DIY SEO: 6 Steps Anyone Can Take to Get Results

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an invaluable marketing tool that drives organic traffic, and therefore potential customers, to your website. 

SEO is essential, especially for owners of SMEs and E-commerce sites. 

If you don’t have a lot of budgets to hire SEO experts, don’t worry:

There are plenty of simple tricks you can do yourself and easy-to-use tools to help you out. 

Once you know the basics, you can decide later if you want to take your optimization to the next level by hiring a professional SEO. 

For now, these are the six steps you need to follow to get results with DIY SEO:

1. Determine the Starting point of Your Organic Searches

SEO consists of improving the position of your website in search engines. 

The first step is to determine your starting point: what is the current visibility of your site? 

The  Domain Overview tool offers you the solution. 

Many SEO tools allow you to see your domain’s visibility on mobile and desktop, and get an overview of both organic and paid traffic (for example, from Google pay-per-click ads). 

The reports even include metrics like backlinks.

However, an SEO audit should not be limited to your website. 

It should also include your competitors’ sites so you can determine your search volume in your industry. 

Domain Overview tool identifies your main organic competitors, that is, those websites that compete in your sector for online traction. 

In this way, you will be able to identify potential areas of growth and find inspiration.

Set up Google Analytics

Other tools that marketers can use to determine their search position are those offered by Google and Bing. 

Next, we leave you a step-by-step guide for you to audit your domain with one of these analysis tools.

Here’s how to set up a Google Analytics account:

• Create an Analytics account.
• Configure your “property” (your website).
• Set up the “report view” on your property. In this way, you can filter the data, for example, based on the IP addresses or sales region.
• Next, Analytics will ask you to enter a tracking code to your site that allows Google to collect data.
• When you complete all the steps above, you can start to see the data. This guide from Google explains how to filter the different views to focus on the metrics that best fit your needs.

Here’s how to set up Bing Webmaster Tools (Bing’s version of Analytics):

• Create a Bing Webmaster Tools account. You can use a Facebook, Google, or Microsoft account.
• Add your website to the account.
• You must verify that you are the owner of the site. Bing offers you three ways to do this: XML file authentication, meta tag authentication, or adding a CNAME record to DNA.
• Later, you can add your site maps and start monitoring the data. This beginner’s guide walks you through the process in detail.

2. Identify Relevant Keywords and Queries

If you want to do SEO yourself, keywords are at the core of a strong campaign. 

They are words or phrases that users enter into a search engine like Bing or Google and that take them to your website.

Identifying the keywords that align with the content of your website and match the search intent of your target audience is essential. 

You can use a term search tool to find out which ones work best. 

Organic Research tool( Ahrefs & Semrush) allows you to identify which ones are being searched for most frequently and which ones are driving traffic to your competitors’ websites. 

Easily discover new organic competitors, who you’re competing with for the top positions in the SERPs, monitor domain position changes, and much more! 

If you want to do SEO yourself, use SEO tools to see the performance of keywords and content on your website. 

You can focus on related terms to decide which ones to target for your future blogging efforts (particularly those that can help you gain rankings quickly).

3. Post-Optimized Content

Once you have identified the keywords, you can start creating quality content, since they are a fundamental element of your content marketing strategy. 

Don’t know where to start making your own SEO content? 

Follow these basic rules:

• Include a main long-tail keyword naturally in the text. Do not use the technique of overusing keywords. Search engine algorithms do not react positively to its excessive use.
• Include the main term in the title and H1 headings.
• Choose secondary keywords that complement the main keyword. So, if you’re creating a root canal page for a dental website, the primary keyword could be “endodontics,” and a secondary keyword “caries.” For future content, you can also consider creating pages for these secondary keywords and include internal links to the main one.
• Include at least one “rich content”, such as an image, infographic, or video. Search engines consider that they add value to the content and will rank the content better.
• Include the primary keyword in the title tag and meta description.
• Consider using available plugins to optimize your content. For example, WordPress offers options that can help you improve your on-page SEO efforts.
• If you’re updating content, make sure the load of the new piece is on the current landing page, or remove the old content before creating your new page. Thus, you will avoid duplicate content, which can harm your positioning in Google searches.
• If you’re having trouble updating meta tags, text, and other page elements because your development team is overwhelmed, you can take a look at solutions like PageImprove. PageImprove and Edge SEO solutions allow you to make instant, indexable and reversible changes to your website.

4. Analyze Your Backlinks

Search engines prioritize content that is valuable to users. 

Google has even established some general criteria to evaluate its value, the EAT criteria: experience, authority, and trust.

Backlinks (links from other websites to yours) help to configure your EAT. 

Links from domains with a lot of authority and traffic are the best and are worth pursuing as part of your digital marketing strategy. 

Backlink analysis gives you information 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 the most backlinks. 

In this way, you will be able to discover which backlinks you are missing and detect new opportunities. 

There are many effective link-building methods, from creating shareable infographics to writing guest posts on other platforms.

5. Detect Technical Errors

In addition to content, your do-it-yourself SEO strategy should also take into account technical issues. 

This technical SEO checklist is a good starting point. 

For example, you should make sure that you use HTTPS, a known ranking factor in search engines. 

It offers you encryption that keeps the data that passes through your site safe, including the potentially sensitive information of your customers. 

The aforementioned guide also advises you on how to improve page speed, fix crawl errors, and much more.

6. Stay Informed

Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving field. 

That is why specialists devote their entire careers to it. 

Engines like Google are always updating their algorithms and changing the factors that influence search results pages (SERPs). 

Following industry bloggers and staying up to date with SEO news will help you not miss a thing. 

The Google Search Central blog, also known as the Google webmaster blog, is a good starting point.

Thanks for Reading.