There are many different elements to digital marketing and especially search engine optimisation (SEO) and each of them is important. Many people concentrate on onsite SEO without realising that it is not as crucial as many off-site elements. This could be because it is easier to ensure keywords are in the right places and that there are internal links. A clear call to action, relevant graphics, a nice header, and so on are all excellent and necessary, but if you ignore offsite SEO, don’t expect the website to perform as well as it should.
Most people know what onsite SEO is, so what is offsite SEO, and how can it benefit your website if it is not on the pages? Onsite SEO refers to such things as –
- The quantity and quality of the links you have to and from your website
- Traffic and user signals
- Social media metrics
- The mention of your brand name and domain name on other sites
Some of these link back to having something on your website, e.g., social media sharing buttons, but most activity is done offsite. For instance, while you have social media buttons on your website and someone clicks one of them to share your information to say, Facebook, the benefits to your website then come from the resulting Facebook activity.
This will usually lead to the mention of the brand name and perhaps the domain name and can easily lead to a flurry of visitors to your website. While these elements are considered more important than having the right keywords and essential information, without those two, the person would not be bothered to click the social media button.
So while we might consider the off-site elements to be 65% of the ‘weight of factors’ in importance, without the other 35% of onsite aspects, they would not work either. If you didn’t bother about having the onsite features in place, it would be like having 35% of a jigsaw missing; it would spoil the other pieces’ sound effects.
That is why it is a good idea to have your website designed and set up by a professional. They know precisely how to ensure it will have the whole 100% of important SEO factors all in place so your website has a much better chance of being all you want it to be for your business. Plus, they can ensure that your website has stable base functions that can easily be expanded to suit your business in 10 or more years.
When choosing a website designer, get one with experience in website design for small or medium businesses so you can be sure your website will be one of the best.