At first, you might get very confused if you’re new to the world of websites, and building your website might seem an impossible task. Well, it’s not; you can absolutely do it yourself; with some research and dedication, you, like anyone else, can do SEO for your own website.
Take into consideration that this requires a lot of time and effort. Also, you must have the patience to learn new information and the desire and consistency to implement them on a daily basis. If you’re willing to commit to this idea, be ready to save tons of money and learn a bunch, as you’re going to skip hiring any SEO agency that might provide this service for you.
Table of Content,:
1. Conducting Research
1.1. Keyword Research
1.2. Optimize URL
1.3. Quality Content
1.4. Build Backlinks
1.5. Image Optimization
2. SEO tools
In this post, we will discuss how to do your own SEO for your website in 2023.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, widely known as SEO, is the practice of optimizing your site to rank better in search engine results pages (SERPs) organically. Over 2 billion active sites and the constant influx of new content can be challenging for site owners to make theirs stand out. However, with the right approach, techniques, and strategies, it’s possible to increase your visibility and attract more organic traffic.
But how can someone do SEO themselves?
Conducting Research
Before you dive into it, you should research key factors in SEO, such as:
- Keyword Research
- URL Optimization
- Create Quality Content
- Build High-Quality Backlinks
- Image Optimization
Without understanding these key factors, it is almost impossible to get better at optimizing your website for search engine results.
Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the most crucial steps in any SEO strategy; it involves identifying the right keywords and phrases that your potential audience is searching for on search engines. This allows you to understand the language and intent behind the searches, which as a consequence, helps you to create better content.
Always remember to stay within the niche of your choice; start by brainstorming a list of potential keywords that relate to your business, product, or service. Then, use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Pro, to identify related keywords, their search volume, and competition. Next, prioritize them based on their search volume and competition for a particular word. Finally, you can choose either short-tail or long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords tend to have a high volume number of searches and high competition, whereas, Long-tail keywords tend to have a low to mid-volume number of searches and low competition. Therefore, I would recommend you choose long-tail keywords, as you’re new and you’re looking to drive traffic.
Optimization of Your Website Structure
Optimizing your website structure helps search engines crawl and understand your website’s content. This way, you will improve the chances of your website appearing in search results for relevant searches.
There are several ways to optimize your website structure:
- Create a sitemap
It is a file that lists all the pages on your website.
- Use descriptive URLs:
Use descriptive, keyword-rich URLs that are short and give engines and users a clear idea of what each page is about.
- Optimize your page titles and meta description.
Page titles and meta descriptions are HTML elements that appear in search results. Try to use your primary keyword in your page title and meta description.
- Use Headlines such as H1, H2, H3, H4, etc., to break up your content and make it easier for spiders to crawl your website’s content.
Create Quality Content
Creating Quality content is one of the most effective ways to improve your website’s search engine ranking and an important factor when it comes to SEO. In addition, quality content encourages other websites to link back to your website, which not only attracts more visitors but also helps improve your website’s authority and credibility.
When creating content for your website, make sure it’s relevant, informative, and engaging for your targeted audience. Always fact-check your content, and make sure to update it, especially if your content was published a long time ago.
Use targeted keywords throughout your content, but remember to avoid keyword stuffing (1-3% is quite good). It would be best if you always aimed to satisfy the reader and provide them with the answers they sought.
Build High-Quality backlinks
Backlinks play a vital role when it comes to Website ranking, especially on building domain authority and page authority. Backlinks are links other websites point (link) to your website; they indicate the quality and relevance of your website’s content. Therefore, the higher the quality of the backlinks, the higher your website is likely to rank in SERPs.
There are different methods that people like to use to build backlinks, but we suggest you avoid buying them and all shady methods as they might result in a ban from SERPs and do not deliver the best results.
Always use White-Hat link building as it is a legitimate SEO practice to gain backlinks from trustworthy, authoritative websites that comply with Google’s guidelines and will always deliver slow but efficient results. Guest blogging is a great way to effectively build backlinks as well, which means writing quality content for other websites for a specific niche; this helps you build relationships with others in your industry and drive referral traffic to your website.
We highly recommend you avoid black-hat link building.
Image Optimization
Image optimization is the process of optimizing the images on your website in order for search engines to find and read them. Image SEO is important as it improves user experience, website visibility, and ranking in SERPs.
Optimization methods are based on the site’s layout and structure, but the most common optimization tools involve image size compressing and minimizing the number of images the site has to load. Image optimization will highly affect the page’s load time as well; therefore, you should not overload your content with images that require time to load, as this will consequently affect your website’s ranking.
Here are some tips for optimizing images for SEO:
- Use Descriptive Filenames
Name your image file that includes relevant keywords.
- Compress your images
Reduce file size, making your website faster and more user-friendly.
- Use Alt text
Add descriptive alt text to images to help search engines understand what the image is about.
- Choose the correct file type
Ensure that your images are responsive, as this will improve your site’s user experience and increase your search engine rankings.
- Use Structured Data
Use structured data to provide additional information about your images to search engines.
SEO tools to help you out
There are some platforms that have tools that will help you immensely when doing the search engine optimization yourself, as follows:
In conclusion, this procedure will require a lot of time and consistency. You will have to learn everything, and cooperate with content creators, unless you see yourself to be passionate about writing as well. It is a long and painful process, but very fruitful in the end.