Have you been struggling with improving your website traffic on search engines? Have you tried several self-claimed SEO consultants or specialists but had zero results? Or perhaps you are on a budget and can’t afford to hire a professional SEO consultant yet? Whichever case you fall into, this article is ultimately for you.
Table of Contents
What is SEO
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is the art of optimizing a website to get indexed or rank high on the search engine result page.
Search engines are the likes of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex. While the search engine result page is the page that contains the generated results for searched queries – hence the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
Why Search Engine Optimization
Seo diagram
SEO is the ultimate means of generating organic traffic to your website.
And the effectiveness of your website SEO determines what position Google and other search engines will place your website when prospects search queries related to your website subject. So, in another word, it is the most crucial aspect of your website when generating traffic. And it is always worth investing time and money in.
Why You may want to do your website SEO yourself
Firstly, I often suggest businesses with good financial capacity hire a good SEO consulting company. While those on a low budget, I recommend they try freelancers specializing in SEO.
However, there are a great number of businesses that have reached out to me that they will want to have a basic understanding of how SEO works. Some considered doing the website SEO themselves, pending when they will have the finances to afford my brand SEO consultation and services.
So as an SEO consultant, here is my resolution. If you are tight on budget or maybe due to some reasons you want to take charge of your website SEO yourself, then this article is for you.
Also, suppose your business is large enough and can adequately cover your SEO expenses. In that case, it will still help to read this article to help you better understand the kind of magic your SEO guys are doing and know how to do your website SEO yourself.
10 Effective Tips to Taking Charge of your Website SEO guru yourself
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Define your audience
Defining your audience makes you target the right people
The first thing to do in every business is to identify your target audience. You can classify your audience based on location, sex, age, and other factors. For example, if you have a law firm in Nigeria, you don’t have businesses using trending keywords in the united states. On the other hand, if you are also into ladies’ wear, you will need to structure your website design and keyword research for ladies.
SEO goes beyond ranking on Google’s front page. You may get tons of traffic, but it will be useless for your business. And there are high chances you won’t get any if you don’t define your audience correctly.
Insight.ng, as a Nigerian blog, mostly use keywords tailored mainly to the Nigerian audience. And that is why you will notice that my first example is key to our primary audience, Nigerians. However, if your business is borderless, like consultation services and the like, you should prioritise who you are reaching.
For example, you may think Forbes is a global blog, which is it, but most of its readership is Americans. And that is who they mostly target.
Read more: Local SEO vs Global SEO is Best For Your Nigerian Business
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Keyword research
Keywords Research
Keywords or key phrases are the strings of words people enter on search engines when looking for the answers to something. They also call it search query. Therefore, every successful SEO project involves active keyword research.
After you have defined your persona, the next thing is to look for the keywords or key phrases they are using to search for things related to your business or services. Keywords are one single word, e.g., “SEO,” While key phrases are strings of more than one word. E.g., “How to do SEO”
In SEO, we don’t guess the keyword. We research it. Therefore, do not assume you know your customers’ keywords on the search engine. You probably understand your industry and its terminologies, but they don’t know the exact string of words people use to search for your service on search engines.
There are quite several keyword research tools. You can use Ubersuggest, Google Trend, ahrefs, and many others. If you are into local SEO, like Insight.ng, a blog whose primary audience is Nigeria, you need to change the flag from the default (often the USA) to Nigeria. And from there, analyze the search queries you get and handpick the ones that are primarily related to your audiences, like age and other factors. Many premium SEO tools will show you this result.
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Analyze your competition
Inspiration on analyzing competitors
You must know what your competitors are doing that you are not getting right. Search for some of the products and services you offer on your website and compare it to the leading site on Google’s first and second results pages.
I mentioned Google because Google is the most used search engine in Nigeria and across the world. Then, open the websites and pay close attention to some of the unique things on their website that you don’t have, like the blog post. Image optimization, comment or forum section, engagement prospects, etc.
Also, you can borrow their keyword by copying the URL and pasting it into your keyword research tools. Spyfu is a great recommendation, but that does not mean other keyword research tools won’t work.
If you notice I used “borrow” instead of steal, it is purely because I am always reserved in making this suggestion to people. It is best to use it only to get Insight rather than their keyword directly. You most likely don’t have the same authority as them.
Would you like to take a chance on your business with collaboration? Sponsor your business with us today to reach a wider audience.
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Start with low competitive keywords
SEO is quite a beast in its extensiveness. If you and a blog with a stronger Domain authority and Google trust publish an article of the same SEO quality, there is a 99% chance that the blog will outrank you. The remaining 1% is if you have voodoo. What we call Juju in Nigeria. So how do you know your website domain authority?
