Search engine optimization is a crucial marketing tool that businesses use to drive organic traffic. With SEO, potential clients can find your website easily. SEO is important, especially for small business owners. If you are not sure whether you should do SEO yourself or hire an expert to do it, here are tips for do-it-yourself SEO, its pros and cons, and why you should hire an SEO agency instead.
How to do SEO on your own
Do you want to do SEO on your own but don’t know how to go about it? Here are some DIY SEO tips to help you get started.
Research your competitors
You’ll also need to research your competitors. Look for the sites selling the exact product like yours, massive retailers, and even informational sites. When researching your competitors, ask yourself the following questions:
- How do they engage shoppers?
- What content themes are they using that you don’t?
- What are they doing well in organic search?
- How have they structured their site to target keywords?
You should also study your competitor’s social media activity or site information that will help you improve your user experience.
Make sure your website has no technical issues
Your SEO strategy should take into account the technical issues. Here is a technical SEO checklist that will be of help.
- Make sure your site uses HTTPS: If you still use HTTP, it’s time to migrate. If you see a padlock on your URL, then it means your site is secure.
- Improve site speed: If your site is slow, your users will have a poor experience. Make sure your site loads quickly to ensure users are not waiting for it to load.
- Fix broken links: Broken links lead to a poor user experience. No one wants to click on a site only to find something they were not expecting.
- Make sure your site is mobile-friendly: Your organic visibility will suffer when you don’t have a mobile-friendly experience.
Perform keyword research
Keywords are crucial for a successful SEO campaign. Keywords are phrases that searchers enter into a search engine to bring them to your website. It’s crucial to identify keywords that align with your site content. You can perform keyword research using a keyword research tool. The keyword research tool allows you to see the most searched keywords and the ones that drive traffic to your competitors. Keyword research is crucial in SEO for the following reasons:
- It helps you know the commonly searched for phrases.
- You’ll know the keywords to target.
- It’ll enable you to know the demand for your products.
Map keywords to each page
Once you know the phrases that consumers use to search for your site, you should map those keywords on every page on your website. You should have a spreadsheet of all the important pages in your site navigation and map the unique keywords. If you have unassigned high-value keywords, you should create new pages for them. Make sure you use long-tail keywords that are more specific.
Write content
You’ll need content to keep your customers on your website. Create ongoing content that is tailored to your customers. Publish quality and unique content at least weekly or monthly. What matters is consistency. You can spice up your content using product photos, illustrations, or how-to videos.
Make sure your content delivers value to your audience. You’ll only be wasting your time when you create content that does not engage customers.
Google is always looking for good content, so you should always have fresh content on your site. Make sure you use keywords in the body, title, and meta description to optimize your content.
Start building links
Links from other sites will help you establish your trustworthiness, authority, and expertise. When you get backlinks from high authority domains, they are a valuable part of your digital marketing strategy. You can use a backlink analytics tool to get details about IP distribution and anchor texts. Check the websites that have the most backlinks.
Pros and cons of DIY SEO
Pros
Cost savings
One of the benefits you’ll enjoy from do-it-yourself SEO is that you’ll save on cost. However, when you do SEO yourself, it will demand time investment. You’ll need to learn the SEO fundamentals and improve your skills before you can start doing DIY SEO for your business. Time is money and you may find that it is efficient to have a professional handle SEO for your website.
Complete control
If you don’t want to have an agency take control of your online marketing, then doing DIY SEO gives you complete control. Even though an agency will write your content and build links, it can be intimidating if you like doing everything yourself.
Instant flexibility
When you do your own SEO, it gives you instant flexibility, especially when you want to adopt new strategies and switch directions in your marketing.
Cons
Limited expertise
Even if you have gained knowledge about SEO for a few months, you will not have the same experience as SEO experts. You won’t be knowledgeable about the changes in the industry as a professional would. You’ll not have the same abilities as someone who has been doing SEO for years.
Time-consuming
SEO is time-consuming, especially since you don’t have any experience. Learning how to do SEO is already exhausting and optimizing your website only makes the whole process more hectic.
What if you choose an SEO agency
Saves time
You only have so many hours to work in a day. It is crucial to use your time efficiently. Going through the process of learning how to do SEO is time that you would have spent on other important aspects of your business. An SEO agency has the expertise and knowledge and will spend a short time.
Give you a better understanding of your market
An agency gives you a market research report that contains information on your organization’s past performance and those of your competitors. When you know where your competition is going, it will help you win over new customers.
You won’t have to worry about changes
Search engine optimization is always changing up to several times in a year. Keeping up with the changes needs time. When you leave it to the SEO professionals, they ensure your digital marketing trends so that your sites remain under Google’s required criteria.
Efficient results
Outsourcing allows you to seek help from a specialist who can produce results more efficiently. If you want to achieve your goals within a short time, outsourcing your SEO campaign is the way to go.
Even though do-it-yourself SEO may seem like an ideal option when you are on a budget, it’s better to leave search engine optimization to the professionals. A digital marketing company is in a good position to help your organization achieve its goals since they are knowledgeable in search engine optimization.