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In our guide, we’ll discuss simple steps for DIY SEO for small businesses to increase online visibility and boost your rankings.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of making your website attractive to search engines.
When you incorporate SEO strategies, you're signaling to Google, Bing, and other search engines that your website is highly relevant and valuable to search queries that align with your business.
Imagine a digital library where countless books are stored. If these books have no proper organization, finding the book you need becomes a grueling task. Instead, if the books are placed systematically as per categories and subcategories, finding the required book no longer remains a herculean task, doesn't it?
That's precisely what SEO does. It's a way to categorize and place your website in the proper racks of this digital library - making it easy for the digital librarian, i.e., the search engine, to find and show your website when a relevant search query is entered.
For instance, when the search engine's spiders - automated bots that scrape web pages for information - see that your site has quality content relevant to green energy solutions, it'll place yours among the top results when users search for a green energy solutions provider.
🔎 See for detailed information: What is SEO? How Does It Works?
Why is SEO Vital for Small Businesses?
As a small business owner, your mission is to get noticed among the sea of other businesses. Good SEO work can ensure that you're among those catching the eye of potential customers.
Needless to say, every small business dreams of ranking on the first page of search results.
Here is how SEO can benefit your small business:
🚀 Increased Traffic: While it's nice to have a good-looking store, it’s the customers that keep your business going. For an online business, traffic equates to customers. SEO brings potential customers to your website, meaning more opportunities to convert them.
🚀 Improved Credibility: When people search for your products or services, you want to rank as high as possible. Not only can it drive more traffic to your site, but it also improves the visibility and credibility of your brand.
🚀 Higher ROI: Unlike traditional forms of advertising, SEO isn't about spending more to get seen. SEO targets users who are already seeking what you offer, leading to a more efficient return on investment.
🚀 Insight into Your Customers: As an added bonus, SEO provides profound insights into your customers. How they search, browse, and more. You can use this data to make informed decisions within your business.
🚀 Competitive Edge: By appearing higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), you stand a better chance of users clicking on your link over your competitors'.
🚀 Authority Building: When you rank high on SERPs, you're implicitly stamping your brand as an authority in your field.
🔎 See also: Domain Authority vs. Page Authority: An In-depth Look
7 Easy DIY SEO Steps for Small Businesses
Search engines prioritize websites that offer the most relevant and valuable content to users. Your goal with DIY SEO is to make sure your website aligns with what search engines are looking for.
Here's a breakdown of some key DIY SEO practices that you can easily implement on your own:
Step 1: Determine Your Goals
Our journey begins by setting clear SEO goals.
What are you hoping to achieve with your SEO efforts? Do you want more traffic? Are you looking to convert visitors into customers? Or perhaps hoping to boost your brand recognition?
Establish clear, measurable goals, and keep them at the forefront as you craft your SEO strategy. Tracking these goals will not only keep you on track but also ensure that your efforts are focused and well directed.
Also, you need to decide where to focus your SEO efforts. A multitude of platforms can benefit from SEO, such as your website, social media channels, and guest blogging sites.
Identify your primary platforms where your target audience hangs out, and then sculpt your SEO approach to each individual platform's peculiarities.
Step 2: Understand Where You Stand
Knowing your starting point is just as important as knowing your destination. Your organic search baseline is essentially your current SEO scorecard. It outlines how well your website is currently performing in organic search.
To understand this baseline you can conduct an SEO website audit. You can easily use SEOmator’s Free SEO Audit Tool to get a detailed analysis of your website's search engine optimization, including technical and on-page factors, content quality, and competitor analysis.
You can also use Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools. Google Analytics provides rich insights into how visitors interact with your site. Similarly, Bing Webmaster Tools help you understand the search engine's perspective—how it views your website.
These benchmarks will serve as your guiding compass, helping you measure how much you've moved forward in your journey to SEO success.
Step 3: Put Your Business on the Map
List your business on Google with a Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business). Maintaining a Business Profile ensures you're in touch with customers across Google Search and Maps.
