How to D-I-Y your blog SEO on a shoestring budget |
You don't need fancy marketing tools to do SEO for your blog, and it shouldn't need to be costly either. This is how you can do it yourself in 7 easy steps.
In the moment that it gets closer to the New Year hits its stride You're likely to go over budgets and costs and trying to determine the reasons you put aside so much cash last year, and what you'll cut back on spending this year. You've been there and it's a gruelling experience.
In the search for ways to cut corners, it's not uncommon to pinpoint strategies and tools you've been using that will cost you a lot of money and figure out ways to get rid of them or move these tools into your own.
However, for some reason many marketers believe that the need for an SEO (SEO) professional or tools that can help facilitate the work they do in that field is a must. But, let me tell you that you can effectively do your own SEO and spend no cash at all.
Are you blown away by the thought of it?
SEO is an important contributor to the overall strategy of marketing.
In reality, 61% of marketers' top priorities in their marketing through the internet is improving 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.
Making sure your SEO is in sync and increasing your organic site traffic can make you stand out from competitors in your space, and make you more accessible to your audiences conducting those web-based searching.
How to DIY your SEO strategy
1. Create a keyword list
The first step of doing your SEO strategy by yourself is to determine your keywords via search engine research . They could be longer or shorter tails however, in essence it should include terms you would like your content to rank for and phrases that your target audience searches for relevant items in your area of expertise on the internet.
In the case of an agency that specializes in designing and marketing it is recommended to start with a list that looks as follows:
Agency for marketing
Design agency
Design and Marketing company
Design of high-quality
Marketing strategy
The long-term keyword you choose could look something like this:
What are the steps to implement a market strategy?
Best design techniques for email marketing
What are the marketing objectives you want to achieve?
Marketing strategies of various kinds to employ
These are just examples. What you'll want to identify is special areas of expertise and build from there.
I'd also consult with your sales team to see what questions prospects might be seeking out and what concerns they're expressing they need assistance on, since that will inform your list of keywords as well.
Make sure to check your rankings to see if you'll know what keywords to build on, and don't forget to look at your competitors' rankings as well. This will provide you with an idea of the keywords that are neglected to help you target them and seize the advantages.
2. Establish or create pillar pages
Pillar webpages are designed to serve as a one-stop-shop for a specific subject, and should tie into one of your keywords. These pages are typically longer, as they leave no scratch unturned, and cover as wide a range of ground as possible.
You either have these pages that have to be changed, or you need to make the pages. In making or updating your pages, make sure you explore different areas of the topic.
As an example suppose you're creating a web page that contains the words "marketing strategy".
You'll want to discuss the best way to put a plan in place, what goals that a strategy will help you attain, the various methods and tactics in a strategy as well as how to gauge the success of your strategy and also how you can implement the strategy.
For each keyword or word you'd like to rank for it is best to have a pillar page. This way, when you use that word in your writing you'll be able to hyperlink back to the page on the pillar, which can increase the content's chance of ranking for that word.
3. Identify duplicate content and broken hyperlinks
If you've been writing blog content at random it is likely that you've many outdated and duplicate content out there, perhaps even some broken pages. You must rectify those issues in order for your website to rank highly, since they will end up working against your site.
Create a spreadsheet that lists the keywords, as well as blog posts that tie into that keyword in some way. In the event that you've got lot of blog content, you may have create subgroups of every keyword. See the image below to understand the concept.
It will also help you plan your activities so that you can better understand what blog posts are the most alike to other posts.
Be sure to also make a separate spreadsheet that houses all broken links you find while doing this deep dive to make it easy to pull off and redirect them.
4. Create updates and redirects
When you're finished creating your spreadsheet, look over identical blog articles attentively. If there are any that seem repetitive or reiterating the same ideas, redirect those less well-thought out or outdated blog posts to the more modern, more high-quality sites.
This can reduce the self-competing content (yes it is possible for your content to compete with itself in ranking on search engines), and ensure you rank on the correct pages for the right keywords.
This is also a good occasion to refresh all blog posts that don't need to be redirected but would benefit from additional content or a refresh.
Since you'll be keeping your pages on the internet, you'll need to ensure that they contain relevant keywords that are used on their content and provide the most up-to current information that is available.
5. Link to the pillar pages in content
Once your blog is cleaned up and duplicate content is eliminated along with any broken links, it's the time to go through your pages and make sure the right ones are linking back to your the pillar pages .
Begin by looking over your subgroupings, as well as the hyperlinks that are listed beneath them.
Let's suppose there are three blog sites with a connection to your marketing strategy as well as email marketing . Review each article and include a link on your pillar page for marketing strategy with "marketing strategy" as your anchor text.
6. Create a linking strategy moving forward
Make sure you're sticking with this strategy in all future blog posts you're writing. After all, you went through the hassle to improve your old content and one thing that can cause harm to that content is if don't continue.
I know I've mentioned spreadsheets many times, but they are your friend in this method. They are able to assist to complete each process, and this is one. I suggest listing every keyword, and in the next column, the pillar post assigned to them.
It's not a bad idea to provide various anchor texts or long-tail keywords which could be employed for each one equally.
By outlining which pillar blog post is linked to what keyword(s) You'll be able to keep any new team members on the same page as well as provide a simple guide to check against as you review and edit any blog posts you'll be writing in the future.
This also helps you to be sure to keep SEO in mind while you write your material.
7. Continue to track your results
Check in on how well your strategy is performing each period of time, or every quarter. It is important to know whether or not your content is starting to rank higher in the search results, or if it's staying stagnant, which could assist you in finding any potential issues.
You can use free tools like Moz and you could also conduct a search using your keywords from time to the time to check the frequency with which your posts are popping into the search results.
In all likelihood, if you're struggling to find a way to track the data and do not want to invest in the SEO software similar to Moz Then I've one final word to share with you. It's one we've heard a lot of today: spreadsheets.
SEO isn't required to be expensive
Having an SEO plan is essential if you want to be easy to find online by your consumers. Hiring an outsourced SEO expert can be costly, but it isn't necessary.
If you move your SEO work within your company and following the steps above, you can get your blog in order so that your most valuable blog content starts to rank and will continue to rank in time.
The basic actions include:
Assembling a keyword list
Making pillar pages, or if you already have a page that is popular to use, revamping existing posts to become the pillar page
Scoping out duplicate content
Refreshing old, outdated content, and establishing redirects for content that is competing with it
Seeding the links to your cluster content from your pages on pillars
Establishing a linking strategy
And, of course keep an eye on your results.
Easy-peasy.