make sure your website is mobile-friendly. In an ever-increasing market of people shopping and searching on their phones, you need to make sure your website is built to handle mobile devices. Not only does this boost customer satisfaction, but Google has been pretty adamant about wanting mobile-friendly sites.
Three, create an XML sitemap (basically a roadmap file of your website and how it “should” be navigated) and submit it to both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. These are free services provided by their respective engines, which allow you to submit your website for search engine indexing.
If you’re not the most technologically savvy, there are still ways you can improve your technical SEO, like ensuring that you’re tackling 301 redirects and 404 errors quickly, and paying attention to your competitor.
4. Local SEO
If you’re running a local business, you need to understand local SEO. It’s essential to ranking well in search engines’ local searches. This added layer can be the difference between popping up as number one on local search engines or losing out to competitors. Any business that serves a specific area or has a physical store can benefit greatly from local SEO.
You’re probably wondering, “What is local SEO,” or “Why is local SEO important?” Well, the first thing you need to know is that local SEO dances to a slightly different drum than general SEO. You can have amazing performance in all three of the other SEO types, yet not show up on local searches for your industry.
The main way you can achieve solid local SEO is by ensuring that your business location is tied into and promoted in all of your content. Ideally, you should engineer your content’s meta headlines and descriptions to include where you’re located, where possible.
Additionally, double-check that your location is obvious to both search engine bots indexing your site, and the customers who are searching for your business.
Finally, don’t underestimate the power of a Google Business profile. It can help guarantee that Google has all the relevant information about your business (address, hours of operation, etc.) that it needs to contextualize your business in local search engine responses. A Google Business profile is not terribly hard to set up, either.
Next steps
If you’re looking to integrate one, some, or all of these types of SEO into your business, you may want to consider hiring experts on digital marketing and SEO performance. After all, this can be a lot to juggle.
Thankfully, at Redefine Marketing Group, we love all types of SEO – from technical, to local, to off and on-page. Our group of qualified, experienced professionals are ready to jump in and help you in your SEO journey, fostering organic growth for your business.