Head to Ubersuggest and paste your website URL. It will also come up with helpful suggestions that you can use to boost your website SEO, including the backlinks.
If your domain authority is lesser than 20, you should stick with low, competitive keywords. You will also see this on the dashboard. You are good to go if you have more than 50 DA and good Google trust.
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Write SEO-friendly blog posts
You can’t change your web content every time; however, you can write blogs regularly to keep up with the google search algorithm. This is where keyword research will be more useful, as you can always search for the latest words or phrases people are using to look for your services on Google and create a blog post around it.
However, ensure you do not overload your blog with keywords. Don’t forget you are connecting with people, not robots. Moreover, many Search Engines Consoles flag content that is saturated with keywords.
Therefore, you have to do it tastefully. Use these keywords in the blog title, the first paragraph of the article, body, meta description, tags, and the URL.
Read More: 10 Essential Elements of Seo Content You Should Know
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Use internal links
interlinks
An internal link is another effective strategy to boost your SEO and improve visitor readability on your website. It simply connects one or more pages on a website to other pages on the same site.
Internal linking helps you to get the most out of your website as it helps you to glue your visitors to your website, reading one blog after the other. It also helps them to know more about your services while satisfying their curiosity about a particular subject and subsequently develop more interest in your product or services. Internal links also help Google bots to crawl your website for different keywords and make it rank well on the search engine.
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Build your external linking
External link or hyperlink symbol
I mentioned domain authority in number 2 of this post, but I forgot to define and mention what domain authority is about and how you can build yours.
Domain authority is purely a search engine ranking score that measures the straight of a website based on the quality of the external link it has. This will also determine how it will compete with other similar websites in the same niche.
External linking is the only way you can boost your website domain authority. It is also effective in getting direct traffic to other people’s websites. However, it would be best if the blog you are getting links from is healthy and align with your website audience. It is also great if the website has a high DA. Something like 50DA and above is great. However, this is not the holy grain, as some websites may have high DA but poor SEO quality. You may also consider paying bloggers to help them backlink their website to theirs, but this is against google policy and can blocklist your site if detected.
I advise people to use Press Release and publish it on reputable PR websites. You can also offer guest posts on some legitimate websites like Insight.ng, Busniessworld.Africa, Nairametric, and others. You can also mention your website on online forums like Quora, Nairaland, Reddit, etc.
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Build your social media network
3D Social media platform
Building your social media network does not directly boost your website’s SEO ranking, but it is remarkably effective in bringing visitors to your website. You can create a Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and many more. All these social media platforms already have millions of users, and you can easily introduce your website to your targeted customers. This will also help you build a close relationship with your customers and understand what they want you to improve on your services.
Search engine bots are occasionally curious about why people are constantly visiting a website, which can have a minor effect on your website. But not reliable.
If this post inspires you, kindly follow our Instagram page to keep track of more interesting posts. You can also subscribe to our newsletter. Insight.ng has always got your back. Thanks for your time!
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Prioritize Speed
Evaluating website loading speed, concept of page speed optimization
People’s attention rates become smaller and smaller every day. And this is the era we start calculating website traffic with milliseconds. So you need to take your website speed paramount. If you are using WordPress, you can easily achieve this by installing Google AMP. You can also consider using lightweight themes like Blocksy or OcenWP. And compress and optimize your images. Also, Use asynchronous and defer loading for your CSS and JavaScript files and Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.
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Master Onpage SEO
On-page SEO encompasses all the SEO practices that occur on your blog. This includes your blog post, header, meta description, permalink, Image optimization, and several others. Some of the features mentioned in this article are also part of on-page SEO, like blog writing and interlinking. However, to make it easy for you to digest, I will link to another article that talks in detail about on-page SEO, which will complement your goal of doing your website SEO yourself.
Read also: SEO Writing For Beginners: On-Page Seo Most Important Factors
Wrapping it Up
As I said at the beginning of this article, SEO is time and money-consuming. It is tricky, even for professionals. All the above tips are simplified processes of doing your website SEO yourself. It, however, did not cover technical SEO.
I will cover that in one of my subsequent articles. But, to ensure you do not miss out on it when I finally do, ensure you connect with Insight.ng on WhatsApp.
About Author
- Taiwo Sotikare is passionate about helping small businesses grow through the power of effective content marketing. Via SEO, Taiwo helps small businesses generate more monthly income. He creates content that hit Google front page, where thousands of targeted customers can access your business swiftly.
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