So, onsite SEO pertains to SEO techniques one implements on their website. This involves implementing enhancements to your HTML (the main output code behind your site) and the content itself. Onsite SEO in itself is simple to implement but can be tricky to get everything right. Below are just a few onsite SEO techniques we implemented, there are plenty more than this list:
Title Tags: This is the title tag in your HTML. It tells your web browser what to display in the title of the window at the top of the screen.
H1 tags: one will use this within their content and is a strong indicator as to what your page is about.
Description meta tag: perhaps not as important to search engines to understand what your page is about but can be used to create a call to actions to potential visitors when your site appears in the SERPs.
Content: having original, quality content along with the right amount of content.
Server Speed: this is more to do with your ISP and the hosting of your website. This can affect search engine rankings and user experience.
URL / page name: a descriptive URL further helps search engines understand what your page is about.
As you may have picked up, the main purpose of onsite SEO is to help search engines understand what your website and web page is about. Not only does this help you with your organic search results it also helps you if you run AdWords. A well SEOed site can help improve your AdWords quality score making your AdWords campaign more affective; but that’s for another blog.
Offsite SEO usually has to do with building links external to your site and link them to yours (backlinks). This can be achieved in directory submissions, article marketing, blogging, social media networks and social bookmarking. It is also valuable to link from sites with similar content and high page rankings.
Onsite SEO would be the easier of the two. One will find that most of their time and energy is spent on the offsite SEO.
Now back to our case study. These are the details:
The subject: www.kalahari.co.za
Key word phrase: orange river rafting
Search engine: www.google.co.za (the web)
The client had an existing website. The existing website did not make good use of onsite SEO techniques. We planned to build a new site with SEO in mind from the start. The point of this case study is not to see how quickly we can reach the first page but how the various techniques affect the sites rankings.
Chart to show Google (www.google.co.za (all web)) ranking position over 26 weeks (6 months)
Google position before new site: position 85 – page 9 position 5
Google position after new website launch: position 21 – page 3 position 1
We launched the website and resubmitted the site to all the search engines. After just one week the site had already jumped 64 positions. Just goes to show what a difference a SEOed website can make in the SERPs.
Google position after we left the site untouched for 2 months: position 24 – page 3 position 4
Leaving the site alone we started to slip in the SERPs. So our onsite SEO only got us so far. We then implemented some offsite SEO, some directory and article submissions.
Google position 1 month later: position 17 - page 2 position 7
We then left the site alone for another month.
Google position 1 month later: position 17 - page 2 position 7
There was no change. We then implemented some more offsite SEO.
Google position 1 month later: position 14 - page 1 position 4
We then implemented another round of offsite SEO techniques.
Google position 1 month later: position 14 - page 1 position 4
The site made no progress. So the competition for the 1st page is getting tougher. We then revisited some onsite SEO and improved the site load time (you can always squeeze some more out of your site :)).
Google position 2 weeks later: position 8
Finally, great success! Now the industry we are targeting is not the most competitive but you will notice how just having a well SEOed site makes an initial big difference in the search engines. As one approaches the top of the rankings it gets a lot tougher to compete and this is where the combination of offsite SEO helps us reach our target (the first page).
SEO is not a leave and forget strategy (as you noticed from the results above). One can view their ranking in the search engines as a slippery slope and like a game of leap frog. As soon as one gets to the first page of a SERP your competitors want to get ahead of you; with applying the right techniques and depending on the competitiveness of the keyword phrase they can, so one needs to regularly revisit their offsite and onsite SEO.
