The Two Pillars of SEO: Learn How-To Use These Principals to Super-Power your Rank on Google and Other Search Engines
Prefix to Two Main Pillars of SEO: I realize, that the title of this article is a bit cheeky, or audacious. Will implementing these pillars or principles really get you ranked? The skeptic in me is saying heck noooo, I hate the internet it’s stupid, stupid, stupid, but the SEO genius deep in my digital soul is deliberating a resounding YES , with a but, a biggol
BUTTTT!
Check our video on the basics of SEO
SEO’n Ain’t Easy
If you’ve done any amount of research on SEO, or you’ve been doing it for a while you know, SEO’n ain’t easy, it’s downright difficult and takes a tremendous amount of time and patience. So, to be clear, implementing these pillars of SEO I outline in this article will help you rank on google and other search engines, but it will take some tenacity, skill, and dedication to SEO o o o , echoing sound effect.
In this article, I’ll cover what the two main pillars of SEO are, and touch on utilizing them to rank on Google and other search engines
What is SEO?
For giggles, I thought I’d go over what SEO is, as that seems like a prelim to any subject on SEO, no matter how complex the subject may be. Just SEO games we like to play with Google to help with website search engine ranking. If by chance you know what SEO, (I’m sure you do if you looked up the main pillars of SEO)
Two Pillars of SEO
The content below covers the two main pillars of SEO and sub pillars or blocks that make up those pillars. Now, before we continue, I’ve read, and maybe you’ve seen them as well, several articles that cover more than two pillars. One such article is PathfinderSEO.com.
However, I’ve studied and written several pieces (ie, a page I originally published about six years ago, when I wrote this article in 2021, here is a link to that content on SEO) of content on this subject and still feel there are only two main pillars, with other elements that fall under those main pillars/categories. The two main pillars we will discussing are on-page or more accurately on-site SEO, and off-page or off-site SEO.
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On-Site SEO
As the name suggests, on-site SEO deals with any SEO or search engine optimization (I specify this, again, for search engine, not the human reader who based on your knowledge I can almost guarantee you know SEO is an acronym for search – engine – optimization.) that is done on your website. Pretty simple, right? Well, yes, the premise is simple however as you probably know it is much more complex than that. So, now we’ll jump into the subcategories that make up on-site SEO.
Content
As you may have guessed. Content is going to be one of the first things we will discuss as a principal of on-site SEO. You may have heard the term, ‘content is king’ and that statement couldn’t be more true. You can have the best SEO and just fudge the content then you’ll be scratching your head when you’re not coming up for the terms you want.
SEO has changed exponentially over the past five years. You can’t just throw some keywords on a page and get backlinks to rank. Now you need real rich content, not thin content on your website with keyword stuffing to trick search engines. It’s a full-time job keep your content up to date and making sure your content is useful and thorough
I realize you may be wondering what falls into content, as that kind of a broad term. I could go into such detail on content, you’d have Ph.D. on the subject after I’m done, but we still have a lot to cover and this article, however complex will just scratch the surface of most of the elements of effective SEO.
Images
Images on your website make a very key component of on-site SEO—the visual component. Visuals are not only important for humans and more specifically the human-to-computer connection, but also computer (ie search engines) connection to your website.
Another important item to discuss regarding images, includes the alt information, such as alt description, alt title, and alt text. all contribute to helping search engines understand your images as well as assist with image search engine optimization—another very important factor for ranking and overall exposure.
This is an example of an image. In case you were wondering what an image was.
Titles
SEO titles, include H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6. With the H1 representing the main title of the page, H2 main subtitle or sections of the page, H3 subheaders under each section, and H4, H5 & H6 as subheadings under the H3s. These titles help to not only structure your content for search engines but are also beneficial to your readers, which will ultimately lead to more time reading your content.
Additionally, titles are not only utilized in the page structure but also in your website structure. Where H1 represents the website title, H2 represents possibly the main services or products your business offers, and H3 are subcategories under those main services and so on with the H4, H5, and H6.
Furthermore, titles are very important for adding important keywords to your website. As search engines and people see the title as something of importance and will weigh them accordingly. And although you as the reader cannot see that “titles” is an H4, you can deduce that it is important by the size and the weight of the text. Search engines, like humans, look at the styling of your titles to gauge the weight of importance that title holds to the writer and the readers alike.
Voice
Relate to your readers and engage search engines in one fell swoop. Utilizing a standard voice on your website will help customers and search engines understand your content better and ultimately make you rank like never before.
What is Business Voice
First off, if you’re not sure what I mean by business voice, I’ll give you a quick rundown on what this entails. Business voice is how a business relates to its consumers, this can be done through text and imagery. It’s how you can almost automatically notice an Apple advertisement vs let’s say Microsoft. The two are both tech companies but have very different representations of company and consumer culture.
Why is business voice important for search engine optimization
For SEO, business voice is a very interesting item to discuss for several reasons, because of a few reasons. For one, I feel this is an often-overlooked piece to SEOs for most new blogs and websites that are not ranking, and two search engine AI is getting better and better at reading business voice. Google, for instance, is working every day at making their AI reading systems understand how we communicate and specifically how consumers relate to brands, how we learn and interact with the world around us. A perfect example of reading and correction software in Grammarly.com
Structure
Next on our pillars of SEO journey, we’ll cover structure and how a well-structured website and webpages will help you rank on Google. This subject, like most of the items in this list, could be assigned to a blog post or maybe even a small book. However, I’ll try my best to cover this in this section. First let’s break the structure into two categories, one website structure, and a single-page structure.
Website structure
Website structure includes the structure format of your website, the framework, the plugins or code you’re utilizing to build your website. For SEO website structure, this will include items such as silo structuring, meta information, SSL, sub-domain structure, CSS formatting, dom elements, schema, and HTML utilization. As I said, all these topics could be covered over several blog posts or a small book, however, I hope this gives you an idea of how website structure works and what is involved.
Single-Page Structure
Single page structure on the other hand handles the structure, you guessed it, on-page. This involves titles, images
Internal Linking
External Linking
Relevant content connections
Trust-Factor or Trustability
Site Authority
Meta Data
Social Linking
NAP
Website Speeed
Design
User-Experience
Element Spacing
Pillars of SEO—Time space and the reality there within
Off-Site SEO
Next on pillars of SEO (for Google!). Same as the aforementioned on-site SEO, off-site SEO is pretty self-explanatory. Off-site SEO represents any SEO done off-site. As we did with on-site SEO we will also break down the building blocks that make up off-site SEO of the pillars of SEO (again for Google!).
Social Reputation
Inbound Links
Inbound Link Volume
Inbound Link Authority or Quality
NAP