Every week, without fail, I hear someone ask where they should put their SEO budget – in on-page tactics or in link-building. Unfortunately, there are plenty of SEO companies and consultants lining up to give them the answer – and that answer just happens (“coincidentally”) to be whatever the company/consultant is good at. When you’re an expert with a hammer, you start to think you can nail anyone (wait, that’s not right).
Here’s the honest answer that no one wants to hear: “It depends”. No one wants to hear it because they’re back where they started – having no idea what to do next. Instead of leaving you stranded or trying to sell you a hammer for your box of screws, I’m going to walk you through 4 cases and explain how I’d allocate your budgets for each one.
What Is On-page SEO?
To add to the confusion, “on-page” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Here, I’m taking a very broad view – it could mean keyword research, writing good TITLE tags, internal linking and crawl architecture, or even content creation. For the purposes of this post, on-page is anything you directly control in the code or content of your site.
Case #1: The Authority
70% On-page, 30% Link-building
The Authority is an established site with a solid, trusted link profile and usually a good base of content. In many cases, it’s a site that’s evolved “organically”, which is a fancy word for “without a plan”. The Authority could be suffering from any or all of the following:
- Keyword research is 5 years out of date
- Keywords are cannibalized across many pages
- Internal links have grown like weeds
- Site architecture doesn’t reflect business goals
- Page TITLEs overlap or are duplicated
- Old but valuable (i.e. linked-to) content is 404’ing
In many cases, no one notices, because The Authority’s strong link profile and solid content keep it ranking well. The problem is that you’re sitting on a gold mine of untapped potential. Of course, The Authority should keep building solid links, but a shift (even for a few months) to really planning and focusing on on-page issues, from keyword research on up, could produce huge dividends.
Case #2: The Perfectionist
30% On-page, 70% Link-building
The Perfectionist often comes out in new webmasters. They’ve read 500 SEO blogs and are following all the “rules” as best they can, but they’ve become so obsessed with building the “perfect” site that they’ve hit the point of rapidly diminishing returns. The Perfectionist wants to know how to squeeze 0.01% more SEO value out of an already good URL by moving one keyword.
It’s time for The Perfectionist to remember the 80/20 rule – there comes a point where your on-page is good enough, at least for now. You have to get Google to your site to put that on-page magic to work, and that means building links. It’s important to develop content (which is why I’ve left on-page at 30%), but put almost every other on-page tactic to the side temporarily and spend a solid 6 months developing and implementing a link-building campaign
Case #3: The Hot Mess
90% On-page, 10% Link-building
The Hot Mess is a Google engineer’s fantasy (or possibly nightmare). She’s broken every single rule of on-page SEO, which worked fine for a while, but then came “May Day” and “Panda”, and now Google is even talking about penalizing her for optimizing too much. The Hot Mess has let something spin out of control, including:
- Blocked crawl paths and bad redirects
- Massive URL-based duplication
- Excessive internal search, categories, and tags
- Aggressive ad-to-content ratio
- Extremely “thin” content
- Nonsensical site architecture and internal linking
- Keyword stuffing that would embarrass 1998
In some cases, this could be “over-optimization” and an attempt to manipulate the search engines, but in other cases the Hot Mess is just that – a mess. Whatever the cause, put down everything and start fixing the problems now. Chasing new links without fixing the mess is like having your carpets cleaned while your house is burning down.
Case #4: The Bad Boy
10% On-page, 90% Link-building
Finally, there’s the Bad Boy – he’s broken every rule in the Google link-building playbook, and they’ve finally noticed. This could be a large-scale devaluation or a Capital-P Penalty, including:
- Paid links
- Link farms, networks and exchanges
- Excessive low-value links
- Aggressive anchor-text targeting
If you’ve been bad enough, you could be talking a serious ranking penalty or even de-indexation. At that point, all the on-page tweaks in the world won’t help you (I left 10% just to keep the site up and running). You have to fix the problem and address the problem links. Bare minimum, you have to stop doing what got you into trouble and show a pattern of positive link-building. You may even have to file for reconsideration. The fix can be tricky, and depends a lot on the situation, but until you fix it, the Bad Boy isn’t going anywhere.
But What About Social?
Before I get a ton of comments, I purposely left social factors out of this post. I think the influence of social is growing and it definitely deserve your attention (and budget), but I don’t want to confuse an already complicated issue. Also, at this point, there are no major social “penalties” (small-p or Capital-P), so it’s hard to have an SEO crisis related to social – with the exception of an ORM problem. Still, social should certainly be a part of any healthy mix in 2012.
Is There a Perfect Mix?
I'm adding this after the fact - a few people asked me in the comments about the 50/50 scenario. Of course, the four scenarios in the post are just examples – based on common problems I've seen – and there are many other valid permutations. I specifically avoided the 50/50 mix for one reason, though - it implies that there's one "perfect" mix that you can sustain throughout the life-cycle of a website. The optimal mix is dynamic, and you should never leave it on automatic pilot.
When you first build a new site, you're going to need to invest in your site structure, keyword research, and on-page aspects. That mix may be 100% or 90% on-page for a couple of months. When that structure's in place and you launch, you'll still need to build content, but you'll also want to get your link-building in gear. For a site that's naturally based on new content (like a blog or news site), on-page may still be 70-80% of the mix (since I'm counting content as "on-page"). For a directory or resource site that has a critical mass of content, you may go 30% on-page, building out the long-tail and 70% link-building for a while. The mix will always be changing, as your site evolves and your business needs change.
