Off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside of a website itself to improve its search rankings, most notably earning backlinks, but also brand mentions, PR, and social signals. It works alongside on-page SEO to build a site's overall authority.
Example
A founder appears on two industry podcasts and the company is listed in a trusted directory. Neither happens on the site, but both build its authority.
Related resources
Glossary
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO covers everything on a page itself, like content, headings, and meta tags, that affects ranking.
The biggest factors are content relevance, page speed, mobile usability, backlink quality, and technical SEO — like clean site structure and proper metadata. Google now also weighs experience and trust signals (E-E-A-T) — real expertise behind the content, not just keyword-stuffed pages. A technically solid site with genuinely useful content will consistently outrank a flashier site with thin, generic pages.
Your website likely isn't ranking due to a combination of thin or irrelevant content, weak technical SEO, slow load speed, or a lack of quality backlinks pointing to your site. Run a technical audit first — broken links, missing metadata, and slow pages are common and fixable quickly. If technical health is solid, the issue is usually content: not enough pages targeting real search intent, or content too generic to compete with more specific pages.
A pre-launch checklist for SEO and AEO: indexing, redirects, metadata, headings, schema, performance and measurement, so a new site starts ranking and getting cited.
