The different types of SEO include on-page, off-page and technical SEO, as well as local, e-commerce, and video SEO. Learn how to optimize them. On-page SEO focuses on the content of your website. Search engines prefer content that's easy to find, easy to understand, and really useful.
If your site's content doesn't target keywords or isn't generally useful, you may need better on-page SEO. Off-page SEO addresses factors that occur outside your website and that can influence your site's ranking. An important off-page factor is high-quality backlinks. If no one visits your website because no one talks about it, you may need better SEO outside of the page.
Technical SEO addresses factors in the site's backend that affect crawlability, user experience (UX), and site speed. Good technical SEO allows both search engines and people to navigate your site easily. Pages that load slowly, broken images or poor navigation impair the user experience and reflect poor technical SEO. A key part of technical SEO is ensuring that both humans and search engines can access your important pages.
For example, a clear and useful site architecture helps everyone find and understand your content. A major part of mobile search optimization is making it easier for users to use your site on their phones. This goes back to technical SEO: optimizing the code so that the mobile version of the site is fast and easy to use. Local businesses should continue to focus on internal, external and technical SEO.
The list above highlights specific actions affecting local rankings, in addition to standard SEO best practices. Content specialists can also update old content on your site if it underperforms. They could improve the page's SEO by suggesting the right words for the meta tags. It also includes technical SEO, such as optimizing the code and making sure that search engines can discover all the important pages.
They were used very frequently about 10 years ago, but since then Google has become very effective in penalizing sites that use this type of tactic. Technical SEO also largely belongs to this category, because it primarily involves changes to the website itself. Inbound links, also called backlinks, are a key signal used by Google to determine the popularity and authority of domains and web pages. Below is a more useful categorization of the different types of SEO techniques in 7 logical categories.
Keyword research is one of the absolute foundations of SEO. It's been crucial since the early days of search engines. Keyword research is a way to find out what keywords and topics you should target and write about. The art of content SEO involves creating content that is highly effective at responding to people's search queries. Another important part of content SEO is using your keywords and their synonyms in different places to ensure that search engines know what your content is about.
Technical SEO involves several changes that, for the most part, are invisible to users and usually don't affect the content in any way. Aspects that can also be included in the field of technical SEO include optimizations, such as making your site faster and work well on mobile devices. The optimization of robots, txt files, robot meta tags, site maps, the Google search console and other elements can be considered part of technical SEO. Backlinks are among the main ranking factors in Google and the use of different techniques to acquire backlinks is considered a fundamental part of SEO. Image SEO involves optimizing these images to increase their chances of appearing in relevant searches.
Video SEO involves optimizing videos, either on your own site or on YouTube, to rank higher in search engines. YouTube is actually a massive search engine in and of itself, as its more than 1 billion users regularly use the search box to search for videos. Some video SEO techniques are similar to standard on-page SEO, such as using a great keyword-oriented title and an attractive description. Everyone prefers to consume content differently: from long articles and short blogs to content you can interact with and practical guides.
There are many types of SEO content that you can take advantage of to delight and convert your audience. Before addressing each of them and their purpose, it's important to understand the relationship between SEO and content marketing. Long-form content is generally considered to have more than 1000 words and can therefore address the core of a topic, provide readers with more complete information and, at the same time, improve your ranking in Google search results. Creating short blog posts is an art form in and of itself, as it involves identifying key points, highlighting relevant information, and keeping content under 1000 words. The best GatherContent alternatives for content teams (2025 update).
On-page SEO, also sometimes referred to as on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing different aspects of your website. This can include body text, keywords, headers, meta titles, meta descriptions, images, and more. Incorporating on-page SEO into your marketing efforts is useful for search engines to understand the content of your site. And once Google understands your website, it can reward you by displaying it for search queries it deems relevant.
How does content quality affect page SEO? This simple way allows you to find more opportunities for building internal links. You can find pages and add links to them to help you improve your on-page SEO. How often should you update your page's SEO content? Off-page SEO is pretty much everything you do to improve your rankings, something that doesn't happen on your website. Off-page SEO is about creating exposure and trust for your company, which can ultimately lead to more visitors and sales.
Most off-page SEO work focuses on link building. If you don't know, link building is the practice of having other reputable websites link to your site. Is social media part of off-page SEO? Yes, social media is an important aspect of off-page SEO. Social media can help increase your website exposure and increase brand awareness.
Many companies will have the link to their website in their social media bios, which contributes to search engine rankings. It can also help create natural backlinks if people share your company's posts on social media. Technical SEO refers to actions taken to help search engines crawl your website and improve the user experience (UX). As search engines and their algorithms become more complex, these requirements change, meaning that this type of SEO is constantly evolving. To ensure that there are no problems with tracking and user experience (UX), your technical SEO efforts must be efficient.
Local SEO is a variation of SEO that focuses on a specific area, rather than a national focus. It's about increasing your online presence in your community and promoting your products or services to local customers. Some ways you can improve your local SEO are writing customized local landing pages, optimizing your local profiles, spamming Google Maps, creating local links, and more. How does proximity affect local SEO? When focusing on your local SEO, it's important to know that where you are exactly has a big impact on where you'll appear in user search results.
This shows that proximity plays a very important role in your local SEO, as it determines which users will find you and your competitors in the nearby area. This is important to consider when making specific decisions with your Google business profile, website, locations, and more. The time it takes to see the results of SEO campaigns varies from one website to another. You'll usually see the initial impact on keyword positions.
