How To Do SEO Yourself in 2024

Website SEO is something you can never ignore, especially if you’re a small business owner.

But, what if you don’t have a huge marketing budget to hire an SEO agency?

Don’t worry. If you can’t afford to invest money, invest your time.

Here’s how the DIY SEO process works:

* Understand SEO

* Create a strategy

* Implement it

* Be patient and consistent

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll tell you exactly how to do SEO yourself.

Let’s dive in.

Understand How SEO Works

The first thing you want to do is learn how SEO works.

Understand its different moving parts and how they work with each other.

The four components of SEO are:

Keyword research

No SEO strategy is complete without effective keyword research.

It’s one of the first things you need to take care of in SEO.

The process is simple:

Finding the right phrases, sentences, or words your target audience is using to find information on Google.

For instance, let’s say you’re a restoration company trying to rank locally.

One of the keywords you’ll want to target could be “Best water restoration companies near me”.

Effective keyword research isn’t as straightforward as it may seem though.

Especially because you need to make sure the keywords you find aren’t too difficult to rank for.

On-page

On-page SEO involves optimizing all the sections of a web page for better search engine visibility.

This includes everything from the structure to the content to the back-end code.

Keyword optimization is one of the most important aspects of on-page SEO.

This means including the target keyword in all the right places on a web page.

Other important on-page SEO factors are:

* Relevance and quality of the content

* Structure of the web page (H1, H2, H3)

* The design and user experience

* Internal and external links

* Use of visuals to improve user retention

* Addressing the query comprehensively

It all boils down to satisfying user intent, providing a detailed answer, and making the page more visible to search engines.

Off-page

Off-page SEO refers to creating quality and relevant backlinks to your website to rank higher on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

Google considers backlinks as trust and authority signals for a website. This is why pages that have a high number of quality backlinks tend to rank high.

However, not all backlinks are made equal. Some can even hurt your SEO.

So, it’s important to analyze a backlink before pointing it to your site. Two of the most important factors to consider are:

* Subject matter relevance

* Domain authority

Domain authority is essentially a measure of how many high-quality backlinks are pointing to that website.

Plus, links pointing to your website should appear natural.

This means making sure there’s a good mix of both do-follow and no-follow backlinks.

Do-follow backlinks encourage search engines to pass the link juice while no-follow backlinks don’t.

Now, when it comes to link-building, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy.

SEOs use plenty of different ways to build backlinks.

Some effective link-building strategies are:

Guest posts

A guest post is a blog post that you write for someone else’s blog as a non-regular contributor.

In return for high-quality content, the blog owner lets you include a link back to your website.

Guest posting is an effective link-building strategy because it creates a win-win situation.

The blog owner gets quality content for their audience, and you get an authority boost in the form of a backlink.

HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

Help a Reporter Out is a service where you can sign up and offer your content as a subject matter expert.

The links you get with this strategy tend to be high-quality.

Other effective link-building strategies are:

* Niche edits

* Broken link-building

* Resource page link-building

* Directory link-building

* And more

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the process of keeping your website technically sound so that search engines rank it higher on SERPs.

It involves:

* Loading speed

* Mobile-friendliness

* URL optimization

* Schema markup

* Installing an SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

* Keeping the site code clean

DIY SEO Tips for Small Business Owners

Do Your Own Keyword Research

Keyword research is an aspect that you can effectively manage yourself.

As mentioned earlier, it’s the process of finding in-demand, profitable keywords for your website/blog.

There are plenty of DIY SEO tools that can help you with keyword research, including:

* Google Keyword Planner

* Ahrefs

* SEMrush

* Keywords Everywhere (Browser extension)

Buy Small Components Instead of Managed Campaigns

Now, some elements of SEO can be too time-consuming and/or technical.

Outsourcing these elements can save you time, hassle, and even money.

So, instead of hiring an agency for all-in-one SEO, buy small individual SEO services.

Consider Outsourcing Content

For instance, if you want to do the link-building outreach yourself, consider outsourcing content.

Keeping the blog section of your website active is important.

But, it’s not worth compromising other aspects of your business.

Plus, content creation is a time-consuming activity.

Outsourcing it can save you plenty of time.

The time that you can invest in building meaningful relationships with other website owners.

Buy Cost-Effective Backlinks If You Don’t Want to Do Outreach

Link-building can be a little overwhelming.

You need to get in touch with website owners and get them to link back to your site.

And it’s an ongoing process.

So, if you don’t want to do the outreach yourself, outsource link-building to a freelancer.

Things To Keep in Mind with DIY SEO (Or SEO in General)

Now that you know how to do SEO for website, here are a couple of things you should keep in mind.

SEO Needs Patience

Whether you’re outsourcing your SEO or doing it yourself, remember that it takes time.

This means your web pages or blog posts will take time to rank.

It’s not something you can implement once and forget about either.

SEO is an ongoing process that needs patience and consistency.

In fact, one of the major reasons webmasters give up is a lack of patience.

So, keep implementing SEO best practices and be patient.

Remember that ranking for your target keywords means consistent high-quality traffic on autopilot.

That should be enough motivation to keep yourself working towards your SEO goals.

You Pay with Money or with Time

Another thing to keep in mind is that you can pay for SEO in one of two ways:

* With money (when you’re outsourcing everything to an SEO agency or a freelancer)

* With time (when you’re managing your own SEO)

As discussed before, the smarter way would be to manage some of your SEO tasks yourself and outsource everything else.

This way, you’re not exhausting your resources and moving forward in a cost-effective manner.

With all that out of the way, let’s address some frequently asked questions about DIY SEO for small business.

DIY SEO: Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Do SEO By Myself?

You can do SEO by yourself, but since it has a lot of moving parts, you’ll have to invest a lot of your time. Outsourcing some aspects of your SEO can help you focus on other important aspects of your business.

How Do I Create My Own SEO?

Creating an SEO strategy can be a simple step-by-step process. It involves coming up with a list of keywords, making your website technically sound, implementing all on-page SEO factors, and strategizing link-building.

Can SEO Be Done for Free?

Done right, SEO can be super rewarding, and nothing worthwhile is free. If you don’t want to invest your marketing budget, you can make SEO free by managing it yourself. But, by doing that, you’ll essentially be paying with your time.

How Can I Practice SEO at Home?

After you understand how it’s done, start by creating a website. Enroll in a course and start implementing everything you learn in that course on your website. The only way to excel at SEO is by practically executing it on a website.

How to Do SEO Yourself WordPress?

WordPress makes the implementation of SEO best practices super easy. You can use SEO plugins to keep your site SEO-friendly.

How to Do SEO for Website Free?

Start by using free SEO checker tools like Screaming Frog and make sure your website is technically sound. Then, find profitable keywords and create helpful SEO-friendly content on them. Lastly, keep building quality backlinks to your important pages. Importantly, be patient and consistent.