What is the difference between technical and on-page SEO?
To non-digital marketers, search engine optimization will seem like a fairly straightforward concept that can be done even by non-marketers as long as there is an SEO plugin installed on the website.
That is somewhat true. In fact, when I started being an SEO professional in 2019, I was able to do my job well with the help of Yoast SEO.
However, now that I’ve been doing this for almost five years now and I’m not just a content writer anymore but an SEO specialist, SEO is not fairly straightforward.
There are 3 SEOs that are common today: technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.
Technical SEO and on-page SEO are the SEOs you have full control over. Off-page SEO is indeed off-page, so other entities are involved. You can control it, but not 100%.
Local SEO is a thing, but they are specifically for local businesses with brick-and-mortar stores. And all local businesses need to do technical, on-page, and off-page SEOs still.
So going back to the question: What is the difference between technical and on-page SEO?
Technical SEO is connected to website development.
If you ensure your title and tagline have the keywords you want to rank for, the layout is organized and clear, the website in general is fast, and the sitemap exists, that is technical SEO.
Whether your website is mobile responsive or not is also a question in technical SEO.
On-page SEO, on the other hand, is all about the text on the page.
You need to mention the keywords in the website copy, in the blog posts, in the page titles, in the URL, and even in the images, among others, to be able to accomplish it properly.
If you have a blog, you will need to do on-page SEO every time you work on a new blog post. Technical SEO can be a one-time thing if no issues arise along the way.
Difference Between Technical and On-page SEO
I own two websites at the moment and I don’t do technical SEO for them anymore. If your website was built properly with SEO in mind (I am my own website developer), you wouldn’t need to worry about it constantly.
Many people think of those 3 common SEOs as phases, but I like calling them stages.
Technical SEO is done during the website development phase, which occurs before anything else, so that is the first stage. Once done, you can move on to putting the text on the page, and that is on-page SEO.
You are putting the text on top of the website, so that’s the second layer and thus the second stage.
When you are done with technical SEO and on-page SEO, you can start thinking of how you can reach out to external entities such as other people’s blogs and directories.
External entities are at a different level, so off-page SEO is the third stage.
On-page and off-page are ongoing SEOs, meaning you need to do them for as long as your blog exists and is being updated. We are going to talk about the difference between them in more detail next time.
