Technical SEO vs On-Page SEO

The discussion of technical SEO vs on-page SEO can be confusing sometimes. Many misconceptions lead to think they are opposite sides of the same SEO efforts. Understanding what both are and what they do is key to having better criteria for digital marketing.

Technical SEO vs On-Page SEO: Key Concepts

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to a series of practices to improve a website’s overall performance. A website is composed of various elements like coding, design, content, and staff like links. So Technical SEO looks for improving the technical aspects of a website.

Let us compare it with a tuned street racing car (similar to The Fast and The Furious franchise-type car). The technical compound is what makes these cars run fast, break on time, and perform stunts (the real ones).

What makes those cars run fast is a bunch of modifications done by a mechanic on the acceleration body. It is similar to the website speed, but a mechanic won’t make it faster, you’ll need a web developer for that. A good web developer and a fast hosting service.

Most search engines evaluate not only a website’s speed but also security aspects and its responsiveness. Tags on documents and outdated or missing links are aspects for a search engine to evaluate.

Technical SEO refers to all improvements on a website on a technical level to make it rank first on SERP.

It is essential to improve your marketing efforts and to have a bigger presence online. It really makes the difference between someone hiring you and hiring your competitors.

However, search engines like Google or Bing evaluate more than just the website’s performance. There is content and keywords to consider on a website to give people the most accurate results. It is Google’s and Bing’s goal after all.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and SERP for Search Engine Results Page. These are key elements for your website to appear on top when someone searches for something online.

​How Technical SEO Works?

As said before, technical SEO is a series of practices that lead your website to the top of SERP rank. However, what is it exactly? And how does it work? First of all, it requires a few small improvements to your website.

Therefore, some changes must fix or improve your rank. A web developer should easily perform these changes. Some take place on the site’s code, some on the hosting server, and some on the search engine itself. Let’s see how they work more in-depth.

1. Mobile-Friendly Website

This is a feat to count on. Mobile-Friendly websites AKA responsive design websites are able to adjust to any device they appear on. Regardless if it is a tablet, an iPad, a desktop, or just your smartphone, the website will adapt its size.

Investing in a responsive design website allows increasing the visitors counter by making it easy to navigate from your phone. It also allows a website to adapt to any desktop or laptop screen size. You can say that the loading speed of any site will increase too.

By not investing in a responsive design you are already shortening your website’s reach. People will enter your website and will be confused, making them leave ASAP. This failure raises your bouncing rate, and this is a metric that shows your website as not reliable.

Not making your website mobile-friendly equals dropping on SERP’s rank. As simple as that.

2. Fast-Loading Website

Imagine for a second, what would you do if you get into a website and it doesn’t charge fast. You wait more than 10 seconds and nothing loads. Probably you’d do what everyone does: leave the website. That is why it is important to have a fast-loading website.

One of the few things slowing down a website is the hosting service. If it is not a fast one, you and everyone else will notice it. Another is the DNS (Domain Name System) provider. It is advisable to keep an eye on your HTTP requests and your CSS styles to keep your web light.

If you didn’t understand some terms in the last part, don’t worry. Surely your web developer already knows what all that means and how to keep them in the fittest manner.

Elements on your website should also load fast. Some elements like forms, images, documents, and more should load ASAP to avoid annoyance. It is recommended to use XML or similar tools for loading fast documents and these types of elements.

Google and other search engines like Yahoo focus on showing websites with a fast-loading rate. Therefore they take loading speed as an important trait to rank websites. When your website doesn’t load at all, it’s due to missing or faded links.

Faded sites are another aspect that throws down your ranking on SERP. It may happen for a lot of reasons, so when it happens ask your web developer to check that. He or she will know what actions to take to fix that.

With luck, search engines won’t notice those sites to penalize your website.

That last part tells you how important it is to have on your team a professional web developer. Keep that important asset on your budget.

3. Secured Website

Would you ask anyone on the street to keep your bank account information? Would you trust a random pedestrian on the street giving him your car keys? No? Of course not. The case for websites is similar. You need a secured website so search engines take you seriously.

When referring to websites, security is SSL which stands for Security Socket Layer. You do not need to know about layers but SSL grants your information is safe. So none besides the user entering its data will know his private information.

SSL secures information on both sides of a website. No one will see the information without the right permissions and the proper request. Personal information leaks can bring a hard lawsuit and this problem must not be an unavoidable issue.

