Others don’t enjoy the same status and are often relegated to obscurity. They’re found on the second, third, or tenth pages of search results—a place where busy internet browsers rarely ever venture. The difference between these two types of websites isn’t luck or some form of digital wizardry—it’s search engine optimization (SEO). In B2B industries alone, organic SEO search is the largest channel, drumming up nearly half of all revenue.
Today, SEO is more than just a buzzword. It’s not a single concept; it’s a wide collection of techniques that maximize your website’s presence in search engine results pages (SERPs). It makes your website more visible, helps it reach more prospects, and, most importantly—is the cornerstone of any effective digital marketing strategy.
However, for SEO to be fully effective, you must apply the right one to your business website. Will a simple on-site SEO strategy skew the algorithm in your favour? Or do you need a more technical SEO strategy to climb to the top?
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll discuss the different types of SEO services so you can choose the right one for your business.
What Are the Types of SEO?
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO involves optimizing your webpage for search results and visitors—this means websites with effective on-page SEO have a higher chance of climbing to the top of search engine rankings and attracting user engagement. On-page optimization entails weaving strong and relevant keywords strategically and naturally into your content. This does two things:
- It helps search engines understand what your website content and its purpose is
- It helps search engines align it with users’ search intent
Some on-page SEO best practices include:
- A compelling title tag optimized to the main keyword, helping a search engine match it to user needs and prioritize your website in search results
- An equally compelling meta description that includes the relevant keyword and highlights the purpose of your website, thus maximizing click-through rates
- Relevant internal links to guide visitors through your website by connecting them to related user pages—while also helping search engines discover more of your content
- Unique, original, and high-value content that addresses the intent of the user and makes them want to keep reading
- Logical heading and structure with clear H1s, H2s, and H3s that help users navigate your content smoothly
- Well-optimized images with descriptive alt text and compressed formats that help your website load faster and improve user experience due to accessibility
- A short, readable, and keyword-optimized URL structure that helps Google parse your website’s content better and suggest it to relevant users
You’ll also need to optimize on-page SEO by paying attention to other elements, including mobile and desktop accessibility, user experience, bounce rate, page loading speed, and dwell time.
Based on the keyword you target for each page and the user intent you address, a well-planned on-page SEO strategy helps you drive targeted traffic. The result? High-quality leads that are more likely to convert into customers or subscribers.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO services take your SEO efforts beyond the limits of your website. They work on external factors to improve your website’s credibility, relevance, and authority—elements that are essential to ranking high in SERPs. You’re probably thinking: why does it matter whether your website is as authoritative off-site as it is on-site? Because major engines like Google have strict guidelines that size up a website’s off-site trustworthiness to decide whether it can be recommended to users.
For example, Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines insist on “Reputation Research.” This involves inspecting the extent to which a website is mentioned in online reviews, expert sources, authority news sites, and Wikipedia sites. It helps Google ascertain whether a website is as credible as it claims. One of the most common tactics for good off-page SEO is ensuring your website follows sound backlinking practices.
Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links to your website appearing on other websites. Google views them as votes of confidence that attest to a site’s credibility and relevance. When you acquire natural backlinks from reputable websites, you get an instant jump in your off-page SEO, and your ranking in SERPs will likely improve.
Besides websites, social media can also help you optimize your off-page SEO. When you promote your website on platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, you build backlinks that ramp up your visibility. Some other off-page SEO techniques include:
Being a credible data source: By citing accurate statistics or well-researched data on your page, your content becomes a valuable resource for several users, including writers, bloggers, and researchers. As a result, you encourage other websites to link and credit your website as the original data source. Since these backlinks are organic, they come with a higher link equity.
Guest posting: Writing guest posts on authoritative industry websites can benefit your business in more ways than one. Besides boosting your brand’s presence in front of new audiences, you get a chance to link back to your website naturally.
Influencer marketing: Businesses typically partner with individuals with clout in their industry to review a product or blog, and then include a link to your website. Such contextual backlinks are rich in trustworthiness due to the influencer’s reach, signaling to Google that your website is worth recommending to its users.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO optimizes your website’s infrastructure to help search engines store and organize its content in the best possible way. Compared to on-page and off-page SEO, technical SEO works quietly in the background. It helps enhance a website’s performance in search rankings through strategies related to user experience.
For example, making a website faster or optimizing it for mobile devices are ways to signal to Google that your website offers a positive user experience—ultimately resulting in your site ranking well on SERPs. Additionally, technical SEO entails using proper meta tags and having a well-structured site architecture.
But how can search engines detect what kind of browsing experience a website offers? Here’s where things get a bit technical. They use methods known as crawling and indexing to discover and rank your website.
