Search engine optimization (SEO) is a valuable marketing tool that drives organic traffic – that is, potential customers – to your website. And getting it right is a must, especially for small business owners and e-commerce sites.
If you don’t have a big budget to hire SEO experts, don’t worry. There are plenty of SEO tips and tricks you can implement and handy tools to help you out.
This is the purpose of this guide.
Here are six steps to follow to get results with DIY SEO:
- Set a baseline for organic search
- Search keywords and related search queries
- Post optimized content
- Analyze your backlinks
- Troubleshoot technical issues
- stay informed
advice: Create a free Semrush account (no credit card needed) so you can follow the steps in this guide.
1. Set a baseline for organic search
Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about improving your website’s search engine rankings. The first step is to understand your baseline: How visible is your website now?
Get started with Google Search Console. It’s a great tool to improve your performance on Google search. And really useful for setting a baseline for current organic research.
If you don’t have an account yet, open the tool and add and verify that you own your site.
Then click “performance“Drop. And then”research results. ”
You will see how many times people see your site, how many times they click through, and much more.
A basic SEO audit shouldn’t just include your website. You should also check your competitors’ websites.
To find your competitors, go to our organic search tool, enter your domain, and click “seek. “
You will find your competitors under “competitorsUnpaid bill.
Then, run each of your top 10 competitors’ sites through our Domain Overview tool.
You’ll get an idea of what their performance looks like. This can help you identify potential areas for growth and serve as a source of inspiration.
Further reading:
Set up research analytics
Google and Bing both provide other tools that marketers can use to measure organic search performance.
Below are step-by-step instructions for tracking your domain using analytics tools from both companies.
How to set up a Google Analytics account:
- Create an Analytics account.
- Set up your own “property” (your website).
- Set up View Reports on your property. This allows you to filter data, for example, based on specific IP addresses or regions.
- Analytics will then ask you to enter a tracking code to your website, which allows Google to collect the data.
- You can then start viewing the data. This guide from Google shows you how to filter different views to focus on the data points you find most relevant.
Further reading:
How to set up Bing Webmaster Tools (Bing version of Google Search Console):
- 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 owner of the website. Bing provides three means of doing this: XML file authentication, meta tag authentication, or adding a CNAME record to DNS.
- You can then upload the sitemaps and start tracking the data. This beginner’s guide takes you through the process in detail.
NB: Bing Webmaster Tools provides information about your website’s performance in Bing search results, making it the equivalent of Bing for Google Search Console. Google Analytics provides comprehensive website data that goes beyond search traffic and rankings.
2. Search keywords and related search queries
Keywords are words or phrases that searchers enter into search engines, such as Bing or Google, to find information or products.
Keywords are at the heart of a strong SEO campaign.
Which means that selecting keywords that align with your content and align with the needs of your target audience is crucial.
You can start with a tool like our Keyword Magic Tool. Simply add one of your main keywords and click “seek. “
The tool will then display the most popular keyword combinations and thousands of keyword ideas.
You can also use Keyword Gap to find which keywords your competitors are ranking higher in, but you aren’t.
Start by adding your domain and up to four of your competitors. then pressComparing. ”
Scroll down to the keyword details table and click on “Missing. ”
Each of these keywords represents a potential opportunity for you to drive more search traffic.
Further reading:
3. Post Enhanced Content
Once you have identified valuable keywords, you can begin crafting quality content that contributes to your content marketing strategy.
Are you wondering how your SEO content works?
Follow these basic rules:
- Naturally include the keyword you’re targeting in the text. Do not practice “keyword stuffing”. Search engine algorithms do not react positively to excessive keyword usage.
- Include the primary keyword in the H1.
- Choose secondary keywords that logically complement the primary keyword. So, if you were creating a page about root canals for a dental website, the primary keyword might be “root canal.” A logical secondary keyword might be “root canal cost”. For future content, you might consider creating content pages for secondary keywords and then providing internal links to those pages.
- Include at least one piece of “rich” content, such as a related image, infographic, or video. Search engines understand that this adds value to the content and will rank higher on the page accordingly.
- Include the primary keyword in the page title tag.
- Consider using plugins to enhance your content. For example, WordPress offers several things that can help your on-page SEO efforts.
- If you are updating content, be sure to upload your new content to your existing landing page or remove old content before producing your new page. This will help you avoid duplicate content, which can hurt your ranking.
- If you’re having trouble updating meta tags, copies, and other elements because your team is powered by requests, see PageImprove for instant, indexable, and reversible changes.
Semrush’s content marketing platform can also help you discover trending topics, perform content gap analysis, find ‘quick wins’, and more.
Further reading:
4. Analyze your backlinks
Search engines prioritize content that is valuable to the user. In the sense that it is useful, reliable and the first to be done by people.
Google has developed many criteria to evaluate this value. One of the main criteria is backlinks.
These are links on last sites you refer to for you website. Backlinks help prove that your website and its contents are valuable to users. A backlink is a kind of “vote” for your content.
If you’re doing SEO yourself, you’ll need to stay on top of your backlinks. You can check your backlinks using our Backlink Analytics tool.
Start by entering your domain and clicking on “analyze. “
You will see your website:
- Authority Score (how easy it is to rank your site)
- Referral domains (sites that point to your site)
- Backlinks (the number of links pointing back to your site)
and more.
Links from high-authority, high-traffic domains are the most valuable and worth pursuing as part of your strategy.
If you see these in your back cookie, that’s a good sign. And you’ll want to attract more backlinks like that through link building.
When you’re ready to launch your link building campaign, you can use our link builder to find leads to reach.
the “horizonsThe Related domains tab shows you can contact to get backlinks.
The tool also allows you to reach any potential customer directly through a connected email account. Allowing you to closely monitor your campaign.
Further reading:
5. Troubleshoot technical issues
Your DIY SEO strategy should also include examining your technical SEO issues.
Technical SEO involves optimizing your site so that search engines can discover, crawl, and index your pages.
The easier it is for search engines to access your pages, the better your chances of ranking.
A great way to get started is to crawl your site with a tool like Site Audit. It can help monitor your site’s SEO health and check for 140+ issues.
NBA free Semrush account will allow you to proofread up to 100 pages with a site review.
Open the tool and click on “Create a projectEnter your domain and press the green button.Create a project” button.
Once the tool finishes crawling your site, you will get an overview of the issues that are blocking your site.
tap on “problemsUnpaid invoice. And you’ll see the full list of your site’s errors, warnings, and notifications.
like him:
Each number includesWhy and how to fix itlink.
Click it. You’ll see more information about the problem, how to fix it, and helpful links to related tools and resources.
Fix the “bugs” first. Then go to “Warnings” and “Notices”.
Further reading:
6. Stay informed
Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving field.
For example, search engines frequently update their algorithms. This can affect how you rank and how your pages appear in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Follow bloggers in the industry and stay up to date with SEO news. The Google Search Central blog is a great starting point.
We also recommend browsing the Semrush Blog and taking the Academy’s free courses.
As things change, look to the experts for recommendations on what to and shouldn’t change in response.
Take DIY SEO a step further
Now you know the basics of how to do your own SEO. This is crucial to keeping your site healthy and ranking high.
Are you ready to take a step forward?
Here are some helpful resources to guide your next steps:
