Before starting with DIY SEO (search engine optimization) for your website, you must know what SEO is and what should be your realistic expectations.

SEO refers to a set of practices that allow us to improve our website's organic traffic. Also, it helps us increase our websites' visibility for appropriate searches.

It doesn't matter whether you own a small business or a prominent firm; SEO will always be helpful. How? By garnering more sales and prospective customers. However, enhancing your website comes at a cost. If you're short on time but have plenty of money to spare, hire a digital marketing agency or a consultant. However, if you want to rank your website up and get more traffic without spilling a lot of pennies, we have six DIY SEO tips.

1. Do keyword research the right way

Start your SEO with keyword research. Don't just begin with assumptions, for example, thinking you're fully knowledgeable about what your customers are looking for.

Yes, you might be familiar with your business jargon, but your potential customers may not use the same terms to search for your products/services. By mastering keyword research, you'll be able to understand what words or phrases your prospects use to locate products/services that your business offers. Plus, it'll help you create themes and decide which outbound links to use by looking at the most common search queries the users search for.

There are a ton of different keyword tools that you can use. However, look for one that offers a quantitative demand score as it'll help you identify which keyword theme you should target. If you're looking to go by our recommendation, use the Google Keyword Planner, but you'll have to use it with Google Ads (AdWords) campaign for maximum effectiveness.

2. Understand your competition

You know the products/services you'll offer, so go ahead and search for them in Google. See what websites top the SERPs (search engine results pages). Now, open the ones that have the same business model as yours and answer the following questions:

• Why are they ahead in this niche?
• What is in their content that's absent from yours?
• Do they engage more customers by offering more intriguing features?
• Do they target more valuable keywords by structuring their site differently?

Also, pay attention to what their customers say (visit their testimonials page).

3. Improve title tags

Usually, just some minor tweaks in the title are enough to make a significant difference. The value of titles in SEO is much underrated, and it's time titles are given their due share of significance. In fact, SEO algorithms read the titles first before doing anything else. Therefore, if you want to rank your website up, use compelling titles – it's one of the best on-site SEO techniques to date.

If your title tag isn't attractive enough, users won't click on it. Here's why choosing the rights titles are fundamental to your SEO efforts:

• Helps you make stunning first impressions: Any prospect will notice your title tag first.
• Offers brand leverage: Since people trust brands, placing your brand name in the title tag will attract clicks from prospects, leading to more traffic.

And don't forget, the title is the first thing Google sees about your website to get an initial understanding of what the page is about. This is precisely why people use keywords within their title tags in a bid to rank higher in the SERPs.

4. Optimize the loading speed of your website

It's mandatory to keep your website loading times as low as possible. If your website doesn't load quickly, the users won't take more than a couple of seconds to abandon it.

Studies report that just a delay of one second will be enough to reduce conversions by 7 percent – a rate that many brands struggle to accomplish.

Hence, optimizing your website's loading speed should be the first thing on your list of to-dos. Also, the loading times don't depend entirely on how your website is coded. A hosting plan plays an important role too. So, opt for a decent hosting plan that offers CDN (content delivery network) and guarantees unmatched uptime.

If you're looking to save bucks and want to optimize the website load time yourself, there's a trial and test method. Use either GTMetrix or Pingdom to compare your website's speed before and after optimizations. This way, you'll know what features to implement and what elements you should get rid of.

Thanks to these tools, you'll be able to compare your website loading speed from a variety of locations, allowing you to make an informed decision. Also, GTMetrix will highlight what optimizations you should make to your website for a seamless, faster user experience.

5. Understand analytics

If you can't measure something, how can you optimize it? Before doing SEO, you should have a basic know-how of what Google Analytics is. It'll help you identify well-optimized pages and those that need to be optimized.

Open Google Analytics and navigate to channels. Click the button 'organic search' and select the landing page as the primary dimension. Now, you can review the performance of your SEO.

Be vigilant with the 'keyword' dimension. No analytics program can accurately track which keywords should be part of your organic search traffic unless you're viewing the Google Search Console performance report.

6. Produce content regularly

Produce content regularly and write on topics that your audience likes. No, you're not required to write a blog every day – that's unrealistic for many people (and unnecessary too). Just publish unique content on a weekly or monthly basis. But remain consistent.

Content doesn't mean endless walls of text. It can be how-to videos, photos of products, illustrations, more DIY guides, or anything that helps your target market. Whatever content you produce, it should deliver value. If the content isn't able to engage your prospects and customers, you've not just wasted your time, but theirs as well.

Conclusion

To wrap it up, it's evident that SEO isn't rocket science and a DIY approach is very much possible. Plus, if you do it yourself, you'll learn a lot. Yes, you may find it time-consuming and a little bit challenging at first, but once you become used to it, you'll start enjoying it while seeing your business reach new heights without shelling out a considerable amount of money!

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