So, if you've been putting off learning how to do SEO yourself until now, here is a comprehensive guide to mastering DIY SEO!
What is SEO?
SEO refers to the strategies and techniques employed to increase both the quality and quantity of the website traffic through organic search engine results. By organic, we mean unpaid or non-sponsored results.
The ultimate goal of SEO is to improve the visibility of your website on search engines such as Google and Bing.
It involves optimizing various elements on your website like the keywords used in the content, the meta tags, and the website structure, among other things to make it more appealing to search engines.
The better your website's SEO, the higher it will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs), leading to increased traffic, and in turn, higher conversions.
📌 Learn the term in detail: What is SEO? How Does It Works?
What are the Types of SEO?
SEO can be broadly categorized into three types:
🚀 On-page SEO: These are the strategies that are directly related to the content on your web page. This includes keyword optimization, headers, meta tags, and URL structures.
🚀 Technical SEO: This deals with the technical aspects of your website such as the site's speed, mobile-friendliness, and the overall structure. It also covers areas like site security and structured data markup.
🚀 Off-page SEO: This involves any SEO practice that promotes your website on the web, thus helping to increase its visibility. Backlinks form a major part of off-page SEO, serving as signals of your website’s credibility to search engines.
📌 Read our blog post: Understanding On-Page and Off-Page SEO
Why is SEO Important?
First and foremost, SEO makes your website more searchable and visible, leading to a sustainable increase in qualified organic traffic.
SEO is fundamental to your business's digital properties, and when implemented correctly, offers long-term return on investment (ROI).
In addition, good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a website, since search engines reward well-structured, fast, and easy-to-navigate websites with better rankings.
Moreover, understanding SEO allows you to understand the environment of the web, including what tactics your competitors are using. This understanding helps in staying one step ahead in the competition.
Why Should You Do SEO Yourself?
Learning how to do SEO yourself gives you a greater grasp of how search engines work and what makes them tick. It offers the flexibility to adapt to the ever-changing search engine rules and keep your website always optimized.
This can save you from incurring substantial costs that you may have otherwise spent on hiring professional SEO services.
Besides the cost factor, conducting your own SEO audits, optimizing your site, and tracking its performance capitalizes on your skills and knowledge.
Being actively involved in boosting your site's SEO paves the way for quick identification and rectification of performance issues. This, in turn, helps to maintain your site's search engine ranking consistency and growth.
Not to mention, the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction you get from seeing your site climbing the ranks in search engine results, knowing that it's all your hard work and efforts that made it happen — there's nothing quite like it.
📌 Read our blog post: DIY SEO for Small Businesses [7 Easy Steps]
8 Do-It-Yourself SEO Tips to Boost Your Rankings
Taking the plunge into SEO may seem daunting at first. But with every new tactic and strategy you master, the fog of uncertainty dissipates, leaving behind a clearer path to SEO success.
Here are some SEO best practices anyone can follow to get results:
1) Setting Up
In order to set up for SEO, you need to equip yourself with the right tools.
For instance, tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster Tools and other online tools serve as your guide in the dark forest of SEO.
They provide you invaluable insights into how your website is performing and how your users are interacting with it.
Set them up, so you can use them to perform your primary SEO tasks.
2) Conducting an SEO Audit
An SEO audit involves examining your website to determine how well it's performing in search and where improvements can be made.
It might seem like a hefty task, but it is a necessary one. It serves as a health check for your website, helping you identify issues and opportunities that could make a substantial difference to your website's search performance.
To simplify and speed up the auditing process, you can easily use SEOmator’s Free SEO Audit Tool. It provides a detailed analysis of your website's search engine optimization, including technical and on-page factors, content quality, and competitor analysis.
3) Choosing the Right Keywords
Keyword research is a crucial aspect of SEO.
These keywords are essentially the search terms your target audience uses to find information online.
Describe your business, identify your target audience, and determine what you offer that sets you apart from the competition. Having a clear understanding of who you are and who you're trying to reach can help focus your keyword research efforts.
