Both onsite and offsite content are important for SEO, but is one better than the other?
As you likely already know, search engine optimization (SEO) is built on a foundation of content. Without content, it’s nearly impossible to increase your search rankings. There are, however, multiple types of content that are important for your campaign: onsite content, which typically lives on your onsite blog, and offsite content, which typically manifests as external guest posts linking back to your site.
These content types serve very different purposes, but is one more important than the other?
Onsite Content
Onsite content can take many forms, including blog posts, whitepapers, press releases, and longform essays. With it, you can add new pages for your site to be indexed, optimize for specific keyword phrases, and provide an anchor point for all your external links to point to. You can also use them to support calls-to-action (CTAs), which can increase your conversion rate. Without them, an SEO strategy can’t survive; you’ll need to produce at least one new post a week to remain relevant, and it’s ideal to have tons of strong onsite content so you can build more powerful links.
Offsite Content
The main purpose of offsite content is to help you build links to your primary domain. By guest posting on external publishers, you’ll have a chance to include a link back to a strong piece of content on your site. These links cumulatively increase your domain authority and individual page authority, which in turn will increase your rankings in search engines; in other words, without offsite content, it will be hard to rank up for even your most relevant terms. Offsite content has some nice bonus effects, including generating referral traffic and increasing your brand exposure and reputation.
The Verdict
Ultimately, you need both onsite content and offsite content to develop a well-rounded SEO strategy. Offsite content has the power to grant you a slightly higher return on investment, since it serves multiple functions, but without onsite content, it’s powerless.
If you need help revisiting your content marketing or SEO strategy, contact Quez Media today for a free consultation!