In the middle 90s, when there existed a few hackers around the globe, it was not a big inconvenience. However, in the information era, this is a serious problem. Imagine that you give your credit card numbers to a website and then this information leaks. Big deal, right?

For search engines, to suggest one website is a matter of exposing its own reliability. That is why search engines must evaluate how secure the website they show on the SERP is. The highest security doesn’t give the first position on SERP, but it helps.

Reliability is a strong resource that many brands need. It makes possible online sales, email subscriptions, and many other important transactions. By adding security to your website, your brand will be more likely to earn people’s trust.

Security is one of the best investments on a commercial website. And SSL is essential to help your website appear first on any SERP. Do not miss it.

4. Organized Sites

If someone asks you to help him look for a pencil, where do you prefer to search? In a missing object’s box, or in the person’s pouch? The same happens when scanning a website to give search engine results. Organization worth gold.

Being organized according to some concepts means knowing where is what you are looking for. On the internet it is different.

Your website must be properly indexed to let everyone else find what they are looking for. The one searching in your pouch will be (probably) a prospective client.

Therefore, all websites must have a sitemap. Even better, URLs need to be well arranged too. The search must be easy for visitors, customers, and search engines otherwise your web loses people and search engines’ interest.

Another thing to be careful with is the active sites on your website. Sometimes CEOs forget to enter their brand’s website to see how it is going. So they do not know every time a site fails or is missing. It might be the IT team’s responsibility, but it is your brand after all.

Again, search engines scan all over your website, searching for these pages to lower the website’s qualifications. Remember that the main goal of a search engine is to help people get what they look for. Search engines won’t show a website with fallen pages.

Even more common issue is when a website has duplicated pages or content. When this happens, search engines get confused while evaluating, and therefore they rank this website in the last places. It is a silly mistake but costs a lot.

Make sure everything works, is organized, and try avoiding page duplication.

5. Registered Website

A big help for your website and for search engine’s task is to register your website on their services. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and practically every search engine there is has somewhere to register a website.

It counts as letting the search engine that your brand exists and telling it where to find your website. Google has Google Search Console, while Microsoft has Bing Webmaster Tool. There you can register your domain and let each company know that you are ready for SERP.

Once registered, the tools will give you a perspective of how your website’s performance is. These tools will give you data about views to the backlinks of your sites or will show mobile performance. It is a fine way to access analytics data and get insights for marketing purposes.

In general, knowing what people will do is having an advantage over competitors. Thanks to the analytic data gathered from these tools the web developer can make changes towards marketing goals.

There are at least two ways registration of your website on these services can improve your SEO. Think of it like letting the search engine all the information about your website, and expecting metrics in return.

Nevertheless, these web tools don’t just show metrics. The tools analyze all your websites crawling from top to bottom, on every page. This analysis will give you ciphers about four possible statuses your pages might have. Those are valid, excluded, warning, and error.

Registering your website on a service like Google Search Console will improve your technical SEO to a different level.

The Importance of Technical SEO for Your Website

After everything you read before, you may have a clear idea of what is important in technical SEO. SEO itself is an essential part of marketing success and a great way to improve your online presence.

Having your website the best you can it’s important. For that, you should fix everything you can and more, or better, ask your web developer to do it. Later you will know the other side of SEO, but a good working website is a must for any company.

Think for a second the times you tried to get into a website with no success. You click on a link, and the link does not work. Then you try to access a site and it takes ages to fully load. Or when you are guided to a page you didn’t ask for. Would you come back to that site?

Practically everything online needs to adapt to new requirements and shapes to succeed. If everyone in your business has a terrific and fast website, not having the same equals losing clients.

The main reason to try appearing on the first SERP is how most people tend to browse for answers. Most people look for answers just on the first SERP, and a few people pass to the second page. Almost no one looks beyond the 3rd page on SERP.

Having every page functional, fast-loading, organized, avoiding double pages, and giving SSL are the needs of a website today.

Only experts can make it right on any website. Your website must rank on top. Make your website easy to use and don’t forget it must have a responsive design.

What is On-Page SEO?

Here is where every doubt about facing technical SEO vs on-page SEO fades. Technical SEO and on-page SEO help different sides of the same website. On-page SEO refers to the content, keywords, metadata, and every detail apart from the functional side.

