Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is aimed at improving your website’s standing in organic search results. Although SEO is a complex activity, that requires a significant investment of time, many businesses don’t have the required budget to allocate to marketing activities that are required to achieve results.
In this blog, I’ll cover the “low hanging fruit” that should be implemented for businesses that don’t have the budget to hire an SEO Agency or Freelancer.
1. Ensure your website’s pages are indexed and error free
Log into Google Search Console and check your site’s overview, to ensure your pages are indexed, with minimal errors:
2. Use the keywords in your content that your customers are actually searching for
selecting the “right” keywords for your business’s SEO campaign is vital for your website’s success. Keyword selection will become even more critical, so use Google Trends to check the number of searches and regional usage of the keyword (in which state/territory the keyword is predominantly used). This tool also helps you understand whether the search terms are trending up, or down:
Use the “Searches related to” section at the bottom of the search engine results page to find other related keywords and check their metrics:
Use these keywords sparingly in your website’s titles, content & meta descriptions.
3. Claim your Google My Business listing
Local SEO is on the rise. This is especially true for businesses that have a physical presence. You must claim your business’ Google Business Profile, to ensure you are visible in local searches:
Proximity matters to all searchers, even more so for those searching from a mobile device.
4. Setup your Google Analytics account
Google Analytics is a crucial tool to understand the behaviour of visitors to your website. Spend some time in understanding your users better, so you can provide them with what they are looking for. Pay close attention to which pages have the most/least pageviews and focus on these. Also check out the Engagement time, to see which pages your users spend the most time on.
5. Create High-Quality content
The production of content is a core aspect of SEO & brand building and this will become even more important, due to the exponential growth of content production, making high-quality content that truly answers the searcher’s question imperative. Alternate between blogs, videos, podcasts and any other format that resonates with your audience. When creating content, It’s crucial you demonstrate your expertise and authority in the industry
6. Make sure your website is fast & mobile friendly
As most of the internet’s searches come from mobile, it makes sense that Google deems mobile sites extremely important. Ensure your website is mobile friendly, usable and loads fast. Use Google’s Pagespeed Insights to get an indication of your site’s mobile and desktop speed. Google’s Core Web Vitals algorithm has gone live and your site must pass these metrics for speed and page experience.
7. Take a holistic approach to brand building
SEO doesn’t operate in a silo. The focus of your marketing should be brand and entity building, both at a personal level and more importantly, a business level. Creating regular content, running PPC Ads, owning your SERP real estate, Social Media marketing and traditional press complement each other to form a holistic view of your brand.
8. Don’t forget socials!
Ensure you promote your content over social media also. Not only will you drive traffic to your website, it will also send social “signals” to search engines, increasing the authority of your website in the search engine’s eyes.
This is just an overview of actionable tasks you can implement for your business’ SEO. It’s merely a starting point for a more comprehensive SEO campaign.
9. Keep a close eye on your backlink profile
Although arguably links aren’t as important as they were in the past, they are still considered one of the top three ranking factors. Monitor your link profile regularly, to ensure only genuine, relevant links are pointing to your site, or else you might feel the wrath of an algorithmic or manual action penalty. These have the ability to destroy businesses. Also, cautiously build high quality, relevant links from related businesses to enable your website to rank for more competitive keywords.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to contact via the form or message below.