To see the full effect, it can take 3 to 6 months and even a year. Since many different tactics can boost SEO, some will move the needle faster than others, so the key is to be patient. Technical SEO involves making improvements to several technical aspects of your website to improve its visibility and accessibility to search engines and, ultimately, help them crawl and index it more efficiently. Unlike on-page and off-page SEO, which focuses on aspects such as content and links, technical SEO deals with your site's infrastructure.
Improving page speed, ensuring compatibility with mobile devices, correcting technical site errors, and creating a site map are important parts of SEO technician. On-page SEO involves optimizing the web pages on your site to improve your search engine rankings and generate more traffic. This process requires you to focus on many elements, such as meta description, structured markup, URL, content optimization, image alternative text, headers, internal links, website speed, and mobile optimization. The goal is to make your website easy to navigate and establish your business as trustworthy.
Among the various types of SEO, on-page SEO is essential for all businesses, regardless of size or sector, as it can significantly improve search engine rankings and boost organic traffic. Off-page SEO deals with all the activities outside your website that can increase your online presence and impact search engine rankings. The main objective is to improve the reputation and relevance of your website and create backlinks through activities such as link building, guest blogging on other blogs, social media marketing and influencer marketing. Off-page SEO is useful for all types of businesses. It's an especially good strategy for small businesses with limited resources.
It can help improve your online presence and attract customers without costly advertising campaigns. Technical SEO is the process of improving the technical aspects of your website to improve user experience and search engine ranking. Some technical SEO strategies include improving the technical elements of the website, such as speed, performance, security, schema markup, mobile responsiveness, site structure, and navigation. A fully optimized website is essential for all businesses, as it converts traffic into customers.
It can be particularly essential for companies with large websites with a large volume of content and pages, as they can be difficult to maintain and have complex technical problems, such as crawl errors, broken links and duplicate content. Technical SEO can solve these problems and help businesses grow. Global SEO is used to optimize the content of your website to reach a global audience, expand your reach, and operate your business in multiple countries and languages. Major global SEO strategies include content localization, website translation, keyword research for international audiences, ensuring crawling and indexing in multiple languages and regions, and building links.
Global SEO is a great opportunity for companies to expand their reach and internationalize. Global SEO can greatly benefit companies such as e-commerce, multinational corporations, content creators, and travel and tourism. White hat SEO refers to ethical optimization strategies that comply with search engine terms and services and improve a website's SERP rankings. These techniques are designed to improve the user experience and provide relevant, high-quality content, rather than relying on tricks to attract traffic.
Some white hat SEO strategies are creating high-quality content, mobile optimization, keyword optimization, and page optimization. White hat SEO can be useful for companies such as e-commerce websites, online retailers, specialized blogs, and digital service providers, who rely on online visibility and traffic to generate leads, conversions, and revenue. Unlike other types of SEO, black hat SEO is an unethical and manipulative optimization tactic used to obtain high search results. This type of optimization hurts the company, since it violates search engine guidelines.
Some black hat strategies include keyword stuffing, content concealment, landing pages, and paid links. While black hat SEO can provide a short-term boost in search engine rankings, companies should avoid using these SEO tactics and focus on ethical SEO techniques to achieve long-term results. This refers to various types of SEO strategies that fall between ethical white hat strategies and unethical black hat strategies. Gray hat strategies often represent a business risk, since they exceed the limits of search engine guidelines without violating them outright, as is the case with black hat SEO.
Some gray hat SEO techniques include buying expired domains, redirecting other domains to your site, and creating low-quality content. While these SEO tactics can lead to a short-term increase in site rankings, they can put companies at risk of receiving sanctions or being banned from search engines. Therefore, it is generally recommended that companies focus on ethical SEO techniques. Emeritus is committed to teaching the skills of the future, making high-quality education accessible and affordable to individuals, businesses and governments around the world.
To this end, it collaborates with more than 80 top-tier universities in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, India and China. Emeritus short courses, degree programs, professional certificates and programs for senior executives help people learn new skills and transform their lives, businesses and organizations. This type of SEO is widely used by small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), including physical and service area companies (SABs), as well as companies with multiple locations, such as franchises and chains. For location-dependent local businesses, such as restaurants, retailers, service providers, and other types of brick-and-mortar businesses and SABs, local SEO is undoubtedly the best type of SEO, as it allows you to compete directly in the local market for top positions on Google and Google Maps (and on smaller ad platforms, including Apple Maps).This type of SEO is also important for the accessibility of users with slower Internet speeds or with visual problems.
Some of the best types of content for SEO include well-optimized blog posts, informational articles, engaging videos, visually appealing infographics, and easy-to-use product pages. Business SEO takes into account the different types of SEO listed above and applies them to companies that reach hundreds or thousands of customers nationwide. For example, if people search for daisies and find a common edelweiss in search results, a higher-quality image would help them to distinguish the type of flower. By understanding what the different types of SEO are and how they should (or in some cases shouldn't) be used to boost your digital marketing strategy, you can more easily determine the best type of SEO to invest your resources in.
This information on the different types of SEO shows that companies have a variety of options at their disposal when it comes to increasing their online presence. In some cases, this type of search engine optimization can overlap with YouTube SEO, but it's not unique to YouTube. White hat SEO is the good type of SEO, or the type that only uses ethical and legitimate strategies and techniques to improve search engine rankings.
