Practical Tips For Business Owners To Optimize Your Website for SEO
If you found this article you probably already know what SEO is and probably want to know how to optimize your site yourself to rank better in search engines. You have the drive and the time to self SEO your site. Now you just need to know where to start. Here’s some practical steps you can take that don’t require years of education and experience of a professional SEO consultant. We also offer full site audits for everything listed below for free, so if anything is confusing or you’re not sure what to do give us a call.
Technical Self SEO
Technical SEO involves a lot of the behind the scenes and programming aspects of optimizing your website. We’ll get to on-page tips later, but without a firm technical optimization your other efforts won’t be nearly as effective.
Reporting
You might think reporting is not necessary until your site is optimized, but if you’re handling SEO yourself you can find a wealth of information about your current optimization that will give you a firm understanding of where you are and what might be easier to rank for.
Google Analytics: Get a free GA account and add the tracking code to your site. This will show you exactly what users are doing once they get to your site. How long they hang out, what pages are most popular and literally thousands of other metrics.
Google Search Console: GSC will show you what searches potential customers are actually searching that result in your site being in the search results (not necessarily clicked). GSC will also tell you any technical issues with your site. Aspects such as mobile usability, security concerns and even manual penalties you may be under. Again there is a wealth of other information you can get from Google for the so it your self SEO.
Keyword Research: This is critical for all future on and off site efforts. Through research you’ll discover what searches have better volume, lower competition or both. You can also discover long tail searches or questions asked related to your business.
Site Files
There are several files on your site that no one ever sees but the search engines. Optimizing these is your first step to having a full technical optimized site.
Robots.txt: This is a file on your web server you can access via FTP or a plugin (if you use WordPress or other CMS). This file is the first thing search engines look at when crawling your site. It gives the search engines instructions such as what pages not to put in their index such as login pages, administrative files, etc. It also tells Google where your XML sitemap is.
XML Sitemap: This is another file (typically generated dynamically) that tells Google every page on your site that you want to be in their index. It also tells them when the page was last updated and a few other stats that are helpful to get your pages indexed and ranked.
Site Hierarchy: This is your site’s URL structure. It should make sense to Google so they can better understand how pages relate to each other. Go to a page on your site and look at the url. Does the url alone give you an idea of what section you’re in (/category/product/sku for example)
Performance
Site Load Time: More and more people are using their phones and tablets on mobile networks to look for products and services. Since Google wants them to have a good experience on sites they find page load time is critical. This could have been the first technical item on this list but the fact is improving your site speed isn’t straight forward. Most of the time it takes a page to load has to do with very technical aspects that aren’t easily changeable. Your hosting provider can help with some updates but there are many that have to do with ow your site is coded. The easiest thing you can do is look into new themes or designs.
Security: Website security is top priority as it’s essential that your visitors do not get a virus from going to your site. Sounds far fetched but it happens a lot more than you might think. The first step is to install an SSL certificate and available security plugins.
On-Site Self SEO
On site SEO is what it sounds like – optimizations that are literally part of your site and usually things anyone can see like content, layout, etc.
Design
UI & Layout: In short your site should look good and present information in a logical, easy to absorb method. Content should have a good Flesch Reading Score.
Navigation: This is about more than your top menu bar. Consider navigational items such as breadcrumbs and next/previous links and any other place a click will take a visitor to a new page.
ADA Compliance
User-Focused: If you’re not focused on your site visitors you’re going to lose business. This includes people who can’t see or hear as good as most. From having a logical tab order through your nav and content to making sure every photo has a “readable” option ADA website compliance is becoming more and more important and can even lead to a lawsuit if you’re in violation.
SEO & ADA: These two are intermixed. Good SEO and site optimization must incorporate accessibility from a user and technical perspective.
Content: I almost forgot one of the most important on-site aspects of do-it-your self SEO. Content! You need strong interesting content that gives people what they’re searching for. The more the better as long as it’s unique. It’s that simple.
Off-Site Self SEO
This one is pretty self explanatory as well. Off site SEO is optimization that helps your site rank from other sites through link building, social media and business listings.
Social
Social Media has great influence power and can be extremely cost effective when done correctly.
Cost Per Lead: Much less than other channels, social promoted posts can reach your audience with minimal investment.
Demographics: You can fully customize your target audience. From gender to interests to zip code, you’re in complete control.
Links
Traditional Link Building: Link outreach is a great way to promote your site. Write good content, share it on social and ask others to link to your site. Every link to your site is a vote for you to dominate the rankings! But be careful – there are a lot of schemes that seem like an easy way to get links but most will not help and maybe hurt your rankings.
Citations: Citations are directory listings that link to your site, give some business and contact information. There are thousands and most are easy to get at little or no cost.
Google My Business
Incredibly important to have your business updated on GMB. It’s more than a citation, it literally tells Google and your potential customers everything about your company at a glance.
Everything Else
This list above is not comprehensive by any means. There are more than 200 signals Google uses to rank your site. This article focused on what most people are able to do without the need of hiring third-party help for your do it your self SEO efforts.
So, you want to do your own SEO? Good for you! I encourage all business owners to take part in their own SEO efforts whether they are working with us or not. There are plenty of areas of SEO you can do yourself.
Where to Start With Do-It-Yourself SEO
- Keyword Research:
You know what you think you should rank for, but do you know what your potential customers are actually searching for when looking for your offerings? Set up Google Search Console – this will show you what people are searching for to cause your site to appear in the search listings. Not necessarily clicking on your site but you’ll see what real people are searching for in relation to your business. Then you can use that information to… - Write Content:
You are the subject matter expert so you’re the best person to write intelligent, informative content about your products or services. In fact, even when we’re writing content we make it a requirement for our clients to be involved in the process, at least at the start of a campaign. - Social Media:
If you haven’t already, start a business Facebook page. Then every time you have a promotion, write a new page on the site or have any relevant information about your business or customers post it. Add images and a call to action like “Click here for the deal!” - Citations:
Search your exact business name and see what comes up. If you’ve been around for a while you might have hundreds of results from other sites that have listed your business in their directories. Claim each and check for accuracy. It’s important all details (name, Address, Phone number) are correct and ideally identical from site to site. Then Search your competitors and sign up for any citations they have that you don’t. It’s time consuming, but worth it – create one or two a day until you dominate. - Secure Your Site:
Call up your hosting company and ask them to install an SSL Certificate. This is critical as Google devalues sites that aren’t secured.
That’s a basic list of do-it-yourself SEO advice that anyone can follow. There are more advanced techniques and tools that will greatly help your efforts. However, not all of them are equal. In my opinion, Google Search Console (free tool) is your best bet unless you are able to pay $500+ per month for some of the other SEO services. If that’s the case, call us and see how you can leverage our suite of tools and SEO consultant’s experience for the same price.