One Size Never Fits All
I'll try to keep the point short and sweet - when it comes to the right mix, there is no one-sized-fits-all solution. On-page SEO and link-building are both important, but how important each one is really depends on your current strengths and weaknesses. Long-term, everyone should pursue a mix of solid on-page structure, unique content, an authoritative link profile, and substantive social presence. Diversity is the best way to future-proof your SEO - if the algo changes or you hit a snag on one pillar, at least there will still be enough left standing to keep your roof up.
Good stuff. I find that a car metaphor works very well for the on-page vs. link building debate:
No matter how aerodynamic your car is, it won't go anywhere without a powerful engine (link building).
But a car that hasn't been optimized to be aerodynamic can go pretty darn fast with a good engine, so long as there are no glaring issues.
For most of my clients (who typically don't have a significant link profile), I tell them so long as they have an acceptable site in place, then their focus should be 100% on content and links. Once that produces some clients/customers/revenue, that will pay for us to go back and optimize on-site.
So, I'd argue that the perfectionist plan (30% on-site, 70% link building) should also be applied to new businesses.
Love the car metaphor.
Let's talk about the Nightmares:
1) The Perfectionist who turns out to be a Bad Boy
2) The Authorithy who thinks has done his site as a Perfectionist (this figure sometimes cannot be saved... Escape!)
My gut reaction to answering the question "What's Better - On-page SEO or Link-building?" would be "get the sequence right". Get your on-page house in order first, then see what gains you get and then follow this up with link-building.
The outline sequence would be....
1. Analyse & benchmark
2. Tell the client what you have found and show them what you are going to do (agree the plan)
3. Get the client to make the on-site fixes (with your team advising)
4. Begin traditional link building (+ social) and content production - with both the client and your team getting involved.
It seems to me that a website that has received an on-site make-over (and therefore easier for the web visitor to use as well as optomised code) would receive an increase of both receiving natural back-links and acceptance of link requests.
It seems logical to check,analyse those elements you directly control first (it should be possible to carry out the fixes quickly) and then approach off-site factors. Of course you should analyse the off-site factors at the outset too but that should initially be for benchmarking purposes before you embark on the slowly-slowly process of link building.
Yet again you have demonstrated near psychic ability by posting about a topic immediately relevent to my current situation.
This provides a fantasitc starting point for my work, knowing which direction to go is often the hardest part. Great profiling.
Don't you just love it when that happens...
The author is absolutely right though, the sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle because in either of the two extremes your headed for murky waters.
Matt Cutts think otherwise.. SEO = Make quality content.
This is all you need! (not)
There's no 50/50 ? I'd like to think that's what i'm trying for.
As Peter wrote the ratio can't be fixed by numbers only.
Apart from that you can take a look at the 2011 edition of the search ranking factors:https://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factorsThis overview - if you want - bring up the numbers of:38 % Onsite-Seo42 % Links20 % Other (Social, Branding, Traffic...)
That's an excellent question (asked by others), and I've added a section to the post about it. The short answer is that I avoided the 50/50 scenario because I think it creates the illusion that there's one perfect mix you can use forever. The "right" mix is always changing.
I don't believe there will ever be a 50/50 since in the beginning your goal will be onpage SEO, but once that has been accomplished, then you should turn your focus to other elements.
Something like this:
First 30 days: 80/10/10 (On-Page/Links/Social)
Next 30 days: 50/25/25
30+ days: 10/45/45
Ah, what a good way to categorize these different types of sites.
For any site, it's hard to find the balance between creating content, updating/optimizing old content, and getting the links to come in to all of that content.
I agree. It is find to hard balance, but summary would be: onpage without link building is just not good enough ; link building without proper onpage is useless.
Present optimization trends constantly set a new tasks to us. Combining onpage and linkbuilding is very well known strategy. Link building without strong social media promotion and viral campaigns is become weak method, considering it is not yr 2002 or 2007 anymore. My main predictions for 2012 are somehow devaluing anchor texts and also devaluing guest post links from various blog networks. I think Google will soon start to treat blog networks in some (lighter?) way like it used to treat link farms once (actually G already started with devaluing blog networks. Take BuildMyRank as an example).
Bottom line: main focus onpage SEO and very careful link building methods with big back links diversification ( remember Panda: The first thing Google/Panda did was to employ live human value raters to study thousands of websites.) combining with strog promotion on social networks (with catchy linkbait methods like infographics) and PR releases. Put PPC on the list in reasonable doses, and you will have winning tactic. To be honest - all I wrote here is nothing new or unknown. If you want to make successful campaign, you need a lot of time and money. If you have more time - let onpage be primary task for now. If you have more money than time, then do both.
Thank you. I noticed it as well that sites with a lot of content rank better now and it is a good idea to start with content, do a little bit of link collecting, building more content and then do some more link building.
Its not only about the content its also about the on site.
Why any one is confuse about this too much ...
Your first step is doing On page SEO correctly and than move to link building and gain the social media attention.
Do not understand why people always confuse about these things.
ON PAGE SEO is a one time effoert. You can keep changing your content. But the most imprtant thing is taking care when building links. Google Panda is pretty harsh for all the link builders.
On-page is a one time effort?! Are you sure?
I see on-site seo as on-going - you should be constantly reviewing your on-site as well as any link-building activity you're doing.
Totally agree Mota! Any part of your website left unattended will eventually lose it's worth. You should be constantly evaluating your efforts and looking for new opportunities to gain traffic.
Great post! I think this would also be a great tool for breaking down these different strategies for your clients. My boss always says SEO is more explaining what you're going to do than doing it, and that's mostly true. Having "templates" for each type of client might help. Of course, it's going to need some customization every time, but it's a good place to start.