When Google’s bots discover a newly published or updated website or content page, they index the pages, i.e., store and organize the crawled data in Google’s database. Websites that are easily crawlable and indexable snag a better spot on Google’s search engine results pages. Here’s how technical SEO can help improve a site’s crawlability and indexability:
Key Technical SEO Tactics
Site Audit: SEO agencies may perform a thorough technical audit on your website. A technical SEO audit includes using SEO audit tools to identify pages that aren’t optimal for crawling.
Internal Linking: Well-planned internal linking strategies can help make a page more crawlable and indexable. For example, strategically linking your site’s secondary and deep-set pages to the homepage makes it easier for Google to crawl and index them, helping them become more discoverable.
Sitemap: Creating an XML sitemap can act as a digital lodestar, guiding search engines to better explore your website’s structure and pages.
Canonical Tags: Canonical tags help search platforms identify the original or preferred version of your web page among a sea of duplicates. This is necessary when multiple URLs reflect identical content, potentially confusing web engines and diluting your website’s SEO rankings. However, with canonical tags, they can better determine which page to index and show in search results.
Another important element of good technical SEO includes ensuring your website has a well-planned structure that makes it easy for users to navigate. A flat web structure is an ideal type of site architecture. It ensures all web pages are well-connected to each other, naturally guiding the user from one to another. This also makes your website easily crawlable, as it prevents orphan pages—pages without any internal links leading to them—from existing. Some other tactics of technical SEO are:
- Breadcrumb Navigation: This is a key aspect of technical SEO. It creates a guided trail that the user can use to navigate back to the starting point of the website. Since it boosts both SEO and user experience, your site has a better chance of ranking higher on search pages.
- HTTPS: Using a secure protocol like HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol secure) instead of HTTP adds an extra layer of security for web users, helping improve the trustworthiness of your site.
- Unique Pages: Creating unique pages on your website is vital. Duplicate pages of content can hurt your site’s SEO, leading to backlink dilution and causing undesirable URLs to rank in search results.
Technical SEO should be your focus if you want to focus on fixing your website’s backend structure—whether by improving your site’s overall architecture or its crawlability.
Local SEO
Local SEO helps your website rank higher in local business searches, i.e., when someone nearby searches for a product or service you’re offering. It is a more targeted SEO service that lets you easily reach and capture geographically close leads.
Most local SEO tactics focus on optimizing a “Google My Business” or GMB profile. This profile reflects your business’ most up-to-date information, including your service description, business hours, exact address, contact information, and customer reviews. The more complete your GMB is, the more optimized it will be for local SEO and rank at the top of local searches. Besides GMB maintenance, you can also use the following tactics to rank in local searches:
- Find relevant keywords with a high search volume among local users. For example, to find a plumbing business in Toronto, ON, users may type in “reliable plumbers near me” in their Google search. When you optimize your website and GMB to this keyphrase, your business is more likely to feature in local search results.
- Create uniform “NAP” citations, i.e., include or update your business name, address, and phone number information consistently across all online directories and social media marketing platforms.
- Stack up positive customer reviews and ratings on online directories and your Google Business Profile to signal credibility and authority
- Create distinct landing pages for multi-service locations, making it easier for Google to crawl and index location-specific web pages.
Enterprise SEO
Enterprise SEO entails administering SEO for major organizations with websites featuring thousands of web pages. It occurs at a much larger scale than traditional SEO. For example, a page like GitHub has nearly 80 million pages indexed in Google—this isn’t the result of small-scale traditional SEO approaches, but the combined effort of supersized SEO practices through automation and ongoing technical SEO maintenance.
The focus is also on ensuring brand consistency across global markets and integrating SEO practices within overarching business objectives. Enterprise SEO campaigns differ across organizations’ diverse needs, but some common elements include:
- A scalable keyword strategy that uses enterprise-level SEO tools to identify and optimize keyword opportunities across multiple service and product categories
- Focused keyword grouping tactics that categorize user intent into informational, transactional, and navigational groups, and assign them across pages at scale
- Scalable content marketing techniques including modular templates to create consistent and speedy content—whether for product and landing pages or blog articles
- Developing content pillars with cluster content to establish topical authority across markets
- Capturing high-authority backlinks through thought leadership content in the form of proprietary research, case studies, or white papers
- Running large-scale PR digital campaigns to stack links from trusted news sources
- Using HTML attributes like hreflang tags to optimize multi-language content, distribute content across local and global markets, and avoid duplicate content issues across various regions
Enterprise SEO also heavily automates its SEO tasks and uses data-driven practices to monitor SEO KPIs.
E-commerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO uses a combination of techniques to boost the presence of online stores and drive organic traffic and sales through strategic positioning techniques. Some of these techniques include:
Keyword research and optimization: To boost ecommerce SEO, understanding user search intent is crucial. Businesses must determine whether their visitor’s intent is navigational, informational, commercial, or transactional. The idea is to target high-intent keywords that resonate with commercial and transactional mindsets. This helps drive users who actually want to make a purchase instead of people just browsing for information.
