While it is always great to outsource SEO as this will leave you with more time to focus on other aspects of your business, we do understand that this is not going to be possible for everybody. In some cases, you will not have the budget. In others, you are just building up a small website which you really do not fancy investing tons of cash into. This is why we have put together this guide. We want to give you a brief overview of six ‘points’ of doing SEO for yourself. This is not a complete guide by any stretch of the imagination, just a quick overview of the things that you should be doing.
Keyword Research
It doesn’t matter the size of the SEO campaign you are running, it is all going to start with keyword research. We are not going to talk about the resources you have for keyword research here. Instead, we just want to give you a couple of pointers.
It is important that when you do keyword research, you follow these two tips:
- Choose specific keywords
- Choose keywords where people are in the mood to act.
Now, let’s assume that you are selling dog treats. Some people would try to rank for the keyword ‘dog treats’. That is not going to work. There is far too much competition out there and you would never rank for those keywords in a million years. Instead, you want to get more specific than that. Let’s say you sell ‘natural dog treats’ (this may still be a bit general, but bear with us). This is great. There is less competition. However, are people always going to be in the mood to buy when they search for natural dog treats? We doubt it, so get more specific than this. Perhaps ‘natural dog treats for sale’. Even less competition, and you know the people who are searching for those words are interested in what you are selling, this means they are more likely to buy!
Landing Page
Next, you will need to optimize the landing page. Let’s stick with the ‘dog treats’ example here. Now, we are going to also say that you run a fairly large ‘pet store’. You want to rank for ‘natural dog treats for sale’ which is good, but you want to ensure that the page that person sees is perfect for those keywords.
So, do not drive people towards the front page of your site which may be packed with dog toys and the like. You will get zero benefits from that. You need to ensure that your landing page for that keyword is explicitly just ‘natural dog treats’. The best SEP practice is one keyword for one landing page.
On-Page SEO
You will also need to ensure that your website is optimized properly for the search engines. It would take us an age (and a rather substantial book) to run you through everything that you need to know about on-page SEO here, so just think about the following:
- Ensure that your website loads fast. You will need a quality web hosting package here. Cheap web hosting packages are never that brilliant. Also, cut down on videos, images, and sound (you will need some images) and use minify options for your JS, CSS…etc.
- Make sure you have your website optimized for mobile devices (this is very important)
- It is important that every page on your website can be found easily. This is not just important for the search engines who need to find every page, but also for your customers.
- Make sure that there are no dead links.
- Fill up your site with quality content (more on that one in a short while)
Off-Page SEO
This is the most important part of an SEO campaign. Off-page SEO is mostly going to be link building. The more links you have pointing towards your website, the higher you will rank in the search engines as the search engines are suddenly going to see you as more ‘reputable’.
Now, we must stress here that you can’t just build up a plethora of links and take a scattergun approach to that. One quality link is worth more than 100 poor quality links (those ones can actually get you removed from the search engines if they are awful links). Try to get links from other reputable websites which are related to your site. Not too related, though. Let’s say you sell dog treats. Well, try to get links from a dog training websites.
Social Networks
You need to be on all the big social networks here. So, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (as well as a few others depending on your business type). Social networks are great for sharing content. Now, obviously, this is going to be terrific for ensuring that people keep their eyes on your company. However, it also has a benefit when it comes to the search engines.
The search engines have indicated that they are going to start taking social media shares and the like into account when it comes to ranking sites, so try to get as many of them as possible. Regularly share content with people and you will notice that you start to climb up the searches very quickly.
Content
Finally; you need to focus on creating quality content for your website. This is important for several reasons:
- The search engines love quality content. Do not stuff it with keywords. Write naturally and you will benefit.
- Your website visitors will love quality content. If they see a well-written piece on your site, then they are more likely to trust you and buy.
It takes an age to put together some quality content, but it is going to be worth it. Remember; if you have awesome content, then people are going to share it around the web. This is great for you. It means that a lot of your link building is getting down with minimum input on your part. Just imagine if a piece of your content ended up going viral!