I mostly depend on On-page SEO as I am a student and don't get much time to build backlinks. If the keyword is less competetitive and you hav written a great article on it then certainly you can rank well on Google.
Woo! Great common question faced by most people who are running a consulting company (unlike me). For me it’s all about the combination of on-page and off-page SEO (excluding social for a moment), I believe it’s very much depends upon project to project and industry to industry.
For instance, if you have a website for hosting company, the ratio (IMO) must be (40, 60) for no-page and off-page respectively. But if you have a website dealing with accountancy services, I think on-page goes higher to 65% and rest you can go with link building.
I have seen many link building companies who claim that they will make you website to the top without asking for a change (not even a dot) in your website but I think this is not true, in my opinion combination is always king to be successful!
Very well written piece of content Dr Pete, I appreciate that.
I would like to however talk about a relatively different strategy here, take a site, and start from a 50-50% and continue this process for a month of two, it will give you a slow start for link building and by the end of the first and mid of second month, your site will have a very good onpage optimization, and after that period of time, you can then turn your focus to the linkbuilding work, I am not sure how to divide this strategy into two different portions but this is one strategy I am trying out on a new site, lets see how far it will go...
Thanks for making relevant distinctions of possible website seo. It will help me in evaluating website's I'm working on.
This is a very good post for me and it has already led me to 3 other MOZ posts including https://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content that you wrote. I am in the midst of shedding potential or probable damaging excesses on my sites and this really helps. Thank you very much!
Nice post. This is an evaluation we always do in our agency and whcih we think is fundamental in pricing correctly your services. I think the "The start-up" is missing here. Which is the kind of client which has just launched, doesn't know much about onpage SEO and has almost 0 link authority. Even if you do the best kwd research and onpage optimization of the world, without a fair amount of links your pages remain totally unnoticed
on-page is everything you do with your website to improve its rankabilty, usability, authority and conversions. So when you look on-page this way, it is definetely more important than deliberate link building. It is eventually the site itself which helps in building authority and leads to conversions, sales and leads. Natural links are by products of what you do on-page. No amount of link building is going to help, if the site doesn't convert into sales.
The scenarios are, admittedly, a bit artificial. Content marketing is a great example - by definition, your content is "on page" and it drives on-page SEO (keyword targeting, etc.), BUT content also can attract links and is an important part of any link-building strategy. I've drawn a line in the sand here just to keep the examples simple, but it's definitely not black-and-white.
We recently took over a SEO campaign for a client who had 'thin' content. They had over 60 pages consisting of around 100 words of 'similar' copy. We rewrote the copy for every page using around 500 words per page, both their short and long tail rank positions improved signifigantly sitewide as a result.. the 'thin' content theory is true!
No short cut in it, Both On page optimization and link Building are important in seo. Before Google panda I have ranked many website by implementing only link building (no on page at all). But after Google panda update, before starting any seo project I first ask for website access then other task. Suppose if you are brand like "Amazon", you don't any link buildingm, just concentrate on your existing website linking.
Of course there's always that sweet spot, where your on-page activities produce content so good that it generates more links than any amount of manual link building can match, and more robustly. Now that really is a good use of time and budget. Fittingly, SEOmoz are a fine example of a site making this work.
My mom always told me I was a bad boy. Now I have it on paper, err SEOMoz.
From the effort point of view there sould be today a bit more effort on the content building. Longtail rules. And from time to time you should collect good links. That is the golden rule for todays Seo.
Good job Dr. Pete.
Classic, "chicken or the egg." I don't think SEOs need to worry abpout penalties, and "on page vs off page" questions. Make something amazing, make an excellant problem, make an excellant web site, create excellant (useful) content, and buil and excellant team.
Think about the best websites and brands, their sucsess is never based on a perfectlly optimized page.
I've always wondered which one of the two is better, so thanks for showing the extremes of both senarios.
Do you ever wish you could explain SEO so simply, your grandma could understand it? I’ve done that here: https://blog.blainelight.com/2012/03/how-google-ranks-websites-how-to.html
Yes, your are right, but some time you need to change the strategy .......Now Google has changed their algo to give ranking and emphasizing more on good quality content and good quality links. So we need to do good on page SEO but that should not be considered over optimization... We should build content keeping the visitor's interest in mind.. Not thinking about the SEs...And we also need to minimize the number of bringing low profile link. yes, if the site is of good authority and has been developed organically then links will automatically come ( like wikipedia ) ... then you don’t really need to focus on your link building campaign... But 70-80% cases you will find that the sites are not putting good quality content. So for those sites need good link building campaign I will also agree with 30:70 ratio for on-page and link-building.
THE HOT MESS! LOL - love it! :-)
Definitely agree when you say "it depends." This also goes back to the "How much does SEO cost?" question. It starts to frustrate a lot of clients when "it depends" becomes the answer to every question, but having this sort of explanation or basis for that sort of answer is always a good call!
Its nice to read the comparision. I think both Link Building and ON-Page makes impact on any website.Thanks for posting the great article about it.
It's hard to balance because it's hard to quantify.
Hey Dr. Pete,
Very good article, It was so funny to see that you call spammers as "Bad boys".
I can tell you that depends of the niche you develop a site, you can play many roles, i mean, if all your competitors are bad boys, you will need to be a smarter bad boy...
I prefer to mix case 1, case 2 and case 4, if you want to get Top rankings :)
I think that the process is always individual and depends on the website state and on the quality of the competition.
One must have their site correct fromt he begening. Engage an SEO into design and development process,so he can suggest to eradicate the negative elements during the process. All in all, much care must be put into site over all structure and features, one must be very clear about what they want and then develop their site around that idea, so that they don't have to keep shifting right after the launch of site. If best coding practices are maintained from the begining and a flawless website is constructed, you make your own life very easy and achieveing Off Page targets become easier.