Building strong backlinks from other websites that link to your site: Many e-commerce sites stack backlinks by asking suppliers or distributors to link to their stores. You can also claim unlinked mentions on websites that mention your e-commerce brand but don’t link to your website.
Maintaining an easy-to-navigate site structure with internally linked pages: This can help your users find a product or service more easily from your homepage. Use navigable drop-downs and distinct category pages that organize all products well and link these to your home page. Doing this not only makes navigation easy but also boosts a site’s SEO performance.
Quality content that offers genuine value and guidance to potential customers: Besides targeting bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content, you also enhance SEO by sharing informative or entertaining content (e.g., product comparisons) on social media platforms. This helps widen reach among potential customers who may be interested in your products and services.
Mobile SEO
Mobile devices are the present (and the future) of online content—a whopping 73.11% of all Google visitors come from mobile accounts. Google’s latest algorithm also serves users who use their mobile devices for online queries.
To stay up-to-date with this trend, your website must be optimized for Google’s Mobile-First Index. This index prioritizes webpages that have a mobile-responsive design in the search results. This means that even if someone were to type a query on their desktop, they would receive webpage results from Google’s mobile index. Mobile SEO ensures your webpage ticks all the boxes for mobile optimization. Here are some signs that your website is mobile-optimized:
- Your website’s content loads quickly on mobile devices
- It doesn’t hide or distort resources in mobile versions
- It automatically adjusts webpages to all screen sizes, from smartphones to tablets
- It appropriately redirects links and features functional internal links
- It features readable font sizes and well-spaced buttons for finger-tapping
- It showcases concise and reader-friendly content through clear structure, headings, and bullet points
This kind of responsive design ensures that your website is well-equipped to handle traffic from mobile devices without compromising user experience.
White-Hat SEO
There are several ways to enhance a website’s SEO and rank well on search page results—but not all are ethical. Some SEO techniques use manipulative methods to climb to the top quickly, often violating search engine guidelines.
White Hat SEO plays by the rules, using only ethical and straightforward techniques to bolster search engine page results. It keeps the integrity of your website intact without inviting penalties. Google has strict guidelines that encourage an SEO expert to follow white-hat SEO tactics to improve a site’s rankings. Most of these focus on delivering original, user-friendly, engaging, and valuable content to users.
White Hat SEO Measures Include:
- Optimizing titles and headings in a webpage to keywords that mirror users’ interests. These keywords may also appear in prominent locations, such as alt and link texts.
- Creating “people-first” content to rank higher among Google’s automated ranking systems. This means upholding the E-E-A-T principle aimed toward providing Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness to website visitors.
- Building crawlable links via a network of internal links that helps Google find more pages on your website
- Using ethical backlinking practices by partnering with authoritative websites and guest blogging methods instead of unnatural or deceptive practices aimed at gaming the algorithm.
- Maintaining technical SEO and conducting regular site audits to ensure proper site and URL structure.
Black-Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO violates the same ethical ideals that White Hat SEO follows. It uses unethical and deceptive tactics to trick search engine algorithms instead of providing genuine value to users. While it may lead to quick results, it’s not worth the risk.
Engaging in such tactics almost always results in severe penalties enforced by Google—even to the extent of being de-indexed from search engines. Here are some common Black Hat SEO practices that could get your website banned from search engines:
- Link Farming: Using several spammy or irrelevant sites to link back to your website, or participating in shady paid link schemes without properly disclosing the source
- Stuffing Keywords: While using keywords is integral to SEO, overstuffing content or web pages with keywords, often unnaturally, and in a way that disrupts readability, is a definite no-no
- Hidden Texts and Links: Misleading search engines by using tiny font sizes, hiding text, or using CSS tricks to conceal links
- Using Private Blog Networks (PBNs): Building a network of fake websites only to create backlinks to your site. They leave clear digital footprints, making it easy for Google’s razor-sharp algorithms to trace them.
- Cloaking: Displaying regular content to users while hiding spammy, keyword-stuffed content to rank higher in SERPs
- Incorrect Meta Tags: Using misleading meta descriptions for clickbait
- Content scraping: Publishing plagiarized content from other websites without citing a source
- Doorway Pages: Creating web pages solely for keyword stuffing and redirecting users to other relevant pages
Gray Hat SEO
Gray Hat SEO exists in an ethically ambiguous space—somewhere between the straight-laced tactics of White Hat SEO and underhanded Black Hat techniques. It doesn’t flout Google’s SEO guidelines quite as blatantly as Black Hat SEO, but it is still considered borderline risky. Even if engaging in Gray Hat SEO methods may not result in extreme consequences such as de-indexation, it is a slippery slope that can easily lead to Black Hat-like activities, especially if a search engine updates its algorithm.
