A lot of people look at search engine optimization as this arcane, unknowable craft. It really isn’t. It’s just in the best interests of some people to make you think it is.
The truth is that applying SEO to your website is actually quite simple. All it takes is a bit of hard work and an understanding of your audience. From there, it’s all about the content.
First, consider what sort of content you’re going to create. For example, if you’re an online retailer that primarily sells home construction supplies and power tools, you’ll probably want to focus largely on DIY content. We recommend taking a look at the social media feeds of a few other businesses in your industry to get a feel for what they write about – and to whom.
Next, download a basic keyword research tool. We recommend AHrefs Keywords Explorer or Google Keyword Planner. These can give you a bit of basic insight into what your audience might be looking for in terms of content.
We’d also recommend looking at Quora, Reddit, and Answer The Public, as well as checking out your Google Search Console.
From there, you can apply this knowledge to figure out the topics and keywords to target with each page and post on your site. Focus on a single keyword or keyphrase for each. Avoid keyword stuffing, and instead, focus on providing value to your audience.
For a blog post, that means answering the question that brought users to your site. For landing pages, that means NAP and other relevant business data. As an alternative to all this work, if you’re on WordPress we’d recommend using a plugin like Yoast SEO.
Already used by millions of websites, Yoast is maintained by a dedicated group of SEO experts and provides you with a complete toolset for planning and applying your SEO efforts across your site. It’s a powerful tool that you can get a ton of value out of even if you aren’t an expert.
Why Bother Using An Agency At All?
We’ll wrap things up with a question that’s probably on everyone’s minds. If SEO is so straightforward, what’s the point of SEO experts and marketing agencies? After all, you can just do everything yourself, right?
Yes and no.
You don’t leverage an agency for their knowledge of how SEO works. You leverage them for their expertise – because they not only have knowledge of SEO but the necessary experience to apply it in ways you might not consider. Moreover, for larger sites, the amount of work required is such that without an agency, it’s downright overwhelming.
Further, while the basics of SEO are such that one can easily master and apply them, there’s a lot of nuances to it that people without a great deal of experience might not graspAt the end of the day, while basic SEO is something that everyone can – and should – do if you have the budget for it, it’s always worthwhile to bring in an expert or two.