I would agree with most part of what you have suggested, a healthy balance must be maintained, but i have figured, social media can guarantee you an instant huge success. If one has a really good Social Media tea, they can create viral ads and or apply several other strategies, get rapid targetted traffic and big media and bloggers pick that up as well and influx of natural links and traffic come.
If a proper plan is in place before starting the coding, a site can achieve success much quicker.
I'm not sure its a clear black & white issue when it comes to on-page opti vs. conventional SEO now that we've seen the impact Social Shares is having on SEO.
The recent news about Google whacking link networks that offer little content value and user experience is a pretty clear sign that old school link building strategy is going the way of the buggy whip. Still, having a solid web 2.0 link wheel that you control what content goes live and how well the content gets optimized (to me anyway) is still a valid and worthwhile component to a "clean" SEO strategy.
nice article, I think you have to find the middle when you are doing SEO, you have to optimize your website structure first and then begin with off site seo. And of course Social media is very important these days :D
The mix will depend on the client, industry, and opportunities for link building. I agree, there is not a single perfect mix of on-page linking and link building.
As usual nice post ..
I also think on page otimization is very very necessary as well as link building.... :)
Great article and great info. I've been on all sides, as an owner of a business, working for an SEO agency and as a client. How many agencies actually follow formulas to do this on a projected basis? The hard part of SEO is all the changes in algorithms and Google hurdles we jump, so month to month, yes, it's hard to predict focus one way or another. That's the fun part of SEO, what we don't know.
" Diversity is the best way to future-proof your SEO - if the algo changes or you hit a snag on one pillar, at least there will still be enough left standing to keep your roof up." I hope I guess riht: it means link building diversity.
Definatly On-page SEO , because whenever we are creating a new site our the first taget is do On-Page activity then after the Link Building and Off-Page activities, so according to your Question is that Both are good but they are specialised in their own time activities.
As content creation is a big part of my daily work I'm always looking for new link-building opportunities, but I try to maximise the impact of that link-building by making sure my on-site stuff is solid. I'm also a fan of building in 'link magnetism' to a site, letting the content do the link-building for you.
But yeah, I completely agree that it depends on your industry, your keyword targets, your competition and a host of other elements.
Great post Pete!
Great post Pete!Both facators are important for overall SEO value.Depending on the case, one may dominate for that particular business.Although there are statistics indicating that on-page SEO brings only 25% of the traffic, I think its value increased even more with the latest updates.Plus search engines love fresh content!
Regards, Vasko
https://cyberlinkmedia.com
For me both of them have equal importance because you can not start doing Linkbuilding if on page optimization is not perfectly done for a website you are working on and you can not only rank on SERP with on page optimization you also need linkbuilding efforts too, to rank your self for your keywords :)
Everything influences everything is good and we must find balance with all the tools at our disposal. excellent post
hello,
thanks firstly for giving me such a useful information about SEO and link building.
it is not easy to determine which is best among both.
thanks agian and have a nice day....
thanks dr.pete for these experienced cases and letting us know about the whole facts which would be better to consider for right mix up of effective marketing strategies . .
Is interesting how many people have a SEO evolution. To be honest, I think that the best is be semi authority (60% onpage - 40% offpage)
Hey Dr.Pete,
I totally agree with the "Don`t play the SEO by numbers(%) game". I hear it way to often, how people are so strictly focused on getting exactly that many do-follow links, that many no-follow, that many separate domains etc etc.
I would lean more to the "tactic" of getting a good solid base at first (90-10 principle), cause without a solid base, everything will eventually colapse or get out of hand. Personaly I mainly deal in blogs and I could conclude that PR flow and traffic flow is mainly influenced by categories which should be neither to deep neither too wide. By deep I mean 4 cats with 10 subcats each or just like having 30 categories alltogether.
Finding the correct mix differs from blog to blog, but I believe 5-6 cats with 3-5 subcats for a decent sized blog (100-200 posts) is a good base.
I would pretty much leave the backlinking to satisfied readers linking to my good content, otherwise whats the point of it all :)
Sincerely, Buyseech
I have tried out on page SEO for couple of our client websites without link building, It worked.
I think 70% On page and 30 % link building is good for any website provided quality content.
[link removed]
I guess it depends on whether you're logical/technical or more creative in your thinking as to whether you believe one is more important than the other.
I tend to believe a structurally sound site does not require as many/as high quality links to succeed than one that is a shambles in order to compete.
There are two analogies I use to explain this. One is your onpage SEO being the tenth hurdle in a race. You can run the first nine as fast as you like with link building, but if google or a Customer arrives as your website and can't understand it then you may fall at the tenth and not finish at all.
The second is in thinking of your website as a book. It requires an index, chapters and a logical, predictable flow to it. You can promote the book as much as you like with links, but if nobody can read it then what do you achieve?
In short (hmm, maybe I should have said that at the start), I believe the value of link building is diluted by the onpage :)
Great post and even better comments! I have a tendency to fall into Perfectionist territory but every site is different and requires a different mixed approach.
I've found on-page to give a lot of success, but link building has been harder to measure, and to implement. One very important aspect of link building over on-page optimisation is a link on another site can be clicked by a user who will then visit your site. Even if it doesn't directly increase your ranking a link from a busy site can increase visitors.
Hi
Congratulation, really great post!
Sam
Thanks Dr. Pete
I can't tell you how many times I have had this conversation with clients and other SEO's. There is no magic answer and once you realize that you can get down to doing what is best for the particular site you are working on. However I do believe you need to get the on-page right before you worry about link building.
As R.teodor said "onpage without link building is just not good enough ; link building without proper onpage is useless."
I have red your post twice and I consider myself a perfectionist. (^^; )
Well I don't think so that there is any need of measuring on-page and offf-page because in SEO, almost everyday a new change is inreoduced. So sometimes, it needs more on-page and sometimes it needs more off-page. So it is totally depends on the guidlines of Google that what updates its algorithm introduced. That's why I can't rate that which percent on-page and which percent off-page I do for my projects. I only ready to know that what is the next update of Google regarding search engine optimization.
I think every webmaster need to learn the basics of SEO and if the investment is on learning on page SEO it's great, but never pay someone to do it for you. paying for link building is a great investment
Excellent post! By the way Hot Mess can be a nightmare for any SEO as well :).
Great post with really good examples. I totally agree with you that there is no perfect mix for on-page and link building. It depends on type of the site and the effort that can be put into it.
Hi, Dr. Pete, You have clear my doubt about these both topic. I have different meaning about both topic but after reading article, I am very clear about on page optimization and Link-Building.
I wish I had written this post.
So often the short answer to the questions we get asked is "it depends". The long answer is often hard to explain and hearing it is way more commitment than the person who asked the question had in mind. When it's a potential client you can see the eyes glaze over as they assume you're just another consultant trying to BS them out of their money.
You did a great job here of clearly explaining a potentially complicated question.
Really appreciatable move because many people have been denying with me regarding the increasing importance of On Page. You provided me a way to argue with all those.
I agree with you that this is the time for on page seo more than the off page seo but never heard the websites that have been penzlyzed on the basis of over optimization. If heard that i dont remember right now, may be one or two websites in my seo career. Do you think is there any limit for over optimization (i mean link building that many companies are performing for years) or any way we can judge it?
Thanks Pete, Its really a helpful & Knowledgeful post! Thanks Again
Wht i got with this post is that, Case # 1 & Case # 2 is good to use for Good & Long Term SEO instead of Case 3 & 4.
M I right?
Take care!
It all depends. Don't take any of example case as the use case.
Compare On-Page and Link-Building factors seperately with your compitition. Then make the exact use case.
What is the mistake people often do? we put both factors, on-page and link building, in one bucket. keep them separate and make analysis respectively.
Compare with the competition and then take the effective and necessary steps.
Everyone, Please add what you think about it?
Cheers :)
I added a section on the "perfect" mix. I see cases 3 & 4 more as emergency situations - extreme examples where you need to drop everything and fix a problem. In a perfect world, you wouldn't encounter those, but the world is far from perfect. In most cases, I think you're going to lean more toward one or the other, depending on your current needs (70/30 or 30/70), but that mix is going to change over time.
let me mention, An insightful topic to discuss in Search Engine Optimization.
Yes, IT ACTUALLY DEPENDS.
Well covered Dr. Pete :)
Good thinking, I am of the opinion that you need 50% and 50%
I think the most important thing now is to get that good, unique content on there and then build links back to as and when you can. Google's getting smarter - link are still the fundemental part of their algo forever, we've got to work on the sites so we don't feel the impending pain when it comes (and you know it will!)
@Dr. Pete
I got surprised with absence of definition about link building. You have given very sweet definition about on page SEO so, what you think about link building?
Why I'm asking this question? Because, I have very strong reason and example to share over here! I just scared after know about bad boys. Am I or not? BTW: You have created such a great romance by adding unique segment title about conditions.
I have very straight question about link building. Honestly, I'm not bad boy and not trying to capture paid links. But, How Google can justify paid links? I'm handling 3 home decor websites and have exact keyword hyperlink on all 3 websites to one my retail store. You can know more by left navigation! Will Google justify it as a paid link or not? Because, I did not give any effort to achieve these inbound links as well as not pay an single dollar.
One more >> How to evaluate value of external website? I'm trying to gather dofollow backlinks but, it throws me in dirty website crowd! Quality website will not provide me dofollow links. Now what??
To keep things simple, I'm just referring to link-building as a tactic in general. I think what you're asking is how I would defined "good" link-building vs. "bad" link-building, and that's a very complicated topic. When it comes to link valuation, Rand has a great post here (I refer to it a lot in Q&A):
All Links Are Not Created Equal
Thanks doc, awesome post!
Dr. Pete
Such a great post. I seriously need to print out the combos and hand them up. I really like how it was written this post was actually a joy to read, put a smile to a serious matter.
I've grown to the same conclusion that SEO is really a cycle and there are times in a websites life it needs to be spoiled with some popcorn and a movie at home(on-page), and sometimes it just needs to get out and have a night on the town(off-page). So I honestly couldn't agree more with the post.
Thanks for the Diagnosis Doc!
So the short answer is both. I like the idea of the balance between the two being viewed as a sliding scale. It certainly requires a focus on each situation's individual needs.
According to me it should be balance. Means it depends on site means if a site have no good content or poor quality of content then it needs off page optimization(link building) a lot otherwise on page will be fine.
By the way my most belief is in case#1.
Pete, i really admire your effort on writing such a nice article on ON Page SEO vs Link Building, but i have a question to ask. If a business regularly blogs about their products and events and build links to their site pages at high frequency, how would you see this practice? Is It good to build internal links via blog posts at high frequency, i mean one link per post and posts are scheduled twice a week.
I would really appreciate your thoughts.
