How to do basic SEO without hiring anyone?
I get it.
It’s not just about the money, SEO service does not comes with a guarantee.
While I still recommend anyone who has SEO seriously ingrained in their business development strategy to hire a professional, anyone who is just beginning with digital marketing does not need to do so.
So, if you are planning a website for your business, ask yourself this-
do you really need professional services?
The thing is, if you do a few simple (& easy) things right, you do not need a SEO pro!
All you need is
A good understanding of who your customer is
What they do and think
A good command over English (or whichever language you intend to use)
A developer of tiny bit coding knowledge
Lets start with
What would they be searching for?
Know the terms that they would be searching for. For example, a hinge in North India is called ‘Daddu Kabza’. A few searches in local markets and focus group discussions with your target consumers can give immense clarity on the subject.
Where are they present(medium/channel)?
An audience still enamored by television (big screen) might not be too active on social media(small screen) whereas an audience captivated by the small screen will not be too active on big screen.
Everyone has a finite time in a day and so it becomes important to understand where they spend it.
There are sources that let you know this information like Datafareportal or Hootsuite, however, the best way to get this information is meeting a sample of your customers and create personas.
What compels them to make decision?
Know the intent behind their search which usually comes from a pain point.
Addressing a common problem in your communication can help you identify the core selling benefit and be the key to sales.
Knowing the sensitivities of your market give your preposition the edge by addressing them to add enhanced value.
For example, Indian car market consumer, due to high traffic, faces challenges in situations like traffic jam, an automatic transmission will be very helpful to navigate through; however, the market is sensitive to price within the segment. So a preposition like “get something extra at reduced cost” would work well. Here is an example
pic credit : https://newspaperads.ads2publish.com
Your consumer persona should be enough for everything above
90% of your work is done.
Let’s come to the remaining 10% of it.
Preparing Content
Identify keywords through your market research (the local lingo), the pain points & marketing sensitivities. Now ensure that
These elements should be properly weaved into your content. Make a note to include them naturally and not forcefully(also called keyword stuffing). A good way to do this is to
Keep the content short & simple. Just enough to give the key information and benefits. If they want to know more,
Leave a touchpoint like an email id or contact number using headers and footers. Also link your contact page as much as with other pages through content at the end like. “Feel free to get in touch with us to know more. Click here”. Also you can
Use the blogs section to give detailed guides, descriptions and useful information through articles (Note that you are reading a blog, study and use it to create content)
Page title and description
Each page that you create has a title & description
A title is around 60 characters with spaces and a description is 160 characters with space
Title - Cadillac - Luxury cars, superior safety, powerful performance
Description - Get your hands on cars that redefine luxury. Make a statement whenever you arrive with Cadillac - cars that keep your safety and comfortable on the toughest roads
Note that the title is an eye catcher while description is a content that gives you either the vital information or resonates with the feeling that you are trying to invoke. It also, preferably if not compulsory, has the most important keywords. Don’t force these as they should either come naturally or not at all.
Do this for all important pages in your website.
Not getting into technical SEO, ask your developer to
Integrate these titles & descriptions into each important page. This would help the search engines see if your page is relevant to the searches made.
Ask your developer to either develop or optimize these important pages by using the google page speed insights. Specifically ask them to avoid any red markers on this reports.
Aside from your laptop/PC, always check your website on different mobile phones & tablets as much as possible and ensure that the text is readable, the website loads quickly and looks good.
All confirmed?
You are done.
Now remember, SEO can take upto 6 months to show proper results so be patient.
Rome was not built in a day.
Just to explain things to you, whenever a user searches for something, google shows a lot of results (this much you know, right?).
However, when someone clicks on one of those pages, google, in background analyses that if user stayed for at least more than 30 seconds. To put things in perspective, for anything that is of value to them, the user will spend at least 30 seconds.
Google also analyses if the user was doing something or sitting idly.
Once a website has users coming in, staying for sometime and take an action, it automatically rises up in rank.
On the other hand, if a website gets lots of people but they do not stay or take no action, its ranks fall.
This is called relevancy in google’s software algorithm.
So now you know.
My last tip is the most important one for SEO.
Make your website useful for people. The more useful the content, the more it will get popular.
Signing off.