SEO techniques can be broken down into two general categories – onsite and offsite. Both of these will benefit your rankings, so it’s worth your time to address them both when building and promoting your website.

On-site SEO includes the specific actions you take on your webpages to increase your search engine position.

Off-site SEO techniques are the actions you take outside of your webpages to increase your search engine position. Backlinks are one of the most important strategies in the offsite SEO toolbox. For example, say you’ve put together a site on reducing hypertension and heart attacks. If Google or another major search engine notices that the American Heart Association has linked back to your site, it assumes your site must include good content. The more of these quality links back to your site you get, the more free traffic you’ll receive from the search engines because your site will rank higher.

Both on-site and off-site optimization help the search engines categorize your site and rank it higher. On-site optimization is more under your control than off-site optimization. So you need to make sure each page of your site is well optimized and then start a link building campaign.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

Tags: Link Building, off-site optimization, On-Site Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, seo