Hello mate! I'm not Dr. Pete but I'll give you my answer on your question. It's quite simple - There isn't a perfect solution that can be valid for all the sites out there. Every single site is different even if it's 99% like 100 others. From I understand (and share as opinion) is what Dr. Pete said at the end :)I'll try to keep the point short and sweet - when it comes to the right mix, there is no one-sized-fits-all solution."
So the answer is simple - Test, Evaluate, Decide. Test, Evaluate, Decide. Test, Evaluate, Decide... until you find the right mix for your project... or until you go insane :)
Thanks Debilz for your time and comment on my query. Yeah i understand that every seo strategy and solutions vary project to project and site to site and testing is the only way out of this complex maze.
Are you talking about 3rd-party blogs or your own blog on a separate domain? If it's your own blog, building a lot of links from one domain is only going to take you so far. You've got get external links from a variety of domains to be effective long-term. Even if the links are external, comment links and even guest-post links should only be one part of your strategy. I think diversity is extremely important in link-building, especially when you're just getting a site off the ground.
Yes i was talking about the compnay blog running on "company/blog". No doubt external links from variety of authory domains are a MUST to get good results in the long term. But once again i would like to ask the question that does one link per blog post ( from compnay blog) hurt the rankings or authority of the site. Is it a bad practice ?
Awesome Post..! 4 cases you have define is totally a great to visulize the current scenario in SEO Firm. Every SEO company needs to define and implement both the things On page and link building as well. Only matter is how we implement both the things and love the way you explain it.
Very nice and quite an up-to-date topic to talk on, with Google seems to be working on ending the obsession of people about link building and trying to bring the balance in the onpage and offpage optimization, there are still exceptional where different percentages work...
Dr Pete, I would however like to get your view and that of other fellows here about a middle strategy, call it a 50% Onpage and 50% Offpage, how would you name that combination where you take both the values as same?
Asad, in my opnion 50-50 strategy could work this way , You do 50% of On-Page by producing amazingly incredible content( according to your readers/customers) the rest of 50% will be done by people who loved your content and then linked to it. This way both 50-50% depend on each other, good content can catch you good links...:)
Well, this is where the confusion lies, if you mean that with 50% onpage optimization, we will be able to get natural links, then taking your hypothesis a bit ahead, I think the 90% onpage optimization will get us even more natural links, as we will be too much optimized.
Your comment shows that you are in support of Case#3, aka "Hot mess" and believes that with great content and good onpage optimization you can get natural links. But I think for new startups in the competitive keywords categories, this rule does not work very well.
dude, NO way i meant the HOT MESS :p scenario to scenario and case to case it changes and when i talk about optimization i always talk about optimizaing it for your readers first. For Example i publish a 1500+ Words research based blog post( unique) about the future of "Artificial Intelligence" on my tech blog and i touch every topic of Artificial Intelligence like I AM THE AUTHORITY IN IT, so at the very first step i am motivating my audience( who are also tech bloggers in this case) to get to know what actually i am TYPING about, i think here i meant no HOT MESS.
I think when you deal with more Enterprise level websites you can make quick wins with on page in my experience (pending you have a dev team who is willing to work with you, I know it is not always that case) but that is where authority comes into play I agree.
I know with SME websites things are a bit different I agree, many more factors come into play especially if you are trying to lift the profile of your website.
But thanks DR Pete, always enjoy reading your posts.
Great post! :) Made me laugh on case #2... maybe I've found a little perfectionist in me! Balance is what I hear over here.
I think it depands, if you have site with low content and have not much work to do for On-Page then you have to spent most of your budget on "Link Building" or if you have site that you need to update the content on daily basis for users engagement than you have to work more on On-page but again obviously you can not ignore link building strategies.
I am doing this...
Case #2: The Perfectionist 30% On-page, 70% Link-building
Works quite well usually, thanks to the semi-blindness of google towards in the differntiation of spam and normal sites(*while measuring link weight), the 70% pays off...
Really enjoyed this post, Pete. I think I'm dealing with everything you described in case #1.
In most cases, I think some initial budget needs to be applied to on-page SEO, if only to audit and validate that the site is ready for a more heavily focused link building approach. The timing of link building strategy is often as important as the weighting of it.
Dr Pete does it again. Great post.
Some of my sites fall in the 'Authority' category and some in the 'Perfectionist' category, so I'll be employing different techniques for both.
I really thougt with all the 'P'enalties being handed out by Google lately you were going to say we needed less 'traditional' link building and to start working on the future of Google's plan: embracing Google+ as a way to gain more authority for the Author and the site online.
But I see you said you were not adding in Social to the mix here. IMO, it is the new way to SEO... Period. And I am not a social media fan-boy by any means, but I have become enamored with Google+ and how it seems to be rapidly changing search.
Well, that really a wonderful categorization about how we need to deal in different situations. But being a webmaster i have always believe that though links play an important role for any newly created website but if we see in long run, then we will notice that ultimately its the website itself who has to handle the traffic, its the website itself who bares the responsibility of turning as an authoritative site or a bizzare.
So i always suggest to focus on what you are offering and how you are presenting before users. Onpage issues helps in making these things smoother. Proper navigation for users, informative content and click through oriented Title and description helps a lot.
Great article "What's Better - On-page SEO or Link-building?"
But i reccomend according to @Perfect Stranger,we should Compare On-Page and Link-Building factors seperately with compitition . Then make the exact use case. Compare with the competition and then take the effective and necessary steps.
Nice write up... I'm always talking to people who are fairly new to the SEO game and they get hung up on keyword usage or getting links. What I typically tell them in this case is Google just wants to see that your website is truely participating on the web. If you're putting all your focus on tweaking keywords on your website then you're not putting enough focus on participating with the rest of the internet. You need to be out on the web starting conversations and providing a value to the visitors of your website or should I say websites (facebook, twitter, blog, etc). If you can do botht hese things you're half way there. The other half is understanding all the little technical things of a search engine algorithim.
