‘Natural links’ are a great way to build your profile
With each Google update the argument for focusing on on-page SEO (the structure and content of your site) versus off-page (getting links and references from other sites) changes. Here we give the essentials of the on-page, off-page SEO debate so you can decide what works best for your ecommerce business.
By Suzie Larcombe
Find out why there are:
- Great reasons for on-page SEO
- Great reasons for off-page SEO
- and even better reasons for ‘a bit of both’
In the beginning, website developers focussed pretty much all their efforts on creating a structure that would be picked up by search engines. Today however there is a growing trend towards SEO that is ‘off-page’, i.e. attracting links and general interest from sources away from your own website. Here we explore how these might be of value to you as an ecommerce professional.
On-page SEO under the spotlight
On-page SEO is about structure and design, it’s about what you do within your website to attract both the search engines and site visitors. Generally speaking, on-page SEO is focussed around your keywords, your content, your titles and page structure and your meta description.
All of these things need to be planned, focussed on your site visitor and at the same time appealing to the search engines. This is never an easy task, but it’s a necessary evil if you want to win the search engine war.
Off-page SEO under the spotlight
Off-page SEO is all about promoting your website, rather than the structure or design of the site. Off-page SEO includes things like link building, social media campaigns and social bookmarking.
Off-page SEO is important to the search engine race because if the world at large thinks your site is worth looking at, the search engines are more likely to rate it. Things like significant traffic coming from Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to your website give power to your elbow when it comes to persuading the search engines that your site is worthy of a higher ranking.
Benefiting from the best of both worlds
So, which should come first; the chicken (on-page) or the egg (off-page). Clearly, you need to have your ecommerce shop in good order before you start banging the drum about it all over the internet, so getting your on-page SEO spot on is your main priority at the start and then keeping it up to date with new developments is essential. These things, and keeping your content fresh, updated and relevant will all help with your page ranking.
Once you turn your mind to off-page SEO, you need to be thinking of how you’re going to develop links and how you’re going to use the social media to promote your site off-page as well as social bookmarking. Here’s a rough game plan of what you should be doing:
1. Sniff out good links and use them to the max, but naturally. The most important thing to bear in mind when you’re link building is quality. Links coming to your site from sites that are already highly respected by the search engines are day and night when it comes to links from sites that have mediocre ranking themselves.
Getting links from the likes of a major magazine or newspaper or from a highly respected industry blogger will give you lots more power to your Google elbow than getting a link just for the sake of it. Make sure that the links you set up are natural and logical. Although this sounds like a tough call, it can be achieved by writing killer content that others will be falling over themselves to share.
2. Develop a social media strategy. Start with your social media profile, and then use the social media to develop your online personality. Your profiles should be a short, but concise description of who you are and what you do, in most cases you can add a link to your website, and of course you should do so.
Make sure you complete all the information you can on the social media registration page so that people can easily find out as much as they want to about you. Persuade people to connect with you (on LinkedIn) or like you (on Facebook) by keeping updates fresh and topical. Seek out relevant fans and targeted followers at every opportunity.
But remember, the social media aren’t the ideal platforms for blatant promotion, instead use them to build trust and to share information before you try to sell.
3. Take advantage of social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a way of bookmarking your favourite web pages online so you can easily access them wherever you have internet access. If you think of how you bookmark your favourite sites on your browser, but take it into the cloud, you’ll get the drift. Social bookmarking counts as a quality backlink and as such can help with page ranking.
So, should you be focusing on on-page or off-page SEO? The answer is simple; you need to be focusing on both. It’s a tough call, but if you’re relying on the search engines to get your tills ringing, you need every trick in the book to make sure you get as close as you can to the top of those search results. Staying up to date with what’s going on in the SEO industry and listening closely to the likes of Matt Cutts from Google will help you fathom out your game plan.
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