December 15th, 2015

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

You hear a lot about search engine optimization or SEO, but often what that means is a mixed bag. Many people don’t understand what SEO is, or that there are many kinds of SEO and that you don’t have to be an expert to improve your SEO. There is both on-page and off-page SEO. Let’s take a look at both types.
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The thing to remember is that SEO tactics change continuously based on the algorithms that the search engines choose to use to help their audience find what they’re looking for. The big key to remember is that the search engines are trying to deliver excellent results for their target audience. Your job is to help them. 

Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO consists of anything you do to improve search engine traffic and results such as inbound links, trust building, social media, blog promotion, videos, press releases, commenting and more. You can use all of these tactics to help build up your website’s traffic and thus your conversions. 
    
1.    Comment on Blogs and Forums – Even if you’re not allowed a link back to your website, your comments on blogs and forums do not go unnoticed - especially today when most use identification procedures via Gravatar or Google to find you through your profile.

2.    Social Media Posts and Promotions – When you write a blog post or publish anything on your blog use social media to promote it. Not only will you get more traffic to your posts, you’ll get more links to your website via your general social media promotions.

3.    Conduct Interviews – Give interviews on radio shows, on blogs, and more. The more authority you can build by being interviewed, the more links you’ll get back to your website and products, and the more people will get to know you.
Finally, when it comes to off-page SEO, don’t underestimate the power and effectiveness of the good old-fashioned press release to get the word out about your business to the media. Press releases are still excellent ways to publish information about your products and services, especially if you can tie it to a popular human interest story and news of the day.

On-Page SEO
    On-page SEO consists of anything you do on your website to ensure that you get more traffic to your website via the search engines without paying anything for the traffic. Creating perfectly optimized pages is as simple as adding a little extra effort.

1.    Publish Targeted Content – If your content is high quality, unique, and relevant to your audience, this will help them find you. They’ll look for words that are inside that content and be sent to your pages.

2.    Headings on Pages – Using keyword-rich phrases for the headings on your website, including your blog posts, will help search engines find you too. Plus the words will be something your audience will focus on as they scan your page.

3.    Check Grammar and Spelling – You want people who visit your website to come away believing you have authority on the topic that’s in your niche. Therefore, it’s important to double check your grammar and spelling.

4.    Code Your Site Right – Within images, headings, descriptions and more, there are ways to use metatags to give the search engine clues about the topic on your blog or website. Use them properly to describe images and the subject matter, so that your audience will find you.

Using both on- and off-page SEO is an effective way to ensure that you set up each page on your site properly. If you use self-hosted WordPress, you can use various plugins like SEO Yoast to help guide you for on-page SEO.

Link to SEO Yoast - https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/

Was this post helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated!