Budget SEO Guide for Businesses
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 9:20 am
You understand the importance of SEO to reach and convert new customers. However, you can't find the money to hire an agency to design your startup's SEO strategy and do the work necessary to implement it. What can you do to achieve SEO on a budget?
SEO Tiles
First, when building your website, you need to incorporate search engine optimization ( SEO ), set goals, create buyer personas, and articulate your desired outcomes. Make sure you have an SEO plugin. Advanced content management systems (CMS) may have an SEO section. HubSpot Content Hub , for example, has a built-in SEO feature and helps optimize content for search engines.
For example, WordPress (which powers about 30% of the internet) has a plugin phone numbers philippines marketplace that includes many SEO plugins; Yoast is currently the top-rated one.
In addition to making sure your CMS includes SEO functionality, here are a few other things you can do to take on the SEO giant at virtually no cost to your business.
Know your target audience
All the tweaks you might think of making to your website to improve SEO are essentially based on one thing, well, two things:
Keywords and
What do you know about the people who use those keywords to search for content?
So do some basic research on your target audience.
Start with what you know : Detail the physical (demographic) and mental/emotional (psychographic) data of your audience as you think they are. Build a target persona of your ideal buyer if you don't have an audience yet.
Find more audience metrics: After you and your team have exhausted your audience insights, you can learn more by having some or all of your audience answer survey questions. You can perform a competitor analysis to gain insights into your competitors’ audiences and use that to determine who you should target.
Do more research: See what others have researched and written about your audience using tools like Google Trends or SEMRush .
You've done plenty of market research to make sure your startup is viable. You know your target market. You might be tempted to skip keyword research; don't.
You may be too close to the business to think and talk like a potential customer. But that's what you have to do to be successful with SEO. Here are a couple of ways to generate keyword ideas (both long and short tail) that those potential customers are using.
Start with a free software tool like Keyword Tool Dominator or Soolve. These tools help you expand potential phrases and show where specific search terms are active.
Short-tail keywords are easier to find, but much harder to rank for in search engine results pages ( SERPs ). Your goal is to identify a combination of relevant short- and long-tail keywords that capture as many consumer search behaviors as possible.
Download Ideal Customer Profile Worksheet
Content is king
Get your content up to speed. You need an inbound content marketing strategy to gain online traction, attract and convert potential customers, and retain a loyal reader/customer base. Quality content helps optimize your startup’s SEO.
In this case, quality refers to factual, engaging, and practical advice presented in a variety of forms: blog posts, e-books, podcasts, online courses, infographics, etc.
Google doesn't like keyword stuffing, so don't do it. Provide value to your reader by creating quality content. Then, include your keywords naturally as part of the flow.
Content makes you a thought leader within your niche and industry. Blog posts, newsletters, case studies, and white papers showcase your industry knowledge and encourage people to trust you for your insight and the education you provide. You’ll become an authoritative source of information, and those who see you as such will keep coming back to you and your site. When they’re ready to make a purchase or if they need a particular service, you’ll be the first one on their mind. This is the foundation of all inbound marketing . Not surprisingly, it’s also a critical facet of search engine optimization.
Content will also attract quality backlinks. What is a backlink? Well, exactly the same as any link from another website that forwards to yours. As your content is shared and others refer to your website, your backlinks help to further establish your site as one of value and quality. The higher the number of quality backlinks, the higher your SEO will be. The better the content, the higher the likelihood of quality backlinks. See how all of this is related?
Maximizing SEO opportunities
Just like with every page on your website, you need to maximize SEO and optimize every post and other piece of content. When setting those keywords, make sure they are present in all the right places. These are also elements that your SEO tool will find and point out to you.
Internal and external links: These should be used to provide the best experience for those visiting your website. Internal links keep the reader on the site longer. External links help with search rankings by associating your site with other relevant websites, particularly those with high authority.
The URL should be the same as the page title, with no intervening words or a shortened version of the title if it helps clarity.
The Title: The title of the page is the first thing that appears in SERP results. Make it descriptive and relevant to what's on the page. Make sure to include your main keyword. Also, keep it to 70 characters or less so it doesn't get cut off by the search engine.
Meta description: This description appears in the SERPs, just below the page title, and entices users to click. So make it compelling. Include your long-tail keyword and try to keep it under 160 characters.
Headings: Not only do they make your content easier to read, but they are also more valuable to search engine algorithms than plain text. Use vocabulary that everyone can easily understand. If it fits naturally, use a keyword. Reserve the H1 heading for the page title and use H2 for subheadings .
