First off, to have a successful website, you must have an active, ongoing strategy for SEO. Whether DIY, a third-party, or both, you still need a plan. In this post, we’ll show how to improve your search rankings without breaking the bank. In fact, no banking is required!
Getting started with low-cost SEO
This post is the first of a multi-part series on how small businesses can have a highly effective SEO strategy.
Achieving better rankings and search visibility doesn’t have to be overly complex. While SEO services are virtually everywhere, we’ll show you how to accomplish a great deal on your own if you wish and to save serious money.
As our focus is on providing value-driven, cost-effective services for small businesses, we believe you shouldn’t have to pay a fortune for SEO services. In some cases, pay absolutely nothing.
We’ll explain how to quickly and easily make SEO-related improvements yourself, as most don’t require a high level of technical wizardry. If you still want to hire a third party, we’ll help you become a better-informed buyer.
But first, read these cost-saving steps before spending anything.
What does SEO success look like?
Most people would say “at the top of the search results page.”
Actually, that’s only one part. If visitors see your page and then leave immediately, what good is that top rank?
In other words, SEO success looks more like this:
- Having a steady stream of visitors
- Getting return visits
- Receiving better-qualified leads
- Becoming a go-to site for your audience
- And achieving a reasonable sales conversion rate.
Getting there requires an SEO plan of attack, which doesn’t have to be overly complex. Still, it does need a slice of time dedicated regularly. Let’s go deeper at how.
First Step: Know your site's weaknesses
Before you spend any money, why not learn where your site has weaknesses affecting search results?
Our website performance audit will help pinpoint areas needing change. Once you know what’s negatively affecting your ranking, you can make the corrections or know what to request from a third-party service provider.
You can run the web audit here. The results will be emailed back in a few minutes and provide clear and easy-to-understand suggestions.
Our audit will address the core areas that search engines like which contribute to your rank. They are:
- Have well-constructed pages that the search engines can analyze. You’ll have clear headings and subheads, brief paragraphs, and content related to the top keywords you expect searchers will use.
- Your site’s pages are well-organized, with logically flowing menus and subpages.
- You have security protocols such as an SSL certificate installed.
- Your site is mobile-friendly for easy reading on phones and tablets.
Note that there are hundreds of ranking points, but these are core focus areas for now.
How do I make site changes after the audit results?
If you are familiar with how to change pages and blog posts in WordPress, you can make significant progress on your own.
You can also hire a third party to help if you’re uncomfortable with these changes or don’t have the time. Our web audit will have given you a great starting point to know what’s needed regardless.
The type of changes you’ll initially need to make will include updating page content to include your focus keywords.
Each page should relate to your core business products and services. You’ll need to make sure pages are organized in a logical flow.
Short, concise paragraphs, headings, and subheads make your content easy to digest. You want both the reader and the search engine to be able to jump to sections based on their content.
Other changes, such as adding an SSL, are significant. To know if you have an SSL installed, look at the top of the page where your web address (URL) shows. You should see an “s” in the address like in https://jambodigital.net
Most likely, your webhost can install the SSL for you and often at no cost.
What to look for in third party SEO Services
A look around the web, and you’ll find SEO services EVERYWHERE. How do you know whom to choose?
Many companies will pitch a magic bullet, quick-fix solution. You’ll hear other pitch phrases such as providing you with hundreds of ‘back-links.’ SEO service prices are all over the map, from a few dollars to $500 or more per month! How do you choose?
1) Find out the exact deliverables. If you don’t understand it, wait until you have an explanation in detail or move on.
2) Compare what you’re told to the results of your web audit. We’ve provided a list of the changes yielding the highest value. If you address those, you’ll be well on your way.
3) Long-term commitments with third-party companies can be costly and sometimes unnecessary. If you genuinely want to turn this over to someone else, make sure you continue to use our audit services to evaluate a third party’s impact over time. And we’re happy to provide a second opinion on the services you are considering.
4) The long-term commitment needed is yours. You have to maintain a high-quality site just as you are to your product or services.
5) Find a company that will work with you progressively over shorter intervals.
6) Look for reports that track your progress.
Ultimately, having a good product and site first will go a long way in getting SEO success.
We believe the job of the SEO service should be to guide you in the process and work as a partnership in the process.
How to start and stay consistent with your SEO plan
Suppose you’re regularly adding content to your site. In that case, SEO principles can be included as a part of that process by you or the person adding the page.
In the case of Google’s ranking factors, there are many. Still, we will focus on those you can quickly complete with your existing site pages. We’ll describe one way to make those changes for the most significant impact in an upcoming post.
Once you understand how to make these changes, you can add these steps to your ongoing process when adding pages or blog posts.
For today, try our web audit. You’ll get a site score with details on what is going well and what could stand some improvement.
