We know on-page SEO as content optimization best practices to help Google understand the intent of your post. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, deals with managing the quality of the your inbound links. Then, off-page SEO should be concerned with link building, right?
It is. But to have inbound links to your site, on-page SEO is also critical.
In this article, we will look into the impact of optimizing the on-page SEO on link building. We will show you how content affects the potential of your link building campaign. So, wear your thinking cap as we go through this discussion.
Let’s go!
Important Things to Remember About On-Page SEO
On-page SEO deals with the optimization of your content. Every element on the page – whether it’s the title, headers, keywords, etc. – is all part of on-page SEO. A well-optimized content leads to a stronger position in SERPs, thus increasing authority.
With so many updates deployed by search engines to filter content, it has been a valuable factor to determine relevance and authority. The higher your SEO metrics and SERP ranking, the more organic traffic you can get. If you have visitors from the same niche, they may also see your site as a linking prospect.
By optimizing your content, a lot of link building benefits can spring out from it. It’s a long shot, but the impact is very rewarding. That’s why on-page SEO remains a necessity for building up your website’s impressions.
What Can On-Page SEO Do For Link Building?
A simple misplacement of an image or an out-of-context paragraph can set off your whole link building strategy. These small errors can ripple and make your content look unprofessional. An example of this is an out-of-context anchor text for a relevant website, making it look unnatural.
But if you maintain an impressive optimization for your on-page elements, your website will look more trustworthy for a backlink. Remember that E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) is the benchmark to assess the content. Having all of these characteristics makes your content and your website superior.
Let us look at the impact of a well-maintained on-page SEO for gathering backlinks.
1. Gradual Increase in Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is not something that you gain overnight. It takes long months before you even see a significant increase in your organic traffic. But however slow this may be, it has a huge benefit for building links.
More organic traffic means more exposure for your website. And since your content is considered a credible resource, other websites can link to your page organically. Organic backlinks have a huge impact on your link building campaign.
This is more effective if you target your audience properly. Going for a niche audience rather than a generic one will give you more link building opportunities.
2. Gives You More Authority and Credibility
Crafting high-quality content gives your website more authority and credibility. This, in turn, will increase SEO metrics such as Domain Authority and Trust Flow. Link builders look at these metrics to determine the target domains for their link building strategy.
If your niche audience trusts your content, they can link to your website and treat you as a credible resource. By reaching out to the right audience, you can tackle industry-specific questions and provide a useful article to answer them. This way, other niche websites will be enticed to link to your credible resource.
You can narrow down your target audience by looking at their demographics and doing thorough keyword research. Proper title, meta descriptions, and H2 tags are also important to get more engagement for your post. More engagements mean more linking opportunities to grab.
3. Good SEO Metrics Attract Link Opportunities
As mentioned earlier, optimizing your on-page SEO improves certain SEO metrics. Link building campaigns often rely on these SEO metrics to know if a website is worthy of a backlink or not.
Here are some of the metrics that are affected by on-page SEO:
- DA
- DR
- Citation Flow
- Trust Flow
These metrics indicate how trustworthy your content is. It shows link builders that you produce high-quality and keystone articles. They’ll be more inclined to choose to link to yours instead of your competitor’s article because of good SEO metrics.
Google will be receptive to good ranking signals if your on-page SEO is optimized. This means that Google sees your SEO metrics even though it does not include them in its ranking factors. But, since we barely know about these Google ranking factors, we rely on these SEO metrics for creating a link building campaign.
How to Do It Right?
Now that we know the impact of on-page SEO on link building and creating link opportunities, it’s time to put it into action. We’ll look into the different ways you can optimize your on-page SEO to attract link opportunities.
Step #1: Focus on a Clear Goal When Writing
To write a good blog post, you have to know what you want to write about. A good technique is to plan your content and stick to that plan. This way, you won’t get sidetracked by other thoughts when writing.
You can make an outline before writing your piece. List down discussion points and draft your article to create a framework. It’s easier to write if you’re following a specific framework.
Step #2: Make a Catchy Title Tag
Next, you have to think of a catchy title. Either you approach this as an intriguing catchphrase or an informative title tag. The goal is to make it catchy enough to gather clicks and organic traffic.
Title tags are the first on-page SEO that your readers will see. It should be one of the primary elements you should focus on. A catchy title tag increases CTR significantly. A higher CTR is a good sign for link builders to include it in their link building campaigns.
Step #3: SEO Writing
Anna Crowe said in one of her blog posts that, “SEO writing means writing content with both search engines and users in mind.” You can’t write an article for the sake of keywords and expect backlinks from it. You should carefully craft the articles you release for link acquisition.
Remember to stick to a singular topic per blog post. A strong topic relevance will ensure that your link opportunities are relevant as well. The links you can possibly earn will be high-quality.
Step #4: Optimize Headers and Meta Descriptions
Headers and meta descriptions are two important on-page SEO elements to rank on SERPs. Traditionally, webmasters opt for direct-to-the-point headers and meta descriptions. This works well, even after Google’s latest update.
But SEO professionals tried to incorporate keywords on these elements to make them more competitive. This way, inbound links can be complacent that their links will rank. Outbound links to high-quality websites can also be reciprocated if they notice that you produce competitive content.
Meta descriptions are crucial if you want your article to rank on SERPs. We’ve recently posted an article regarding SEO keywords for meta descriptions. You can check it out to see what keywords you can use to optimize this element of your on-page SEO.
Final Word
We may think that on-page SEO is only concerned about the quality of the content. Now we know that it has an indirect impact on link building and earning high-quality links. It’s a piece of useful information to have when building a proper link building strategy.
That’s it for our article regarding on-page SEO for link building. If you have SEO-related questions, leave them in the comment below. We’ll answer them as soon as we can. Good luck building links!
