How do you make your blog D-I-Y? SEO without spending a dime |
You don't need fancy advertising tools to perform SEO for your blog, and it shouldn't need to be costly too. Learn how to do it yourself in 7 simple steps.
In the moment that you approach the New Year hits its stride, you're most likely going over budgets and costs and trying to determine how you spent so much cash last year, and what you can cut down on your spending this year. We've all been there and it's not a pleasant experience.
If you're looking to reduce costs there's a tendency to identify strategies and methods you've been using that cost some serious dough and find ways to either get rid of them or move them in-house.
However, for some reason many marketers believe that using the services of a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist or tools to support their efforts in that area is a must. But, let me let you know that you can effectively DIY your blog's SEO and not spend any cash at all.
Are you blown away by the thought of it?
SEO plays an important contributor to your overall marketing plan.
Actually, 61% of marketers' top priorities in their marketing through the internet is improving their SEO and growing their online presence. And I'll bet that with increasing voice search in popularity, that number will only grow over time.
Making sure your SEO is in sync and increasing your website's organic traffic could make you stand out from other competitors and also increase the accessibility of your audiences conducting those web-based search results.
How do you DIY your SEO strategy
1. Put together your keyword list
The initial step in implementing your SEO strategy for yourself is to find the keywords you want to rank for through search engine research . These may be short-tail or long tail , but essentially it should include terms you would like your content to be ranked for, as well as phrases your audience uses to search for relevant items in your area of expertise on the web.
If, for instance, you're an agency that's specialized in designing and marketing, you'll want to start with a plan that appears as follows:
Agency for marketing
Design agency
Design and marketing firm
High-quality design
Marketing strategy
Your long-term key words could appear similar to:
What are the steps to implement a market strategy?
Best design techniques to use for marketing via email
What are the marketing objectives you want to achieve?
The kinds of marketing strategies to employ
These are just examples. The first thing you need to identify is special areas of expertise and build from there.
I'd recommend also talking to your sales team to see what questions prospects might be seeking out and what concerns they're asking for help with, as that will inform your list of keywords as well.
Be sure to look at your ranking in order that you know which keywords to build on, and don't forget to examine your competition's rankings as well. That will give you an idea of any keywords that are neglected so you can focus on them to gain an benefit.
2. Establish or create pillar pages
Pillar pages are intended to be the one-stop shop for information on a certain topic, which should also tie into one of the keywords you have chosen to use. These pages are typically longer as they don't leave any one unfinished and go over as much territory as is possible.
You either have these pages and they need to be updated, or you need to create these pages. In designing or updating these pages, make sure you explore different areas of the theme.
So, for instance suppose you're creating a web page that contains the words "marketing strategy".
It is important to talk about what you need to do to put your strategy to achieve the objectives strategies can assist you to achieve, various mediums and methods that a strategy consists of as well as how to gauge your strategy's success and the best way to implement your strategy.
In the case of every word or keyword you want to rank for it is best to have a pillar page. That way, whenever you make use of that term in your writing you'll be able to hyperlink to that specific page on the pillar, which can increase the content's chance of ranking for that word.
3. Note duplicate content as well as broken links
If you've been creating blog content willy nilly there's a good chance you've got lots of outdated and duplicate content or even broken pages. It is imperative to fix those problems to ensure that your blog is able to rank highly, since they will end up working against you.
Create a spreadsheet that lists the keywords, as well as blog posts that relate to that keyword in some way. If you've got a large amount of blog posts it is possible to add subgroups for every key word. Check out the picture below for an understanding of the concept.
This will help you organize your efforts so you can more easily break down the blog posts that are most alike to other posts.
Also, make sure to create an additional spreadsheet to store the broken links that you discover when doing this research so you can easily pull the links and redirect them.
4. Create updates and redirects
After you've completed your spreadsheet, review the related blog posts carefully. If there are any that seem repetitive or reiterating the same ideas, redirect older or less effective blog articles to more updated, higher-quality pages.
This will reduce any self-competing content (yes it is possible for your content to rival itself on search rankings) as well as ensure the right pages rank with the appropriate search terms.
This can also be a great occasion to refresh any blog content that doesn't require redirection, but would benefit from additional content or refresh.
Since you'll keep your pages on the internet, you'll need to make sure they have the right keywords used in their content and provide the most up-to most current data available.
5. Link to the pillar pages within the content
Now that your blog is cleaned up and duplicate content is eliminated along with any broken links, it's time to review your website's content and make sure the right ones are linked to your the pillar pages .
Begin by looking over your subgroupings as well as the links listed underneath them.
Let's suppose you have three blog links that correlate to marketing strategies and marketing via email . Read each blog post, and then add a hyperlink to your marketing strategy pillar page using "marketing strategy" as the anchor text.
6. Develop a link strategy that moves ahead
Make sure you've adhered to this plan to all new blog posts you're writing. After all, you went through the effort to update your content and the only way to cause harm to that content is if aren't consistent.
I know I've mentioned spreadsheets about a zillion times, but they are the best option when it comes to this approach. They will help you with just about each stage, not just this. I recommend listing each keyword as well as in the following column, the post given to them.
It doesn't hurt to also provide various anchor texts or keywords with long tails that can be employed for each one also.
In describing which post belongs to which keyword(s) You'll be able to keep all new team members in the same place and give them a quick guide to check against as you review and edit the content for your blog in the future.
It also ensures you continue to keep SEO at the forefront of your mind when you write your material.
7. Continue to track results
Check in to see how your plan is performing each quarter or month. It is important to know whether or not your content is starting to rank higher in search results, or if it's staying static, which can help you locate any problems.
It is possible to use tools for free like Moz or conduct a search using your keywords from time to moment to determine if your content is popping up.
In all likelihood, if you're wondering how to monitor the data and do not want to invest in the SEO software such as Moz Then I've one closing word for those of you who are interested, and that's something we've heard a lot of this morning and that is spreadsheets.
SEO does not have to be expensive
Having an SEO strategy is crucial if you want to be quickly found online by customers. The hiring of an outside SEO expert could be expensive however it's not necessary.
If you move your SEO work within your company and following the steps previously mentioned, you can put your blog up and running to ensure that the most valuable blog posts begin to appear on search engines and will continue to rank in time.
The basic steps are:
In assembling a keyword list
creating pillar pages or if you already possess a popular page you use, revamping existing posts into pillar pages
Scoping out duplicate content
Updating stale, out-dated content and granting redirects to content that is competing with it
Seeding the links to your cluster's content using your pages on pillars
Establishing a linking strategy
And, of course, keeping an eye on your results.
Easy-peasy.