How to D-I-Y your blog SEO on a shoestring budget |
It doesn't require expensive advertising tools to perform SEO for your blog and it shouldn't be expensive, too. Learn how to make it happen yourself with seven easy steps.
In the moment that you approach the New Year hits its stride You're likely to go over your budget and spending and trying to determine what you did with your cash last year, and what you can cut down on your spending this year. You've been there and it's a gruelling experience.
In the search for ways to reduce costs, it's not uncommon to identify strategies and methods that you've used for a while and can cost a significant amount of money, and find ways to either eliminate them or take these tools into your own.
But for some reason, the majority of marketers think that the need for the services of a search engine optimization (SEO) professional or tools to support their efforts in that area is an absolute must. This is why I'm here to let you know that you can effectively DIY your blog's SEO and not spend any cash at all.
Have you been blown off by your imagination?
SEO is an essential element of your overall marketing strategy.
In fact, 61% of marketers' most important inbound marketing priority is enhancing their SEO as well as increasing their organic presence. It's a bet with the rise of voice search in popularity, that percentage will only increase year-over-year.
Ensuring your SEO is in sync and increasing your organic site traffic can put you ahead of the competition in your field as well as increase the accessibility of users who are conducting internet searching.
How do you DIY your SEO strategy
1. Create a keyword list
The initial step in implementing your SEO method by yourself is to determine your key words by conducting search engine research . They could be either long- or short-tail however, in essence it should include words you want your content to rank for as well as terms that your target audience searches for related items to your area of expertise on the web.
For example, if you're an agency that specializes in design and marketing You'll need to begin by making a checklist that reads as follows:
Agency for marketing
Design agency
Marketing and design firm
Quality design
Marketing strategy
Your long-term keywords may look similar to this:
What is the best way to implement a successful marketing strategy?
Best design techniques for email marketing
How to identify marketing goals
Marketing strategies of various kinds to employ
These are just examples. What you'll want to determine is your specific areas of expertise and expand from there.
I'd recommend also talking to your sales team to see what your prospects are asking about and what they're asking for assistance with. This can inform your keyword list as well.
Make sure to check your current rankings so you can determine which terms to focus on as well as examine your competition's rankings, as well. That will give you the idea of keywords that are neglected to help you concentrate on them and gain the advantages.
2. Establish or create pillar pages
Pillar webpages are designed to serve as an all-in-one-shop solution for a particular area, that will also be linked to one of your key phrases. They are usually longer, as they do not leave a one unfinished and cover as wide a range of ground as they can.
There are pages on your site which need to be updated, or you need to make the pages. In designing or updating these pages, make sure you go into various areas within the theme.
So, for instance suppose you're creating a web page that contains the words "marketing strategies".
It is important to talk about what you need to do to put your strategy together, the goals that a strategy will help you reach, different mediums and methods which a strategy is composed of as well as how to gauge the effectiveness of your strategy and also how you can implement the strategy.
For every keyword or words you'd like to rank for it is best to have a the pillar page. So, if you make use of that term within your text you'll be able to hyperlink back to that particular pillar page, which will increase the website's potential to rank in search results for the word.
3. Note duplicate content as well as broken hyperlinks
If you've been writing blog posts at will there's a good chance you've got many outdated and duplicate content out there, perhaps even some unfinished pages. It is imperative to fix those problems in order for your website to be ranked well. they will end up working against you.
Make a spreadsheet listing every keyword and blog posts that are tied to the keyword in some way. If you've got a number of blog entries You may need to add subgroups for each search term. See the image below to get an idea of the concept.
This can help you manage your efforts so you can better understand the blog posts that are most alike to other posts.
Make sure you also create an extra spreadsheet which houses any broken links you encounter when doing this research to make it easy to pull the links and redirect them.
4. Update and redirect your website
After you've completed your spreadsheet, look over related blog posts with care. If there are any that seem repeated or repeating similar ideas, you should redirect the less strategic or dated blog articles to more updated, higher-quality pages.
This can reduce the self-competing content (yes you can rival itself on the search results) It will also ensure that your pages are ranked for the correct keywords.
This is also a good chance to make changes to any blog content that doesn't need to be redirected however could benefit from more information or a refresh.
Accordingly, since you're going to keep these pages, you'll want to make sure they have appropriate keywords in the content, as well as provide the most up-to current information that is available.
5. Add links to pillar pages in the text
Once your blog is cleared of duplicate content and the clutter has been eliminated, as well as any broken links, it's time to look through your blog's pages and ensure that the correct ones are linking back to your pillar pages .
Start by reviewing your subgroupings as well as the links under them.
Now, suppose that there are three blog sites that correlate to marketing strategy as well as email marketing . Go through each post and add a link to your pillar page for marketing strategy with "marketing strategies" as the anchor the text.
6. Develop a link strategy that moves ahead
It is important to ensure that you're adhering to this method in all future blog posts that you create. You've already gone through the effort to improve your old content and one thing that can cause harm to that content is if do not continue to follow the plan.
It's true that I've spoken about spreadsheets many times however, they're an asset for this approach. They will help you to complete each step, including this one. It is recommended to list each key word as well as in the following column, the pillar post assigned to them.
It's also a good idea to provide various anchor texts or keywords with long tails that can be utilized for each equally.
In describing which article is associated with which keyword(s) You'll be able to keep the future team members in the same place as well as provide a simple guide to check against while you're editing and reviewing any blog posts you'll be writing in the future.
Also, it helps to be sure to keep SEO at the forefront of your mind when you develop your content.
7. Continue to track your results
Check in on how your strategy is doing every quarter or month. It is important to know whether your website is starting to rank higher on search results or if it's staying in a rut, and aid in identifying any issues.
There are free software tools such as Moz , or you can conduct a search using your keywords from time to the time to check the frequency with which your posts are popping on the internet.
Of course, if you're wondering where to track the data and do not want to invest in the SEO software such as Moz Then I've one final word to share with you. It's one we've said a lot this morning and that is spreadsheets.
SEO doesn't have to cost a lot of money
A solid SEO strategy is crucial if you want to be easy to find online by your customers. The hiring of an outside SEO expert can be costly, but it isn't necessary.
If you move your SEO work within your company and following the steps mentioned above, you will be able to get your blog up and running to ensure that the most valuable blog content starts to rank, and continues to rank as time passes.
For review, the fundamental steps are as follows:
Making a list of keywords
Creating pillar pages, or if you already possess a popular page you make use of, transforming existing posts to become Pillar pages
Scoping out duplicate content
Updates to outdated, stale content and assigning redirects for content that's competing with itself
Seeding links to your cluster content from your pillar pages
Implementing a link strategy
Also you should be keeping a close eye on your results.
Easy-peasy.