What Are the Different Types of SEO?

Before we start with types of SEO let’s just first understand what is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is the process of increasing the number of visitors on your site by ranking better on Google SERPs for relevant keywords or search phrases within your domain. Read more on What is SEO to get more insights.

In this post, we will explain to you 12 different types of SEO & how they are important to plan your organic search strategy to rank higher in organic search listings amongst your competitors.

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1. On-Page SEO

All the measures you take to make your web page rank higher on search engines falls under this umbrella. On-Page SEO includes authoring high-quality content with the sole purpose of it proving helpful to your website visitors, adding meta tags to help Google bots better understand your content, using HTML tags to highlight headings and other content elements and ensuring there are no broken links or duplicate content/pages. Cleaning up the URL structure and having an ordered naming system for various similar pages that fall under one category, choosing images that are not too big while writing descriptive file names, etc. are just a few other on-page SEO techniques. If you want to know more about it, you can read our detailed post on what is on-page SEO.

On-page SEO refers to the technical processes that go into optimizing a page’s tags, content, images, internal links, and other elements that improve its visibility for search engines.

It is one of the most important types of SEO in digital marketing that directly affects your website’s rankings and overall visibility. There are many elements that go into optimizing on-page SEO for a page. A checklist for on-page SEO can help you in refining not only your page, but also its overall functionality. Here are the most important factors to consider for on-page SEO:

• Site Speed: How fast your website loads can make a lot of difference in reducing the bounce rates. It is a very crucial factor for on-page SEO. Using on-page SEO techniques like optimizing HTML codes, refining meta tags, reducing the redirects on pages, and optimizing the size of media on pages significantly fastens your site’s loading speed.
  

• Image Optimization – This on-page SEO technique involves two factors – compressing the size of images and media on your website to ensure a fast loading speed and optimizing the alt text of images for better visibility to search engine crawlers. Using the right keywords in alt text for images can significantly boost your page’s visibility for search engines, and improve your website’s rankings.
  

Internal Linking – This on-page SEO process involves enriching your webpages with internal links. Internal links can help search engine crawlers seamlessly explore your website’s architecture, discover related and new content, and rank pages based on their relevance. Additionally, this process also helps the users easily access relevant content on your website without any additional clicks.

2. Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to everything you do outside of your site to fare better and feature higher up in Google’s SERPs. It includes working on external ranking factors like building links from trusted sites in the same domain as you, successful social media marketing, having customers give you a positive review on various online forums, etc. If you want to know more about it, you can read our detailed post on off-page SEO techniques.

Off-page SEO is another type of SEO that carries a lot of weight in determining your website’s ranking. Off-page SEO is every SEO activity you carry outside of your website. This can include obtaining backlinks from authoritative websites in your domain, social media advertising, reviews, and much more.

The most important activity in off-page SEO optimization is link building and obtaining backlinks. Link building is a process that involves getting links for your website on other relevant websites to display your content’s value and authority to the search engines.

Getting backlinks for your website from authoritative websites in your domain is a great indicator of the value of your content’s quality, authority, and relevance for search engine algorithms. While it may be difficult to measure the exact impact of one backlink, getting one from an authoritative website can significantly boost your rankings and domain authority. 

Another factor in off-page SEO is social media. Social media channels can help in improving your traffic. If there is a good amount of chatter on social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., about your website or its content, search engines make it easier to find your website. Having content that is shared a lot on social media or generates conversation can bring you a lot of organic traffic, which boosts your website’s SEO.

3. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is largely to help Google bots successfully crawl, interpret and index all the pages of your site for future use. Creating a thorough XML sitemap, making your site mobile-friendly, adding structured data to help web crawlers sort and categorize your pages based on the type of content they carry are just some of the techniques used. Do refer to our deep-dive post on what is technical SEO for more insights.

Technical SEO is a type of SEO that involves on-site auditing and optimizing of technical elements to improve the website’s performance and SERPs. Technical SEO mainly focuses on improving the functionality and efficiency of your website’s performance. For instance, search engines like Google often give preference for rankings to websites that have a very responsive design and crawlable website architecture. Search engines also give preferences to websites that have a seamless mobile responsive website. Having weak technical SEO on your website can even result in getting penalized by search engines.

There are many elements involved in this type of on-page SEO. For instance, using a secure HTTPS connection and caching information for any media on your page can improve the page load time. Other technical SEO elements involve uploading sitemaps, refining the HTML code, meta tags, alt texts, and more.

Another important aspect of technical SEO is to optimize the HTML on each page. A process like schema markup tells the search engine algorithms what exactly is on your webpages. This helps the crawlers easily figure out the purpose of your page, its contents, and more. Similarly, using the right type of redirects for your page can also improve its health.