Image Descriptions: Also called “alt text,” this is another opportunity to add keywords if it makes sense, so be precise in your description.
SEO Tiles
First, when building your website, you need to incorporate search engine optimization ( SEO ), set goals, create buyer personas, and articulate your desired outcomes. Make sure you have an SEO plugin. Advanced content management systems (CMS) may have an SEO section. HubSpot Content Hub , for example, has a built-in SEO feature and helps optimize content for search engines.
For example, WordPress (which powers about 30% of the internet) has a plugin phone numbers philippines marketplace that includes many SEO plugins; Yoast is currently the top-rated one.
In addition to making sure your CMS includes SEO functionality, here are a few other things you can do to take on the SEO giant at virtually no cost to your business.
Know your target audience
All the tweaks you might think of making to your website to improve SEO are essentially based on one thing, well, two things:
Keywords and
What do you know about the people who use those keywords to search for content?
So do some basic research on your target audience.
Start with what you know : Detail the physical (demographic) and mental/emotional (psychographic) data of your audience as you think they are. Build a target persona of your ideal buyer if you don't have an audience yet.
Find more audience metrics: After you and your team have exhausted your audience insights, you can learn more by having some or all of your audience answer survey questions. You can perform a competitor analysis to gain insights into your competitors’ audiences and use that to determine who you should target.
Do more research: See what others have researched and written about your audience using tools like Google Trends or SEMRush .
You've done plenty of market research to make sure your startup is viable. You know your target market. You might be tempted to skip keyword research; don't.
You may be too close to the business to think and talk like a potential customer. But that's what you have to do to be successful with SEO. Here are a couple of ways to generate keyword ideas (both long and short tail) that those potential customers are using.
Start with a free software tool like Keyword Tool Dominator or Soolve. These tools help you expand potential phrases and show where specific search terms are active.
Short-tail keywords are easier to find, but much harder to rank for in search engine results pages ( SERPs ). Your goal is to identify a combination of relevant short- and long-tail keywords that capture as many consumer search behaviors as possible.
Download Ideal Customer Profile Worksheet
Content is king
Get your content up to speed. You need an inbound content marketing strategy to gain online traction, attract and convert potential customers, and retain a loyal reader/customer base. Quality content helps optimize your startup’s SEO.
In this case, quality refers to factual, engaging, and practical advice presented in a variety of forms: blog posts, e-books, podcasts, online courses, infographics, etc.
Google doesn't like keyword stuffing, so don't do it. Provide value to your reader by creating quality content. Then, include your keywords naturally as part of the flow.
Content makes you a thought leader within your niche and industry. Blog posts, newsletters, case studies, and white papers showcase your industry knowledge and encourage people to trust you for your insight and the education you provide. You’ll become an authoritative source of information, and those who see you as such will keep coming back to you and your site. When they’re ready to make a purchase or if they need a particular service, you’ll be the first one on their mind. This is the foundation of all inbound marketing . Not surprisingly, it’s also a critical facet of search engine optimization.
Content will also attract quality backlinks. What is a backlink? Well, exactly the same as any link from another website that forwards to yours. As your content is shared and others refer to your website, your backlinks help to further establish your site as one of value and quality. The higher the number of quality backlinks, the higher your SEO will be. The better the content, the higher the likelihood of quality backlinks. See how all of this is related?
Maximizing SEO opportunities
Just like with every page on your website, you need to maximize SEO and optimize every post and other piece of content. When setting those keywords, make sure they are present in all the right places. These are also elements that your SEO tool will find and point out to you.
Internal and external links: These should be used to provide the best experience for those visiting your website. Internal links keep the reader on the site longer. External links help with search rankings by associating your site with other relevant websites, particularly those with high authority.
The URL should be the same as the page title, with no intervening words or a shortened version of the title if it helps clarity.
The Title: The title of the page is the first thing that appears in SERP results. Make it descriptive and relevant to what's on the page. Make sure to include your main keyword. Also, keep it to 70 characters or less so it doesn't get cut off by the search engine.
Meta description: This description appears in the SERPs, just below the page title, and entices users to click. So make it compelling. Include your long-tail keyword and try to keep it under 160 characters.
Headings: Not only do they make your content easier to read, but they are also more valuable to search engine algorithms than plain text. Use vocabulary that everyone can easily understand. If it fits naturally, use a keyword. Reserve the H1 heading for the page title and use H2 for subheadings .
Image Descriptions: Also called “alt text,” this is another opportunity to add keywords if it makes sense, so be precise in your description.