Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t a form of advertising, but it costs both time and money. If you have the money but are short on time, an SEO consultant or agent is am option. However, if you are short on money, the DIY SEO tips below should help you improve your organic rankings.
1 Master Keyword Research
Keyword research always comes first according to this Dallas SEO Agency. You must never assume that you know what your consumers want. You probably understand the jargon used in your industry. However, your prospects probably use different terms than those used by trade colleagues to refer to the goods or services that you offer.
Keyword research gives you an understanding of the phrases and words used by consumers to find your products/services. It also helps you gauge the demand of these products/services. It helps identify keyword themes used by actual researchers in search queries.
The best keyword tools are those that provide a quantitative demand score to help you determine the relative value if you were to target each keyword theme. The go-to keyword tool is Google Keyword Planner, although you will requite an active Google Ads (previously AdWords) campaign to get the most helpful data.
Übersuggest, which is a free Google Autocomplete scraper, Word tracker, and SEMrush are the top non-Google keyword research tool to consider.
2 Understand the Competition
Search for the most important products/services offered by you and take note of the most prominent websites in the search results i.e. the ones that share your business model and those dissimilar to yours but compete for the same searches.
- What are your competitors doing well?
- What content themes are your competitors using that you lack?
- Do your competitors have interesting features for better engaging their prospects?
- Do your competitors structure their websites differently to target more valuable keywords?
It is also important to study their reviews and benchmark their social media activity to learn more about what their customers think compared to what you hear, or not, from your own.
3 Plan Your Website
If you understand what consumers want and the keywords they like using to find those products/services, identify pages on your own site to address those search queries.
Having a list of all the low-, mid-, and top-tier web pages along with their corresponding keyword focus forms the basis of the architecture of your website. Each medium- and high-priority keyword from your keyword research should ideally have a corresponding page for optimizing on your website.
Use long-tail keyword themes with fewer searches and are usually more specific and longer – such as “how to get chewing gum out of carpet” or “where to buy kids toys – in FAQ pages and blogs.
4 Optimize Your Website
Creating the pages comes next, but this is often the hardest part. Depending on the ecommerce platform you are using and your access to designers and developers, you might find it necessary to outsource some of the work.
Websites today should be mobile responsive to better cater to the ever-growing demographic or tablet and smartphone users. Mobile-friendliness is important for 2 key reasons. First, according to Google, over 50 percent of searches come from mobile devices. Ensure that the experience of mobile users is engaging and seamless.
Second, Google currently ranks all organic search results for both mobile and desktop devices based on the website’s mobile experience, which includes page speed.
5 Produce Content Regularly
You don’t have to turn your business into a publishing company or even start a blog by posting content each day. It is unrealistic for most ecommerce websites. However, it is still important to regularly publish your own content. Schedule weekly or even monthly updates. Consistency is what matters.
Content doesn’t have to be text. For instance, an architectural firm may publish photos of its projects with short textual descriptions. A realtor may publish weekly video bulletins with transcripts. The goal is to publish content that’s tailored to the consumption habits of the target audience.
6 DIY Public Relations
One of the key SEO components is link authority, but the buying of links is forbidden by Bing, Google, and other search engines. That’s why you need public relations and outreach. If you have public relations representatives, coordinate with them to ensure that you never invalidate their efforts. If you plan to do it yourself, keep reading.
Google advises website owners to create compelling websites that users will want to recommend to their friends and keep visiting. This content-focused approach to SEO is Google’s solution to the omnipresent question of how to get links more ethically.
The content that you are currently producing should ideally be targeted to different segments of the blogosphere or media. The pieces then become conversation starters with different websites to encourage them to link to or write about.
The competitive research that’s referred to in step 2 above, comes in handy here since you now have an idea of the best-ranking and most influential websites you should approach.
7 Build Your Social Media Network
Join Twitter along with 2 other major social media platforms. You have numerous options – Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and many others. Social media is a great way to connect with prospects and customers and provides an audience for the content.
Understanding and nurturing the relationships will boost your SEO in the end. Increasing your content’s exposure also increases the likelihood of some of your viewers linking to it or blogging about it.