4. White-Hat SEO

White-hat SEO refers to all the optimization techniques which abide by Google’s search engine guidelines. Although one needs to be patient to see results, they are sustainable and create genuine goodwill around your brand. Besides, there is no risk of your site getting banned or bumped down in the search results if there is a new algorithm change. All in all, white-hat SEO is low-risk and high rewards if you do it right. Examples of white-hat SEO techniques include authoring useful and relevant content after doing extensive keyword research, earning links from high-authority sites based on the merit of your on-page content, etc. 

5. Black-Hat SEO

Black-hat SEO is the exact opposite of white-hat SEO in that it finds and takes advantage of any loopholes or weaknesses in Google’s search algorithm to rank better on its SERP. It does not stick to the search engine’s list of SEO dos and don’ts and resorts to spammy or paid link building methods, keyword stuffing, showing different content to bots/crawlers and humans (called cloaking), etc. to get ahead. It goes without saying that black-hat SEO can get your site blacklisted or its rankings to drop so it is best avoided. Besides, these high-risk SEO techniques give you only short-lived results.

Here in this video, Matt Cutts explained how can a website compete using White Hat Techniques rather than using Black Hat Techniques.

6. Grey-Hat SEO

Grey-hat SEO tactics are often used by SEO agencies due to pressure to see quick results from a client and fall in between white and black hat SEO in terms of approach. Although Google’s webmaster guidelines do not explicitly say that such methods are prohibited, they are still frowned upon and can lead to undesired search outcomes. Examples of this type of SEO include clickbait content that is sensational yet mediocre and of no value to the user, excessive and suspicious link exchange between sites, paid reviews, etc. Again, it is best to stay far away from such underhanded SEO tactics.

7. Negative SEO

Among the different types of SEO, this is by far the most detestable and unethical. Negative SEO is done with the intention of making your competitor’s search rankings suffer so that you yourself can take their place or benefit from it. Negative SEO methods include hacking into someone’s site and building a suspiciously high number of low-quality links to it, posting negative feedback or reviews about them in various online forums, etc. Needless to say, negative SEO can even lead to legal ordeals if the one practicing it is caught. Check out this video to know more about Negative SEO. 

 8. Local SEO

One of the essential types of SEO is for local businesses. Thousands of businesses require customers to visit their physical locations, even though many operate entirely online. You will not make any money if customers do not come in the door. The better you present the content to search engines, the more likely they will show it to potential customers. Including a region or city in your content, like page titles, descriptions, and keywords, and displaying awards and trust symbols for the visitors can help you convert local leads into paying customers more efficiently. In addition, if your customers have a positive experience with your brand, they are more likely to recommend it to others.

9. Mobile SEO

The process of optimizing a website for search engines while also ensuring that it is viewable flawlessly on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is known as mobile SEO. A negative mobile phone experience with a brand can turn off a potential customer for good. This type of SEO is essential because it allows you to reach out to your customers at the right time and in the right place, giving them the best experience possible. Mobile optimization helps you analyze your site’s design, structure, page speed, and other significant factors to ensure mobile visitors are not turned away by any point of information.

10. Ecommerce SEO

The process of optimizing online stores of businesses is ecommerce SEO. Ecommerce SEO encompasses all aspects of the SEO trend of the horizon. It’s a real business that requires you to make money and sell products while expanding them over time. Millions of queries are answered every day by search engines, many of which are related to ecommerce. Ecommerce SEO benefits you in increasing the traffic and ranking of your website.

11. International SEO

Optimizing your website to drive organic traffic from multiple regions and languages is the goal of international SEO. You must allow your target audience to make purchases in their currencies and their language, and you must address them appropriately in their cultural context to do international SEO well. If you list dates and times, make sure you use the correct format for their location. Speak to them in their native tongue if they have any concerns. The goal of international SEO is to provide your target audience with a positive experience on your website.

12. Content SEO

If you have been haphazardly producing content, hoping that some of it will rank, it’s time to commit to a more organized content SEO strategy. Content SEO works best when the content is high-quality and optimized to rank high in search engines. It will attract search engine traffic and efficiently achieve the targets. The overall goal of content SEO is to create SEO-friendly content that search engines understand while satisfying the user’s intent and keeping them happy. When it comes to content SEO, it’s important to remember that optimizing your existing content develops a strategy that fits best for you.

13. YouTube SEO 

YouTube SEO is exactly what it sounds like. YouTube is one of the most used search engines in the world. The trick to gaining views on YouTube goes beyond creating good videos. There are a lot of elements involved in publishing content on YouTube that alerts the algorithms about various things. YouTube SEO involves enriching the metadata of the video, optimizing YouTube channels, SEO-friendly video descriptions, creating attractive thumbnails and enriching them with metadata, and much more.

One of the key elements involved in YouTube SEO is having an SEO-friendly title and description for the videos. The description should complement your video and tell the algorithms about the content, its relevance, and its purpose. Having a longer keyword-rich description does the job in this regard. Additionally, adding meta tags and hashtags relevant to the video also helps in boosting the video’s visibility to the YouTube engine algorithms.

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