Great Post! The only other comment I would add to this is if your a business specifically follow one of these two rulles:
- Make a Good product
- Be the first product to market
This flips some of this concept on its head but if you truly have a share worthy product then I would do the basic on-page SEO work and focus entirely on social to generate links for you. Looks at websites like cloudflare or Apple for that matter. A remarkable product does a lot for SEO. If your selling crap expect to get crap links and look crappy to google because none of your information is note-worthy.
Great read Dr. Pete!
Two additional things to consider...
1. Audience - If you're working to engage the "fly-by-the-seat-of-pants" peeps, who thrive off viral, social blurs of gotta-have-it-ness, you need to (imo) take link building by the hair and shake every last ounce of life from it - on a consistent basis. They don't necessarily care how much authority you have - if it's hot, they want to dance with it until the next big wave hits.
2. Stability desired - The lasting effects of link building are far and few between. Too many variables for my taste. Plus links can turn into a high-maintenance date really fast. I have several sites that are still ranked #1 organically for highly-competitive keywords that I've never done an ounce of link-building for. How they are ranked so highly is still an eye-glazing phenomonon to me... but then I remember how much time I put into making sure they were genetically engineered to produce hotness time and time again.
Timely post. I'm currectly dealing with a client whose e-commerce site has "would keyword stuffing would embarrass 1998".
I think this is the best article on this topic. I really enjoyed reading it and you really gave answers. The power of example is great. Thanks for that!
Great Post! thumbs up*
What about 30% on page, 30% link building and 30% social media marketing? What do you thinkg guys?
I do not think that social media got a such a great importance. 30% is a lot.
The remaining 10%?
On-page is one of the major part then off-page like: If you have a house(Website) without a name(Keywords Stuffing) in-front of your door, than postman(Crawler) very hard to find your house, and will ask different peoples(Back-links) about your house in the end postman will finally find after a time consuming procedure but if you have posted your name in-front of your house than it is easy for postman to find you.. :) short and simple story... BTW i select 70 and 30.
I was doing link-building on a site for about five months and its ranking wouldn't budge. I finally decided to take a closer look at the homepage itself, and address some on-page issues. After the next crawl: BAM! We went from #8 to #3. It was amazing. That's when I became a believer that you can do all the link-building in the world, but if it's to a site that Google isn't detecting relevant to the particular search, your efforts are wasted.
I personally feel that one should not put too much time on building backlinks all the time. One of my friend has more than 2000 backlinks and got pagerank 6 last pagerank update but still his blog traffic is way lower than my blog. So i think that On-page SEO should come first.
I get asked the same question by my clients all the time and I always tell them both. I think it's important to optimize your site first, so that it's ready for any new visitors that arrive via your off site link building efforts, but you can't really expect one with out other to make a big difference.
Nice post Dr. Pete i personally feel that a good onpage (not over aggressive or spammy) would always be beneficial and the perfect blend of all tactics would be great thanks
Interesting article. I'm not an SEO purist - I believe in a good solid mix of techniques when it comes down to it.
I don't necessarily believe in the whole 30/70 / 70/30 link-to-content ratio. If you do things well - whether it's viral, ppc, blogging then your site will be picked up around the web and in turn gain value as it grows.
Personally my favourite article on SEOMoz to-date was Anthony Mangia's article on blogging - he sums it up nicely when he says that blogging is the last linkbuilding strategy you'll ever need (that and the fact that its a natural way of growing your website and it's content):
https://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-last-linkbuilding-strategy-your-business-will-ever-need
I'm a big believer in content marketing (and it really sits somewhere between on-page and link-building), but especially for new sites, I've seen too many cases where they built up a lot of content and nothing happened. It's like having the best products on the shelf but not getting anyone into the front door. You have to get that content out to people and pound the pavement - that could be active link-building, it could be indirect (like commenting and forum participation), it could be social, or it could be PR or even offline advertising. You've got to get that content in play, though, and it usually doesn't happen by itself.
True but the very nature of blogging encourages viral behaviour. I do a lot of work around social - i.e. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (to a slightly lesser extent admittedly) and as long as your content is interesting or even slightly controversial someone is likely to pick-up on what you're saying. It won't always be the case that every article you write will go viral but there are a few choice pieces that will yield good results. It's how you target your content in the end.
I've found I get a great deal of traffic from other bloggers, Google's blog search engine, Technorati and other well respected sources. As long as you keep writing there will be someone there to read what you have to say - just make sure it's what your target market are searching for.
Great stuff. Pareto rule can be applied to almost everything. On page is surely 20-30% of the story and link building + social is the rest. I would say that even social is overrated to some point.
Great post!
A handful of people asked about the 50/50 scenario. Of course, there are more variations than the 4 I presented, but I avoided the 50/50 scenario for a reason. It's a great question, though, and so I've added a section to the post called "Is There A Perfect Mix?"
I think "The bad boy" is a perfect example of why focusing on on-page optimization is where you should be spending your time. Link building, in other words, purposely trying to get links, will more than likely end up causing that scenario somewhere down the line, don't you think? The guy who bought links, and got his website on all kinds of spammy link sites "was doing everything right" 4 years ago, and he was killing it, I'm sure! Its sites like SEOmoz, with its continuing effort to improve its user experience, create valuable content, and have a diverse site with lots to do that ultimately allows your site to rank well. I whole heartedly agree, that in the short term, link building is a viable strategy, but for a brand that has every intention of sticking around for the next 2 decades, I believe the best you can do is put 100% of your eggs in the on-page basket, knowing that links will come naturally.
