What's the difference between on-page and off-page SEO?

Side by side

	On-page SEO	Off-page SEO
Where	Your own pages	Other sites, social media, the real world
Who controls it	You, fully	Others; you can only earn it
Examples	Page titles, meta descriptions, headings, alt text, internal links, useful content	Backlinks, brand mentions, reviews, word of mouth
Main risk	Thin or copied content	Buying links

What does on-page SEO include?

Google's SEO Starter Guide covers the basics:

• Unique, clear titles and short meta descriptions for each page (see title tags and meta descriptions).
• Descriptive URLs with words that make sense to people.
• Short, descriptive alt text on images.
• Internal links with anchor text that says what the linked page is about.
• Content that's easy to read, unique and up to date.

The same guide notes Google Search doesn't use the keywords meta tag, so don't waste time on it.

What does off-page SEO include?

Mainly earning backlinks and attention from other places. Google's Starter Guide calls word of mouth one of the most effective and lasting ways to get found, and suggests promoting through social media, community and offline marketing, while warning that overdoing promotion can harm your site. Google's spam policies rule out buying links, excessive link swaps and automated link building.

Where do technical issues fit?

Things like crawling, speed and mobile setup are often called a third bucket, technical SEO. All three only work together: see what is SEO.

SEO takes months, so most businesses run ads in parallel for customers now: see what is SEM.

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