With a Business Profile, you can list important details about your business like contact information, operating hours, photos, and services. Plus, you even get a platform to engage with customers through reviews, Q&A, and updates.
It's an easy but effective way to step up your SEO game. You're putting your business on the map, quite literally!
🔎 See also:How to Add Keywords to Google My Business
Step 4: Make Your Website User-Friendly
User friendliness is a key ranking factor that search engines consider. From design to navigation, the overall user experience on your website is crucial.
Make it intuitive, attractive, and user-friendly to ensure visitors are taking the actions you want them to. Your visitors should be able to find what they're looking for without any hassle. A site menu, search feature, and page hierarchy all contribute to smooth navigation.
Avoid text that's too small or colors that make words hard to read. Stick to standard fonts and eye-pleasing colors.
More people are browsing on their phones than ever. Hence, a mobile-friendly website is paramount. Whether it's displaying text optimally or seamless navigation, ensure your website shines on mobile screens.
Also, internet users are notoriously impatient. Page speed matters. If your site doesn't load within a few seconds, chances are, the visitor will switch to another site. Minimize HTTP requests, enable compression, reduce redirects and improve server response time to improve your website’s speed.
Furthermore, regularly check for broken links. Clicking a link and ending up on an error page (aka a 404 page) is infuriating. Fix broken links immediately.
🔎 See also: How to Find & Fix Broken Links in Google Search Console
Step 5: Optimize Your Website with Keywords
Keywords are the bridge connecting your content with the searcher’s intent. Identify and incorporate keywords that your target audience might use when they need products or services like yours. Leverage online tools to find keywords that are relevant to your business and have a good search volume.
Once you have a list of keywords, include them in the strategic places on your website such as page titles and headings, meta descriptions, URLs, image file names and ALT tags.
The meta title and description are your first chances to attract a searcher's attention on the SERPs. They should be crisp, compelling, and contain your focus keywords.
Moreover, it’s crucial to publish high-quality content on a regular basis that contains said keywords.
Ensure your content adds value to your reader. It should be unique, engaging, and relevant, resonating with your audiences' needs and interests. Offer readers practical, feasible advice they can apply and add pictures, infographics, or videos to make your content more engaging.
🔎 See also: Metadata Optimization: Best Practices for Better SEO 🚀
Step 6: Build High-Quality Backlinks and Internal Links
Backlinks are like votes of confidence from one site to another. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more credible your site appears to search engines, thereby boosting your rankings.
Ensure that your backlinks come from trusted sources such as guest blogging. Avoid dubious websites or directories and focus more on reputable and relevant websites. To check your backlinks, you can use SEOmator’s free backlink checker tool once you need.
While backlinks often get the spotlight, don't underestimate the power of internal links - the hyperlinks pointing to another page on the same website.
Internal linking helps users navigate your site, defines the architecture and hierarchy of your website, and allows link equity to be spread around the site, enhancing SEO. So, navigate within your content, identify potential internal links, and start linking.
🔎 See also: How to Find Spammy Backlinks & How to Get Rid of Them
Step 7: Monitor and Fine-Tune Regularly
You wouldn't go on a voyage without checking the compass, would you? Monitoring your progress is crucial to the success of your SEO efforts.
SEO is an ongoing process, and tracking your results helps you see if your strategies are working. For instance, you might discover relevant keywords you're not currently targeting or areas where your competitors are outranking you
To help you track your progress, you can use Google Search Console which offers you insights into how Google sees your website for free. From site performance to indexing status, you can use the tool to continually fine-tune your SEO strategies.
Algorithms update, preferences change, and tactics that worked yesterday may not work today. Stay on top of SEO trends, understand them, and adapt your strategies accordingly.
Final Thoughts
Implementing SEO is like setting sails to catch the digital wind. It propels the online presence of your small business towards higher visibility and traffic, setting the course for continued success.
With our 7 easy DIY SEO tips, which include setting clear goals, focusing on user-friendliness, optimizing your content, building high-quality links and monitoring, you are on your way to steering your small business towards new horizons of growth!
🔎 See also:
- SEO Forecasting in 7 Steps with Case Studies
