Small businesses looking to bootstrap their capital expenses, can find it really tough to allocate a marketing budget for SEO. If you are looking to hire an experienced SEO expert, you are looking at a four-figure monthly budget for sure.
But it’s a necessary evil, isn’t it? Given that 95% of search users do not go to page two of search results pages, its page one or nothing. The question is, how do you deal with the staggering expenses of running an SEO campaign, especially if you have limited funds, or no funds to begin with?
Do you cut corners and try cheap SEO packages? Do you opt for PPC (which can be more expensive than SEO)? Do you just focus on manual social media marketing and hope that your website will miraculously start to rank someday?
Here’s the fact. That someday might never come. SEO is fiercely competitive. But the good news is that you don’t always need a sizeable budget to get started with it. There are a whole bunch of hacks that you can do yourself.
Will these hacks get you to page 1 for keywords related to your business? Probably not. But they will give you a head start for sure. If your website is currently languishing in the murky depths of search, this will at least boost you up into visibility.
So, strap in and enjoy the read on how to be an SEO expert yourself.
#1 – Educate yourself on the basics
As complicated as SEO gurus can make it sound, SEO in reality is quite simple. Oh yes. You heard that right. Despite all the talk about Google algorithms, crazy penalties, fluctuating rankings, it all boils down to three basic parameters.
- Keywords – You need to find low competition keywords with reasonably good search volumes.
- Content – You need great, original content. There’s no two ways about it.
- Backlinks – You need the best backlinks that your content can acquire naturally. Else, you’ve got to ensure that you make those links seem natural at least.
Once you understand how these three parameters come together, you will be able to do most SEO tasks yourself. It does come with a very steep learning curve, mind you. But necessity is the mother of invention. In this case, it could be learning.
#2 – Prepare for war with the best Free SEO tools
Every search engine marketing company in the world uses SEO tools to perform most SEO tasks. That’s because tools will automate most of the complex tasks and take the guesswork out of it.
There are tons of SEO tools mind you. But these are what we consider the most important ones.
- Ahrefs – Useful for domain research, keyword research, competition research and more
- SEMrush – Ahrefs on steroids. One of the best features is that it allows you to spy on your competition.
- io – Not necessary if you have subscribed to SEMrush.
- Spyfu – Spy on the keywords that your competition is ranking for
All of these are paid tools though. Here’s a list of some tools that offer free basic accounts as well.
- Answer the public – Terrific tool that generates search questions
- Woorank
- Google keyword planner
- Yoast SEO plugin
- Ubersuggest
- Canirank
- KWFinder
- Google trends
- Reddit Keyword Research Tool
This list is not an exhaustive one. But it should help you get started and perform most of the basic SEO tasks that SEO experts perform.
#3 – Devise an SEO strategy
First things first, you need to have a detailed SEO strategy. An easy way to do that, would be to spy on your competition to see what they are doing. Then just do it better. If they have a 5000-word article ranking on page one for a keyword, write a 7000-word one. That’s just a hypothetical example of course.
But it gives you a gist. Map out a plan for everything. How do you plan to perform keyword research? How do you plan to use those keywords for content marketing? Do you plan to integrate social media marketing into the mix? What about on-site SEO? Having a plan is half the battle won.
#4 – Start from the website
Start from the most important part of the equation, your money site. Well, money site is SEO lingo and it means the website that generates revenue for you. In this case, it can be your business site.
Here are some of the most important on-site SEO factors that you need to fix or change.
- Meta Info – This includes keywords, title, description
- Headers – H1 to H6
- Content – Original and providing value to your readers
- Images – Alt text optimized
- Page Speed
- URL structure
- Canonicalization
- Redirects
We know that this can be an information overload. But if you go one step at a time, there’s no reason to be overwhelmed. Here’s a great guide from Moz to help you get started.
#5 – Keyword Research
The next step towards becoming an SEO Expert is to find nuggets. We call them nuggets because they are extremely rare and incredibly valuable. We are talking about keywords. There are two types of keywords that you can find.
- Short tail – One or two word keywords with huge search volumes but equally competitive
- Long Tail – Three to ten word keywords with reasonable search volumes but much less competitive
Always go for the latter. Here’s another great guide from Ahrefs to help you on your way.
#6 – Content marketing
You have the long tail nuggets, you have a great actionable plan and you have the weapons (SEO tools).
The next step is to integrate those long tails into your content. Group three to four similar keywords and create content pieces around those keywords. Skyscraper content, which is SEO lingo for extremely long content pieces, works incredibly well for SEO ranking. Imagine an 8-10k word article that’s crammed to the brim with useful information for readers.
Neil Patel has a great guide over here for beginners.
#7 – Begin building backlinks
Finally, it’s time to start building backlinks. This is usually the part where most beginners start to get wary. After all, you need tons of money to build backlinks, don’t you?
No. You don’t. You can earn some great backlinks for free, especially if your content is top notch.
There are some great guides that can help you with your back linking journey. This one from Backlinko is one of our personal favorites.
Closing thoughts
Remember, you can use this information to become an SEO expert yourself, or use it as a reference point when you are looking to hire an SEO company.