Come up with a list of potential keywords that reflect your niche, your offerings, and your audience's search behavior. Think about the phrases and questions your audience might use when searching for your business or anything related to it.
Moreover, you can insert some of your brainstormed keywords into a keyword research tool to gain valuable data about them, including search volume, competition, keyword difficulty, and more.
Lastly, look through the keyword data you've gathered and choose keywords with a decent search volume and relatively low competition. However, don't just chase high volume keywords; also consider user intent and relevancy to your business.
📌 Read our blog post: How to Find Trending Keywords (7 Methods)
4) Creating Useful and Compelling Content
Content is what attracts users, engages them, and ultimately, drives conversions.
Incorporate your target keywords naturally within your content. Your primary keyword should particularly appear in the first 100-150 words. Avoid keyword stuffing as it can result in penalties.
Aim to provide unique, compelling, and valuable content. Quality content naturally attracts backlinks, social shares, and user engagement – all beneficial for SEO.
Don’t forget to break up your content into readable chunks using relevant H1, H2, and H3 tags. This makes it easier for both the users and the search engine bots to scan your content.
Furthermore, keep your sentences and paragraphs short, use bullet points, or lists to break up information and always check your spelling and grammar.
Also, internal linking is crucial. Link to other relevant pages on your website. This keeps the users engaged, lowers bounce rate, and spreads link equity throughout your website.
5) Optimizing Title Tags
Title tags are HTML elements that specify the title of your web page. They are the first impression of your site on the search engine results page.
Your primary keyword should preferably be placed at the beginning of the title. This can help in boosting your site's ranking for that keyword.
Longer web titles can get cut off on the search results page. So, stick to a limit of 60 characters.
Write a title that entices click-throughs. For instance, you could use numbers, brackets, or power words like 'best', 'ultimate', 'easy', etc.
6) Enhancing Website Structure
The structure of your website plays a crucial role in your SEO performance.
Your website should have a clear and logical hierarchy. Each page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
The URLs of your pages should be simple, easy to understand, and include your target keyword.
Slow-loading websites hurt user experience and can negatively impact your rankings. Use tools to identify and fix issues affecting your site's loading speed.
For instance, large images can slow down your website. Optimize your images by compressing them, using appropriate file formats, and adding alt text with your target keywords.
7) Attracting Backlinks
Backlinks are links pointing to your website from other websites. The stronger and more relevant the website linking to you, the better.
High-quality, unique, and informative content will naturally attract other websites to link to you.
Reach out to relevant, high-authority websites in your industry and offer to write a guest post for them. This not only gives you exposure to a larger audience but also earns you a backlink.
Also, promoting your content on social media platforms can help you reach a wider audience and attract more links. If you can network with influencers in your industry and get on their radar, they might link to you or share your content with their followers.
8) Monitoring Performance
Just like annual health check-ups, monitoring SEO performance helps us track our website's health, allowing us to address any potential issues early on.
Regularly keeping tabs on your SEO activity is invaluable. It allows you to discern which strategies work for you, which areas require improvement, and it affords you the flexibility to optimize your strategies in real-time.
Like in a scientific experiment, you'll do some testing, measure the results, make some changes, and then measure again.
Check your Google Analytics regularly to see how much of your traffic is coming from organic search.
Also, bounce rate is crucial since it measures the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate might indicate that you're attracting the wrong traffic or that your user experience needs improvement.
Pay close attention to where your pages are ranking on Google and Bing for your target keywords.
Lastly, don’t forget the conversion rate. This is the percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as filling out a form or purchasing a product. This is a direct measure of how well your SEO efforts are contributing to your overall business goals.
Final Thoughts
The importance of SEO in today's digital landscape cannot be overstated. It's what leads to higher search engine rankings, more clicks, and ultimately, more conversions for your business.
You can and should do SEO yourself, since it is cost-effective, gives you full control over your website's content and provides valuable knowledge and learning experience.
It’s vital to acknowledge that SEO is a long-term strategy. Don't expect immediate results. Be patient and persistent in your efforts!
📌 Read also:
- How Much Does an SEO Audit Cost? - SEO Audit Pricing