Common Gray Hat Tactics
- Clickbait Titles: Sensational headlines written solely to drive clicks that don’t reflect the true story
- Paid Guest Posts/Reviews: Stacking up backlinks from review sites or paid guest posts without properly disclosing them
- Content Spinning: Rehashing content from other websites without adding fresh angles or value
- Expired Domain Redirects: Boosting link equity by redirecting high-authority expired domains to your site.
International SEO
International SEO serves the varied (and often more complex) needs of businesses with a global audience. Such businesses typically employ international SEO to optimize their website in a way that is relevant to and drives traffic across countries, regions, and multi-language users. As a result, it involves using these key SEO-driven components:
Geo-Targeting: This tactic uses SEO tools like Google Search Console’s International Targeting to choose a country-specific domain (ccTLDs). For example, a Canadian ecommerce brand might use .ca for regional websites and .co.uk for UK audiences.
Hreflang Tags: When a website’s content is spread across multiple regions, managing language settings becomes more complex. Here’s where hreflang tags help—they signal Google which version of a page to show users based on the region from which they’re visiting the site.
Localized Content: Optimizing a global website with translated content isn’t enough—it also needs to be optimized to suit cultural nuances and incorporate regional slang (if any), as well as meet currency requirements, units of measure, and payment methods (for e-commerce stores).
Country-Specific Keyword Research: A relevant keyword in one country may not be as relevant in others. Global business websites need unique keywords for each country’s website—SEO tools that offer regional settings can help you find search terms that are most relevant to that location.
Sound Technical SEO: It’s important to use content delivery networks (CDNs) to ensure your websites load quickly for users worldwide. CDNs help your website connect through the web visitor’s nearest available server, improving website speed and minimizing disruptions.
Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a malicious tactic aimed at pulling down the rankings of a competing website through SEO-driven sabotage. The website at the receiving end of negative SEO may face penalties or reduced trust signals without even engaging in any Black Hat SEO practices—all because they’re triggered by someone else.
That said, negative SEO isn’t all that easy to pull off, especially against well-maintained websites with a good SEO ranking. Regardless, it’s prudent to be aware of common negative SEO activities to protect your website against them. They typically include the following:
Duplicate Content Triggers: Bad actors may copy your site’s content at scale and repost it consistently across several low-authority websites. It misleads Google into thinking your website isn’t the original source, which may potentially lower your rankings. However, with Google’s smart algorithms, this can be harder to carry out than one thinks.
Backlink Attacks: Creating toxic backlinks from spam or pornographic sites that link back to your website could disturb Google’s spam filters and result in penalties.
Click Fraud: Triggering bots to click on your ads could drain your ad budget quickly while your conversion rate remains empty. Someone could also direct low-engagement traffic to your website, mirroring high bounce rates—which could hurt your SERP rankings.
However, cases of negative SEO are extremely rare. Few SEO companies would indulge in such risky activities, considering Google has stepped up its measures to detect such attacks. The fact that it also requires massive efforts—both in terms of scale and coordination—to pull off can act as a strong deterrent for potential troublemakers.
Other Various Types of SEO
Aside from the above kinds of SEO, specialized SEO branches are emerging as the online space becomes more multimedia-focused.
Image SEO: This entails techniques to optimize images so that they rank well in Google Images or other visual search results. They often involve using descriptive, keyword-focused filenames, creating alt text descriptions, writing captions, and submitting image sitemaps to help Google index images easily.
Video SEO: Video SEO helps your content rank high on all video platforms, including Google searches and YouTube. Key tactics to improve video SEO include optimizing thumbnails, adding transcripts and closed captions, and relevant, keyword-rich video titles.
Voice Search SEO: This niche SEO technique can help you optimize spoken queries for digital assistants, including Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, or Cortana. They’re best optimized by adding long-tail, question-based keywords to mimic conversational language. Using local SEO techniques and mobile-responsive features also helps your website rank higher.
Choosing the Right Type of SEO for Your Business
Choosing the most suitable SEO for your business, whether it’s local, technical, or enterprise-level, all depends on three key factors:
- Your business objectives
- The audience/demographic you wish to target
- The content format you’re aiming for
It takes more than a single SEO type to build a strong campaign and a long-term online presence that drives consistent traffic, leads, and conversions.
There may not be a perfect science to choosing the right SEO mix for your business—but at Merged Media, we come pretty close. We specialize in bespoke SEO planning that best reflects your business voice and drives bottom-line results. Whether you want to refine local SEO practices or aim for national visibility, we help you rise above the noise. Book a strategy call with us today.