Again, let us use the streetcar analogy to explain it better. While technical SEO is the engine and the breaks, on-page SEO is similar to strobe lights and painting. For people to differentiate your website from others it must have its own charisma and original content.

Regardless of being focused on content, on-page SEO also allows for the improvement of HTML code and more. It means that your content, the metadata of images and videos, and the use of headers will improve SERP’s rank.

When you try to aim for on-page SEO you are also trying to make the user’s experience a strength. User experience will determine how easy to understand and navigate your website is. However, that type of SEO leads to bringing more and more modifications to the content.

A good example of on-page SEO is when you add a blog to your website. Then, the new content will attract more and more people depending on the way you set the information. Interesting and fresh content makes a real difference in this SEO effort.

What probably differentiates on-page SEO from technical SEO is the relevance of keywords. Keywords are the words that cause the searches on a search engine. Choosing a keyword or the other will affect a website’s exposure on search engines.

Let us see how on-page (Also known as on-site) works more in detail.

How On-Page SEO Works?

To explain how it works, it is better to point out some of the elements on-page SEO focuses on. In terms of proficient on-page SEO work, content must take special care on:

1. SEO Writing

Since every piece of content is evaluated by search engines, it is important to know how to write for SEO. There are some parameters to follow in every language to make it SEO writing. What exactly are those parameters?

Making the text easier to read and making it a better user experience will also help SEO. If users recognize a website as good, they will recommend it. So writing while thinking about UX (user’s experience) is a smart way on-page SEO makes a website relevant.

Good SEO writing is meant to be relevant, substantial, and high-quality content.

2. Header Tags

HTML has a simple yet effective way to organize information: header tags. Every effective content website has these tags to separate topics and guide the reader through them. That is why you see letters of different sizes on pages.

When improving UX, there is a need to improve readability. Using text on H1, H2, and so on helps to easily differentiate headings and subheadings. When a search engine crawls over the website it will notice the content on these header tags.

It is basically like labeling your text to make information easier to find for users and for search engines.

3. Headlines

Sometimes content writers give low credibility to headlines, but they are important assets. When you are reading information from a website, an appealing headline will trap the reader. After that, the reader will continue browsing on that website, looking for information.

While doing on-page SEO, headlines are the ones to impact and attract people to your information. Compelling headlines can transform an impression into a click. When the marketing goal allows it, headlines are all your PPC ad should have.

4. E-A-T

Since 2014, E-A-T is a framework Google uses for website evaluations. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and  Trustworthiness. It shows us what Google says about what is quality for them in the matter of SEO.

To avoid mixing things in general, E-A-T looks for a website’s trust, mentions, and the content creator’s fame. 

5. Title Tag

It affects just a little SEO, but it is still worth talking about it. It is a tag set on the body section in HTML code that contextualizes the page’s content. You can recognize it as the clickable link under the main link on SERPs.

When it is missing, doesn’t work as it is supposed, or is duplicated your website receives a bad score. Hence, your rank position goes down if you have it wrong.

6. Meta Description

This is what you read from the website you see on SERP under the site’s link. It helps to summarize what the website is about. Regardless of how Google denies meta description helping SEO, there is evidence it does.

Setting right meta descriptions tends to improve people’s perception of the result and therefore the search result. It also helps to improve the site’s CTR (Click-through rate). Because meta description makes it easier to let you know what the web is about.

7. Image Optimization

Let us state something: Images help users digest easily any content. Or at least they should. Images can be photos, infographics, or statistical charts. When you upload images without the right treatment they are either high or low quality and non-standardized sizes.

The image quality changes the number of the rank on different results pages due to the image’s SERP. Image quality also can increase your web’s bouncing rate, when images are too heavy to load fast. Definitely, they should be treated and improved to get the most of SEO.

By optimizing all images you will have a faster loading time, which at the time improves UX. Faster load pages help improve your SEO naturally. And not to mention that an optimized image appears first on the search engine for images. It is important to have it on the count.

8. Keywords and Content

Two common mistakes that on-page SEO deals with are keyword stuffing and content audit. Not auditing content is not a problem per se, but it won’t help when you are assessing your marketing goals. 

The content audit allows you to see if the content you are working on gives a nice ROI or not. Additionally, it helps you see if your content is working, and what kind of content works better. It is like analyzing your existing content to see what to do with it next.

Now, let’s talk about keywords. More keywords mean a better rank on SERP, right? NO! It is a myth.

