SEO
You want more traffic to your website, and increasing search rankings is one way to make it happen. In fact, bringing in more traffic from organic search might be the best way to get your message out to those who most need to hear it. But can you do your own search engine optimization (SEO), or do you need to hire someone?
While there might be aspects of SEO that can be best handled by an agency, you can do a lot yourself to improve your website SEO. With all the SEO tools available these days, it’s easier than ever to research keywords, monitor site traffic, and more. You can even learn to update your own metadata and create your own content, build backlinks, and follow industry developments. Here’s how to do your own website SEO.
Come Up with Some Keywords
The first step in optimizing your website for search is to come up with some keywords. You shouldn’t just pull keywords out of thin air. You should do keyword research to make sure you’re using the right keywords – for your industry, for your products, and for the intent of your customers performing the search.
You can use a tool like Google Ads Keyword Planner to generate keywords based on terms real people actually use to search. Look for keywords that have a high monthly search volume (MSV) and a low level of competition from other websites. That might not always be possible, but you can always try variations of your chosen search keywords.
Learn How to Monitor Your Site Traffic
Before you begin optimizing your website content, you may want to find out exactly how much search traffic you’re currently getting so you can better measure your progress. Use a tool like Google Search Console to learn more about your site’s search performance. You can use the same tool to monitor your increasing traffic as you implement SEO techniques.
Produce Some Great Optimized Content
Content is the pillar of any good SEO strategy. There’s nothing more important to your website’s SEO than your content. Content should be attractive – it should be well presented and offer something of value to the reader or viewer, whether that’s entertainment, information, or a mix of both. Content should be authoritative, thoughtful, and well-informed. It should incorporate visual elements like charts, infographics, videos, and images.
And it should include keywords integrated into the body of the content in such a way that they flow and feel natural. Keywords should appear in the title and subheadings where it makes sense that they do. A primary keyword should appear in the first and last paragraphs of a written piece and two to four times again throughout the rest of the body of the piece. Videos and image content can implement keywords in captions, hashtags, and title headings. Don’t overstuff your content with keywords, and prioritize quality writing and content over using a lot of keywords.
Optimize Your Metadata
Optimizing your metadata, or on-page optimization, is probably the most confusing part of optimizing your website for search, because it involves going into the HTML code for your website and making changes there that won’t appear on the site. Metadata is there for search engines and browsers, to give them information about your website. When you include keywords in your metadata, including your meta description, can help search engines more easily rank your website.
Build Backlinks and Buzz
If there’s one part of SEO that might demand the services of a good Phoenix SEO company, it would be off-page optimization, or building backlinks to your page and buzz about your brand online. Backlinks are most effective at boosting your SEO when they come from authoritative sites in your industry. Getting your content shared to (and talked about on) social media can also help your off-page SEO. Having your brand talked about on social media or in other online spaces can also boost your off-page SEO.
Keep Things Chugging Along
The work doesn’t end when you finally achieve your search traffic goals. To keep those numbers up, you have to keep churning out new content, keep hyping up your content on social media, keep making those guest blog posts and working on building backlinks. It’s often at this stage of the game where bringing in an agency can be most beneficial. They can help you maintain your progress with content creation and other services to support you.
SEO can seem like a complete mystery if you’re not familiar with it, but it’s definitely worth taking the time to learn. When you learn to do your own website SEO, you’ll not only save some money on marketing, you’ll also gain a greater insight into your customers and what they want.
