Are you looking at how to do SEO yourself? You’ve come to the right spot. Here you’ll learn DIY how to do SEO yourself with 3 basic steps. Read on to improve your SEO game.
First, I want to talk briefly about SEO and what it is, so you can understand it better. Search engine optimization is the process of tweaking your content and website to get found by more visitors through search engines queries.
This is what most of us do when we hop on a search engine such as Google, Bing, or any other search engine:
- Pull up Google search engine, type what we’re looking for, and hit search.
- What we typed in the search box is the keyword.
- The results we see are the most relevant content to that keyword we searched for.
- Most people are likely to click on results showing on the first page (position 1 – 10)
Most of us won’t check search results on the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th page of Google. Why don’t we do this?
Because we’re at a time in technology when the most relevant content we’re looking for is shown on the first page’s search results. The more words we search for the more specific the information we’re shown.
For example; if you’re a Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Dealer in Las Vegas, you want to rank for “motorcycle”. Unfortunately so does every other motorcycle company in Las Vegas.
Your goal should be to rank for the specific search that’s most relevant to what your business sells or provides.
So consider ranking for “Harley-Davidson Dealer in Las Vegas”. This can help your potential customer find you much easier. If you’re not sure what keywords to rank for, you can use keyword software such as SEMrush or Ahrefs.
I use a ton of software programs for multiple things and I highly recommend these two for keyword research.
So I have an idea about what keywords you want to rank for, now what?
So the goal is to get your website to show up on the first page, but how do we do this? You need a plan, then do the research, then make the plan a reality.
Now that you understand keyword research a bit, here are 3 of my top recommendations. You can start implementing these today to start your own SEO for your website.
1. Create a Content Strategy
Start from the ground up. This means writing out the very broad sense of your business.
Let’s use that motorcycle example. Motorcycles would be what we call a pillar topic. The pillar topic is the main topic. It will branch out into subtopics (called cluster topics).
These could include motorcycle engines, motorcycle tires, motorcycle maintenance, motorcycle detailing, motorcycle storing, etc. Then you can create blog page articles that answer common motorcycle related questions such as:
- How to properly store a motorcycle
- How to properly detail a motorcycle
- What kind of fuel does a motorcycle take?
- What are the safest motorcycles to ride?
But if you had a more specific motorcycle dealership like Harley-Davidson you can replace the motorcycle keywords with Harley-Davidson instead.
Once you know what people are searching for from your keyword research, just start implementing that into topics you can write about.
Local businesses should focus more on local SEO. This would include using cities in your main pages such as your homepage, about page, products pages, etc.
Since you’ll want to answer questions nationally, and internationally you don’t have to include cities in your blog pages. You’ll want to reach everyone that owns a Harley, not just local Harley owners near you.
2. Produce High-Quality Content
Write engaging and high-quality content that gives your readers information that is useful and relevant. This means that you should create content that solves problems, provides useful tips and inspires others.
This will help make your readers more confident and build their trust in you. Your content should always be written with the readers’ needs in mind.
Here are a couple questions to ask yourself when writing:
- What question is my target audience asking?
- How can I write the best answer to this question?
- What can I do for them?
- Does my content make sense?
- Is my content easy to understand?
- Will this article give them a good experience on my website?
If you do this, you’ll be able to boost your search engine ranking. This is because search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! give priority to websites with relevant content.
Search engine algorithms aren’t easy to understand. They’re designed to determine the quality of your content. If your content is high quality, it will likely rank higher in Google’s SERPs. Most SEO agencies or content writers try their best to appease Google because it’s the most used search engine.
If you’re not sure how to write content, you can reach out to us, and we can write your content for you.
3. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly & User Friendly
If your site is not mobile friendly, you will lose visitors fast.
Here are a few things to look at on your website to check if it’s mobile friendly:
- Is your phone number clickable?
- Tip: Add your phone number to the top menu and make it a hyperlink. Use the same format below with your own phone number.
- Is your font readable on your phone?
- Tip: Recommended font size for a mobile website is 18px.
- How does your website look on a tablet?
- Tip: I recommend checking your website on a desktop/laptop, tablet, and mobile phone for good measure.
- Is your website loading quickly?
- Tip: Not sure? Use Pagespeed from Google.
- Are your images large and take forever to load?
- Tip: I recommend getting them to a smaller size. This can be done using any of the freeze tools online such as https://imageresizer.com
And there you have it. My top DIY 3 basic steps for how to do SEO yourself.
Running a business yourself can be hard, and we know you want to do it the best way possible. But you don’t have to build your website, write your content, and do SEO yourself. Sometimes it’s nice to focus on your business and leave the search engines to the SEO marketing experts.
If you don’t have the time to improve your SEO yourself or feel overwhelmed, we are more than happy to help. Reach out by clicking the button below.