Having 8.000 times the work potato won’t make you rank first on SERP for potato. On the other hand, being specific on long-tail keywords can help a site to rank first just on this term.

Any marketing expert knows that having the same keyword on many sites will make you compete with yourself. Also, he knows what the best practices are to select and use properly one or many keywords.

9. User Engagement

Good titles and seductive paragraphs are part of what on-page SEO does for user engagement. There is still a battle to figure out how to prevent them from leaving soon. In fact, there is still more to do for them to stay and interact with your website.

Giving the right information and having an alluring narrative are just two of the many practices you can perform. However, a big part of the user’s engagement comes with UX details. So fast-loading pages, easy-to-browse content, and good source material comes great for this.

User engagement is hard, but it is achievable with enough time and good content.

The Importance of On-Page SEO for Your Website

SEO is about ranking higher on SERP and on-page SEO achieves that by focusing on content. In that sense, you could say that on-page SEO looks for the best quality content and the most useful. 

Some brands don’t pay attention to their content and it results in a low ranking on SERP. Makes perfect sense that successful companies invest in content management as a huge part of their marketing strategy.

However, it is not only important to show new information to reach the top rank. By doing the right keyword selection a company segments what kind of audience they want to be their clients. This is a smart customer selection and is one of the best approaches in digital marketing.

Having the right content, organized the best way, will make it easier for users to find what they look for. When they are satisfied with the experience on your website, they will recommend it to their friends and family. Then, you will have more visits.

More visits mean more presence and more authoritativeness, which definitely improves your SEO. Any advantage upon your competitors can make a difference for people who want to solve a problem.

The purpose of publishing new content is to earn followers by giving valuable information to them. Make sure the information is as clear and organized as possible. Reading through a tangle of words discourages you from reading and then your bouncing rate rises.

When on-page SEO is at its best, even when your website has technical flaws, it still ranks high. But don’t think that on-page SEO is better than technical SEO, they are both parts of the same SEO efforts. Later you will have a better explanation.

Technical SEO vs On-Page SEO: Key Differences

As you can see now, they are not the same thing. Can you spot the main differences between them? It is a little hard, but let us help you identify at least the top 3 key differences. For sure, knowing that will change the way you see SEO right now.

1. Technical SEO Is Focused On Performance

As mentioned before, technical SEO looks to improve your website’s feats. So it is responsible to improve your website’s performance on loading speed and security. While on-page SEO can’t do anything to enhance loading speed or something like that.

Selecting fast hosting and good DNS can make the difference in loading your website. Some hosting services are deficient and slow the website load almost 3 times slower. From the user’s point of view, when a website loads slowly it is better to load some other website.

Another element of technical SEO is the responsive design of your web. Showing content equally organized on any mobile device or desktops allows showing content organized and easy to read.

The web developer must suggest what service to use to avoid slow loading pages. Also, he or she must be aware of considering functional issues of your website. Even if you want your website registered on Bing Webmaster Tool or Google’s equal your developer must know.

2. On-Page SEO Is Focused On Content

Content has 3 things to focus on to help a site’s SEO. Keyword selection is the first to analyze. Thanks to keywords, and the way they appear on the website, a search engine will index your website as a good website.

A content manager is the right technical person to know what are the best practices for keyword selection. Those can be single or long-tail keywords. Nevertheless, avoid keyword stuffing which consists of repeating the same keyword.

The next point to focus on is content, obviously. Keywords can appear, but without context, they will fade into oblivion. Writing arousal content will keep your readers engaged and interested in your brand.

Last but not least, UX plays a tremendous role in visitors’ love. When you see many plain words, 2.000 words paragraphs you know it is going to be a nightmare to read. Texts, like any other form of expression, need to be clear, consistent and organized to understand them.

Focusing on content is not a thing technical SEO can do. There are not possible ways that loading speed or responsive design can help the average visitor to like all content. Headings, headlines, and tags are the responsibility of a marketer, not of a web developer.

3. Keywords Are Only Key For On-Page SEO

Apart from tags and URLs, technical SEO has a few to do about keywords. A well-selected keyword won’t enhance loading speed nor mobile-friendly feats. In technical SEO you must pick a keyword for an URL, but this is optional.

On the other hand, on-page SEO works around the right keyword selection. Single or long-tail, specific, or general keywords will bring your website to SERP. Therefore you must have special care for the ones you choose.

