Building up a lean startup requires some strategic planning. The digital marketing side is one area where a wise brain often outweighs a big budget. In reality, it doesn’t cost anything more than some of your time to achieve quality SEO results for your business’s site.
Remember, SEO isn’t so much a product as it is a service. It’s possible to give yourself similar results to what an agency can provide if you learn a bit about how search engine optimization works.
Not everything will be possible without paying — and, of course, some stuff will take too long to learn. But, you can considerably boost your ranking placement in Google by executing some of the simple SEO tactics mentioned below which are provided by the expert team at Danang Digital.
1. Perform Blog Outreach & Write Your Own Guest Posts
You are a small business owner, correct?
That title gives you an insane amount of credibility in some online publications. Whether it’s a general site like SmallBizTrends.com or a niche-specific website, your perceived authority can gain you publishing access. Become an expert contributor at a website that’s already ranking well in Google for keywords related to your business.
Pro tips:
- – Make sure you will receive a DoFollow backlink in your byline
- – Look for sites to write at that have higher Domain Authority rankings
- – Pitch ideas instead of exact articles so you get optimal results from your time
- – Are you trying to rank for geo-related keywords?
Guest posting isn’t a primary SEO strategy for local business sites. The geographic relevance of the sites linking to yours must be brought into consideration. High authority backlinks from general sites will still hold some weight but not as much. So, look for some link building opportunities from within your city if that’s possible.
2. Create Pillar Pages as Per HubSpot’s Guide
Alright, here’s the big value adder…
Long-form SEO content is something that Google loves. The problem is they don’t know how to digest all the words based on the read value they offer. Instead, their ranking algorithm looks at factors like “what’s in the header tags?” and “what’s the anchor text for internal links, what are the header tags for the page they link to?” and so on.
So, you need to be systematic when creating lengthy content. Keep your shorter blog posts fun and stress less about keyword optimization on those. For your main ranking pieces though — follow a winning strategy, such as HubSpot’s “pillar pages” technique.
Your lack of SEO knowledge is no barrier here. HubSpot effectively lays out guidelines to follow to make your long-form content rank well. These pages serve as the foundation (“pillars”) for your website. The great thing about this tactic over Backlinko’s “skyscraper technique” is the fact that your internal linking matrix is strategically planned out.
Basically, by creating pillar content your website will have the groundwork it needs to start ranking well in Google. Your future blog posts will be easier to plan out once you have these pages built.
3. Build Social Signals Like There’s No Tomorrow
Another free way to generate some ranking buzz for your site is through creating social signals. If you haven’t already, build up social profiles on all the main networks — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.
Some of these sites won’t generate any “rank juice” but doing more can’t hurt and doing less could hold you back a bit. What’s more important is trying to build some actual social interaction from these communities. Forget about marketing completely and only work on establishing your brand’s identity and trust from your target audience.
You can further your viral reach by posting on forums (where relevant) or through discussion boards like Reddit and Steemit. These platforms help you to generate some quick traffic to your website. Keep these direct visitors entertained when they reach your site so they spend a little time there before they leave. Push them to be social and build a self-sustaining virality cycle that extends your reach every time you promote a new blog post.
Lastly, video social signals are possibly the most effective of all for SEO purposes. Put some videos on YouTube and Vimeo, share on your social media pages and embed the most relevant ones to your website.
4. Make Your Website RankBrain-Friendly
Google’s RankBrain algorithm focuses on the value of your content and your website as a whole. This algorithm is considered to be the third-most important ranking factor, right behind your content and your backlinks. It primarily boils down to your “engagement metrics” which includes variables like your visitor’s average time-on-page, bounce rate, dwell time, etc.
Your main focus should be on making sure people don’t bounce from your website in just a short period of time. Google sees this as a reason to believe that your site didn’t serve the kind of content or answers that the searcher desired. Imagine if they back out of your page and go to the next result and stay at their site for 10 times longer. If that happened, the engagement value of your competitor’s content would be viewed as superior to yours. Then, RankBrain would say “Hey, let’s push up the ranking spot for this more useful content and send down this not-so-helpful webpage”.
All that in mind, what can you do to optimize for RankBrain?
Make sure your website has a user-friendly design; don’t just look at the general appeal of your site, but also analyze micro-factors like your blog’s typography. Direct searchers to content that speaks to them and provides the answers they desire. Push them to check out other parts of your website, such as by including a sidebar on your blog that contains relevant and enticing posts.
Conclusion
You do not need to spend a lot of money to get quick ranking results for your website. In fact, there are very few SEO tactics that can create super fast results. The only major example that comes to mind is a high-quality DoFollow backlink from a top authority site like Forbes.
Stop sweating on your budget and start educating yourself on the best SEO practices. Work on your on-page and on-site SEO methods. Build up quality content that will help rank your site. Make sure your website copy is properly keyword optimized as well.
Stay persistent, and your website will see a ranking boost in the near-term. But, more importantly, you’ll be on track for major SEO success in the long run. It’s not a sprint, but a marathon, so you need to commit yourself to keep progressing each and every single day.