We plan the off-page and on-page SEO for your site to enable you better visibility
We plan the off-page and on-page SEO for your site to enable you better visibility
Table of Contents
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a valuable marketing tool that drives organic traffic (i.e. leads) to your website.
Search engine optimization is a must, especially for small business owners and those who run e-commerce sites.
If you don’t have the massive marketing budget to hire an SEO expert, don’t stress: there are many simple SEO tips and easy-to-use tools you can implement to help you.
Once you master the basics of SEO, you can decide later if you want to take your optimization to the next level by bringing in a dedicated SEO professional. For now, here are six steps you should follow to get DIY SEO results:
- Set Your Organic Search Baseline
- Research Keywords and Relevant Search Queries
- Publish Optimized Content
- Analyze Your Backlinks
- Explore Technical Issues
- Stay Informed
1. Set Your Organic Search Baseline
Search engine optimization is all about improving your website’s search engine rankings. The first step is to figure out your baseline: How prominent is your website now? Domain overview gives you the answer. SEMrush lets you see your domain’s visibility on mobile and desktop, and you can get an overview of organic and paid traffic (for example, from pay-per-click advertising on Google). Comprehensive reports even cover metrics like backlinks.
However, an SEO audit shouldn’t just cover your website. It should also include competitor sites so you can better understand their share of search volume in your industry. Our domain overview tool highlights your key organic competitors, sites competing in your domain to gain traction online. This allows you to identify potential growth areas and can serve as a source of inspiration.
Other tools marketers can use to baseline their search locations include those from Google and Bing. Below, we provide a step-by-step guide for tracking your domain using one of these analytics tools.
Here’s how to set up a Google Analytics account:
- Create an Analytics account.
- Set up your “property” (your website).
- Set up the “reporting view” in your property. This lets you filter data, for example, based on IP address or defined sales regions.
- Analytics will then ask you to insert a tracking code to your website, which allows Google to collect data.
- You can then start viewing data. This guide from Google explains how to filter different views to focus on the data points you find more relevant.
Here’s how to set up Bing Webmaster Tools (Analytics for Bing Versions):
- Sign up for a Bing Webmaster Tools account. You can use a Facebook, Google, or Microsoft account.
- Add your website to your account.
- You must verify that you are the website’s owner. Bing offers three means of doing this: XML file authentication, meta tag authentication, or adding a CNAME record to DNA.
- You can then upload your site maps and start tracking data. This starter guide takes you through the process in detail.
2. Research Keywords and Relevant Search Queries
Identifying target keywords that align with your website content and match your target audience’s search intent is critical. You can use a keyword research tool to learn which keywords perform best. These are words or phrases that searchers plug into a search engine like Bing or Google that bring them to your site.
If you’re looking to find out which keywords drive traffic to your competitors’ websites, we have a number of tools that can help you do just that. For instance, our Organic Research Tool allows you to see which keywords are searched most often and what drives traffic to their websites. Easily discover new organic competitors, see who you’re competing with for top positions on SERPs, observe domains’ position changes, and more!
3. Post Optimized Content
Once you’ve identified valuable keywords, you can start crafting high-quality content that will make up a heavy portion of your content marketing strategy. Follow these basic rules to do your own SEO content:.
- Choose secondary keywords that logically complement the primary keyword. For future content, you can also consider building out content pages for these secondary keywords and then providing internal links to those pages. So if you’re creating a webpage about root canals for a dental website, a logical secondary keyword might be “cavities”.
- Use “rich” content, like an image, infographic, or video, to help your website rank higher in search engine results. Search engines recognize that this adds value to the content and will rank it higher when compared to competitors’ sites.
- Include your primary keyword in your page’s title tag and meta description.
- Consider using some of the many plug-ins available to enhance your on-page SEO efforts. For instance, WordPress’ built-in search engine OptimizeEngine can help you find and optimize your content for different audiences.
- This will help you avoid duplicate content, which can harm your Google search rankings.
- Include the main keyword in the title as an H1 title.
- Don’t practice “keyword stuffing” – search engine algorithms don’t react positively to the overuse of keywords. Include a primary long-tail keyword naturally in the text, and don’t try to include multiple keywords at the same time.
4. Check the Backlinks
Backlinks (links from other websites to your own) help establish your EAT. Google has established loose criteria to assess value, the EAT principle. Links from high-authority, high-traffic domains are the most valuable and worth pursuing as part of your digital marketing strategy.
Backlink Analytics provides details about referring domains, including anchor texts and IP distribution. You can also use a backlink gap tool to identify which websites in your niche have earned the most backlinks. This is a fantastic way to discover what backlinks you might be missing.
5. Investigate technical issues
In addition to content, your DIY SEO strategy must also consider the technical aspects. This technical SEO checklist is a great place to start. For example, make sure you’re using HTTPS, a well-known ranking factor in search engines. This provides encryption to keep data transmitted through your website safe, including potentially sensitive customer data. The above guide also provides advice on how to improve page speed, fix crawl errors, and more.
6. Be Informed
Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving field – that’s why specialists dedicate their entire careers to it. Google Search Central blog, formally Google Webmasters blog, is a great starting point. Following bloggers in the industry and staying up to date on SEO news will help you stay abreast of the latest.
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