This is a great post. I totally agree with the "it depends" approach for our customers. There is no real measurement for on-site vs. off-site ratio in SEO. Every project is unique and targeting the best demographic will require more or less of each.
For Example. A site like https://www.wechoosethemoon.org/ very heavy flash site, they dont seem to do any on-site SEO or any off site SEO, they just built a fun flash site that users love. They are on the first page for "Apollo 11" and "The Moon". These keywords are highly competitive (I checked in SEOmoz key tool 81% and 74%). I also used OSE to check their Anchored text linking in, and they have all natural links. They have 13 inbound anchors text links for "Apollo 11" out of 5,212 links. This site barely has any content on it...
OnSite SEO for https://www.wechoosethemoon.org/
OffSite SEO for https://www.wechoosethemoon.org/
Google always stressed to build your site for your users, and this is a great example of why!
I don't know the details of the site, but that's a great example of a situation where, if they just got some SEO friendly content behind the Flash (there are a couple of approved ways), they could probably see big gains with minimal effort. They're doing incredibly well on one front, so focusing a bit on the other front would probably produce big wins.
Awesome described Dr.Pete; balance between two on-page and link building not 50- 50. I really like to do on-page must not like spammy. After that link building.
There should be a balance between both. Although link building requires more time, it all depends in the current stage of the website.
Have only skim read the post, so if included already, apologies, I would add :
- Have ranked well for reasonably competitive keywords, using detailed on page optimisation and only external natural link building. However have noticed visits tend to stay static, just from those keywords optimised on page for already and not the variations you get when also build links as well.
- On page often fine for lower competition keywords, exact searches in 10's or low 100's.
- Link building usually required for keywords with exact search volumes in the 1000's+, exception being if have keywords in domain name.
To reiterate what says in the post, cover many angles, this then deals with future algo changes as well as human error, which should lead to a fluctuating as opposed to a dropped rank.
Again another valuable stuff from you Dr. Pete!!! Well I have got this point in my mind (after going through your post) that The right proportion of On Page optimization to link Building can never be defined. The reason for this fluctuating ratio is simple enough i.e. Constant changes in Search Engines way of crawling and indexing data!! I follow the mixed rule i.e. Keep on doing the stuffs with flexibility!! Thanks Dr. Pete, Thumb Up to you!!
As usual Great post Dr Pete! On and off page both are compulsory to build a strong website but finding the exact ratio of optimizing a site is not a bed of roses. Every project that I got, I spend first 2 months on on-page SEO to make this site Search engine friendly, afterwards I move on Social Media to drive some initial traffic and work it on until I got sustainable amount of visitors. On last phase I move towards off-page SEO and build a strong plan to make authority back-links. I apply this pattern on almost every site and got some business for my clients. The whole process at-least take 10 months to showing great peaks on analytic graph and the best part of this pattern is; my entire sites are Algorithm-prove because I obey Google Guide lines and work on Randfish techniques.
So you didn’t get any traffic till 2 months? How you make client satisfy? This is questionable.
Can't you start the work with blogging, some onsite optimization and social media so that you start getting initial traffic?
Did I just read right, did you say it takes you at least 10 months to start showing peaks in analytic?
Don't you think that statment along with the fact you only get your clients "some business", kind of tells you you need to change how your working?
We have our clients ranking in at least the top 15 (page 2) for competitive keywords within 2 months bringing them better and better analytics stats day by day and sales before the end of the first month in most cases!
No offence Asif, but I really think you need to work out your stratages so you can give your clients better results and in a more timely manner. For example, you should be working on both on page and off page seo from the begining IMO, and working out any on page problems at the same time as building links etc. I mean common, why would you not build any links for two months? Do your clients have that bad a sites to vouch for those two months of you not getting them any visitors or sales?
P.S. Great post Pete, I really enjoyed reading it :)
@Kumail Hemani @NathanielBYou drive a wrong meaning of my wordings I didn’t say that I don’t drive traffic in my first two months. If you have done your on-page correctly it will eventually help you to rank without linkbuilding (some social media help).I only does legitimate things to get my website on top 10 SERP results I will create link bait to get organic links use viral marketing to gain more exposure. Both techniques need time and lot of time and I explain each and everything to my client if he agrees then we will continue or else I won’t take project. Suppose I have a website is just launched one week ago but got lots of links and reach on top 10 within in one week “strange how is it possible?”. I surely got hit by their algorithm.
Onpage matters a lot in SEO without onpage off-page is useless until your site is a brand. I only accept website that are scratch. After ten months my every client is satisfied with my performance and continues with my services and all my techniques effects are endless.
If your clients are happy, Asif, that's cool. I think link building is really important, though. On-site is just part of the equation.
@redpointHQ We should provide maximum benefits through good SEO so that it makes client more happy? Link building and Onsite Optimization both are essential part of SEO campaign - if anything is missed it won't give satisfied result or see a big drop maybe after the end of the project AND definitely you will lose that client and he will never come back or refer your services, IMO!
Asif, onsite optimization is a part of SEO but only onsite couldn't work! Maybe you get rank for low competitive keywords for a meantime - Will this satisfy you? Where you can create social media profiles, high authority profiles and some blogs on Blogspot or Tumblr can produce quick as well as reliable results and your competitors will have to do much more work to get your website down for those keywords.
I have served 1 and half years as a UI Developer in a software company. I can do much much better Onsite Optimization but I never leave the website by just doing onsite SEO we should serve the client best and produce outstanding results and work for the long time strategy.