The right keyword selection means less competition on search engines and therefore higher ranking for your website. It is recommended that selected keywords appear on tags and URLs, but they matter more when evaluating content.

To summarize, keyword selection must be well thought in on-page SEO because it is built around it.

Which One Should You Focus On First?

This question seems tricky since there are many ways to perform SEO on a website. However, using one does not necessarily forbid the other.

Your marketing and development teams can work that separately. Usually, the web developer and the content writer are not the same people.

Now, deciding which to focus on, is a matter of what is worse in your website’s overall performance. There are free tools on the internet to check how good your website’s performance is. Also, there are free tools to assess how friendly and relevant your content is.

For example, if you still have issues loading a site or have other speed issues, it is time to fix performance. Then it is time to focus on technical SEO and evaluate what is dropping your site’s loading speed. When you have missing links or images it’s the same.

What should you do when your website is doing fine but your content is boring? Then it is time to focus on-page SEO to fix content issues. Some of the best practices are keyword and content audits, but you better leave decisions to your marketing team.

It may look that you should focus on technical SEO first and then on-page SEO, but how to know that?

What is urgent fixing first? It requires an evaluation to fix the one you consider first. After all, you read in this text all about technical SEO vs on-page SEO and you have better criteria.

What is important here is knowing what to focus on. If nothing is wrong then you can keep your website’s performance under periodic surveillance and content under appealing standards. Check them from time to time so your SERP rank doesn’t drop through time.

Why Technical SEO & On-Site SEO Are Not Enough for Your Business’s Website

SEO is an effective and complex way to keep your relevance on the internet. Both technical and on-page approaches are just a few of the free SEO methods. There are more SEO tools like off-page SEO and local SEO, just to name a few.

Of course, the non-paid approach to improve SEO is good, but you should not ignore paid methods. That helps accelerate the marketing results. Generally speaking, SEO takes months to show results, but with a little paid to help, the waiting shortens.

So for faster results, you may consider a PPC campaign or other kinds of ad campaigns. They will work as a limited-time push for your marketing goals. However, non-paid effectiveness works better in the long time term.

PPC (pay per click) and PPM (pay per mille) are two of the many paid methods to improve marketing goals. Nevertheless, organic methods like technical, on-page, and off-page SEO are.

Building a big presence and reliability on the internet is a matter of dedication, patience, and consistency. Never lose that vision of what SEO is supposed to do for your website and your brand.

Let The SEO Experts do The Hard Work

Setting modesty aside, who else can do the right thing for a delicate process like technical SEO? Only experts can deliver an optimized website in just a couple of weeks. So by hiring professional help, you are not spending money, you are investing money.

The difference between investing and spending is thinly separated for those who have no direction, inspiration, nor guidance. When investing you expect something in return. In business, it is almost always money in return AKA ROI (return on investment).

But in business, not everything is about money. Sometimes it is about taking chances to make a good impression on your audience. Other times it is about spreading the word as fast as possible. This is impossible for someone who is still learning how to do-it-myself.

In learning science, there is something called a learning curve. This is a term referring to the time you spend learning about a subject.

Since empiric education has a lot of time for trial-error, sometimes it takes months to be ready to understand every concept on digital marketing.

As the CEO of your business or your startup, you can delegate this task to experts. You can do it in two different ways. Either you add a digital marketing expert as a partner, or hire an expert as long as you need.

In both cases, you avoid losing time, effort, and even clients trying to learn how to manage SEO. Only experts have the experience to foresee and avoid possible poor outcomes. In business, sometimes you have only one chance to make a great impression.

There is only a first impression. Being prepared for the actions to come may give you a huge time advantage over your competitors. Only experts know how to do that the right way.

Why Brimar Online Marketing SEO Services?

You are very close to improving your website and your brand’s online presence. You only need to set an appointment with us and from that point on we will handle your marketing issues. In Brimar, setting modesty aside, we are experts on SEO and other digital marketing solutions.

Many digital agencies can offer the same products, sure. But how many digital agencies do you know are able to care for your brand as if it were theirs? That is the quality service we can offer you. Personal, granular, and global care to reach ASAP your marketing goals.

You just need to contact us by phone number 415-286-8852, or via email info@brimaronlinemaketing.com. Let’s get started making your brand reach the top of your business. You are a date away from success. Do not hesitate, go for it!