Becoming an entrepreneur can be scary, especially if you are competing against big brands. But thanks to Search Engine Optimization, you have an even playing field against these enterprises.
The only caveat is whether you have the time, team, and budget to develop, implement, and measure an SEO strategy.
Luckily, doing SEO does not have to be complicated. That’s because we will walk you through these eight steps you can run a successful and low-cost SEO campaign:
1. Analyze Your Website
Before you start, you need basic information about your website. Here are some things that will help you analyze your website:
What’s Your Website Platform? Your site should have a modern and not an outdated platform. If you have an obsolete platform, you can switch to reputable platforms like Hubspot, WordPress, and Marketo.
Will You Change Your Current Design? Although you might like your current design, it might not be the most well-designed, user-friendly site for SEO purposes. In this case, it’s advisable to get professional services, such as WordPress theme customization. This will ensure that your website not only follows the best UX/UI design practices but also has clean code that improves the website’s speed and performance.
2. Optimize for Long-tail Keywords and Phrases
Another great way to create a strong SEO strategy with a limited budget is to go for long-tail keywords and phrases. If you’re in a highly competitive niche, this will help you stand out.
Initially, start with keyword research. If you have a limited budget, it’s also better to opt for long-tail keywords because you don’t have the resources that large websites have. So, make sure that you use the right keywords.
Some handy tools you can use are Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console. Here are also some of the benefits of using long-tail keywords:
- They tend to have low competition as compared to short-tail keywords.
- They are more relevant, and the searches are highly targeted.
- The conversion rates are higher because they bring in qualitative traffic.
3. Produce High-quality Content
Producing high-quality content is a great way to establish your site as an industry thought-leader. As such, you can drive relevant traffic to your website.
If you produce high-quality, in-depth content, people will stay longer on your site. That’s because they would want to consume the information you are sharing. This can result in a longer dwell time.
Usually, longer dwell times send a signal to Google that your content is relevant and helpful. This will then, in turn, boost your rankings in the long run.
Creating high-quality content is essential in letting you maintain high rankings. It’s also a critical component of your SEO marketing strategy. It’s also worth noting that Google rewards sites that publish long-form blogs- with an average of about 1,500-2,400 words.
Since long-form articles are a lot longer to read, an average user will spend more time on a site. Secondly, if the content is informative and usable at the same time, it establishes you as a valuable reference.
4. Invest in a Mobile Responsive Site
The core of your digital marketing campaign is your website. That’s because it reflects your business on the internet.
However, it’s simply not enough to have a website. It should also be mobile responsive or can accommodate devices of all sizes.
It’s also worth noting that 75% of all online traffic comes from mobile devices. If a tablet or smartphone cannot easily access your website, you can potentially lose your credibility.
5. Build on Your Link Profile
Ideally, you want to create content that’s good enough to earn links without any promotion.
If you want to create a successful link-building strategy, try to go back to your marketing personas and SEO strategy. If the content you create provides value to your target audience, people searching for the same target audience will likely link to it.
Although you can automate blogger outreach, it’s not as successful as with personalized emails.
Bloggers and influencers can instantly smell formed emails as soon as it hits their mail. You can try sending out emails manually, using a basic template to guide you.
Focus on these aspects when doing your pitch:
Uniqueness: Come up with a brief explanation of how your content will provide value to customers.
Links: Hyperlinks are a much better alternative since posting links directly to an email makes it look like a form letter.
Subject Line: Bloggers and influencers receive a lot of emails daily. A considerable chunk probably consists of link-building requests. Your subject lines have to stand out to be specific. Specific enough to know what you are talking about.
Contact Information: You are the one who’s reaching out to them. So you need to provide them with your contact information to show them that you are the real deal.
In the same way, link building is all about creating good relationships. It’s more than just getting one individual backlink. To maximize your results, you can partner with a reputable SEO company that provides low-cost SEO services.
6. Improve Your Page Speed With Minimum Efforts
With this approach, check in with your page speed and then take necessary actions. It has still been widely debated whether or not a site’s speed influences its overall user experience.
Also, improving your site’s page speed enhances the overall user experience. Meanwhile, longer load times hurt your conversions.
Additionally, here are some factors that you need to consider with your page loading time:
- Optimize images
- Minify CSS, HTML, and Javascript
- Decrease server response times
- Allow compression
- Get rid of CSS in the above fold content and render-blocking JavaScript
- Leverage browser caching
- Stay away from landing page redirects
7. Check Out the Competition
Even if you’re still new in the industry, you probably know who your close competitors are. Monitor what they’re doing so that you’ll have a good idea of the products and services that they offer.
This allows you to stay focused on giving your customers something valuable, too. You might want to start examining the websites of your competitors and how they differ from yours.
By doing your research, you might find something that works for your strategy and implement them. Keeping an eye on your competitors is essential with every SEO campaign.
However, this can also be especially important if you don’t have a huge budget to start with.
8. Test, Optimize, and Test Again
In the same way, you should constantly check on and improve your strategy to ensure that you’re getting the results you want.
Monitor your analytics to check what kind of impact you have with your SEO. Keeping a close eye on your bounce rates is also crucial so that you can match personas with keywords and your funnel strategy.
Both your rankings and site traffic will indicate how well your site is optimized.
Tracking crawl errors and index pages also allow you to focus on the technical issues which affect your SEO. Also, by measuring your link-building efforts, you’ll get to understand how well your email strategy works.
The Bottomline
Implementing SEO can help your business get a competitive edge against big brands. Luckily, it is a promotional tactic that does not cost much to implement.
However, you should remember that SEO is not a one-off marketing strategy.
You need to enrich yourself with the different tactics you can do to make your business grow. From there, you can test what you know, keep what sticks and let go of the tactics that are doing you any favor.
