How To Do SEO Yourself: A Beginner's Guide

Everything you need to know to launch a successful SEO campaign on your own today

When it comes to digital marketing as an SEO beginner, your strategy is only as strong as your budget. Learning how to do SEO yourself frees up resources for other marketing channels, puts you in control of your organic search initiatives, and gives you valuable insights into your online presence.

Of course, doing your own SEO requires your time, but the good news is you don't have to do everything all at once. In this article, we will discuss SEO in detail and how to get expert results as a beginner.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your online content to help it rank in search engine results pages or SERPs. The goal of SEO is to increase your content ranking in organic search results to improve visibility, create awareness, and drive traffic to your website.

You might also think of SEO as your website’s credibility. A credible site has content written by a subject matter expert and follows good grammar. It also addresses search engine requirements while sufficiently addressing the audience’s concerns. The more “credible” your site is, the higher Google ranks it.

Why is SEO important?

SEO is essential for businesses wanting to gain visibility in organic search results. Increased visibility can translate into greater brand awareness and boost organic traffic to your website. While learning the key DIY SEO strategies can take time, the benefits are worth it, including:

• Higher-quality traffic (and more of it) to your website

• Increased visibility for your business in organic search results

• Greater trust and legitimacy for your business (a higher SERP ranking indicates that Google has deemed your site trustworthy)

• Opportunities throughout the entire marketing funnel (such as capturing more leads in the awareness stage or boosting engagement with a newsletter)

• Expanded audience reach

• It reveals whether a specific content strategy is working to bring in more leads or if it needs refinement 

Is it possible to do SEO yourself?

Most people assume you need a degree or significant experience running SEO campaigns to optimize a website for ranking. However, it is possible to implement your own SEO strategy by utilizing SEO best practices. These best practices include, but are not limited to, creating engaging and informative content and including target keywords to help readers find your content.

Eight steps to getting started with SEO

You can use the following SEO tips to build and execute your SEO strategy.

1. Conduct keyword research

The first step in any SEO task is to perform keyword research, which is important because it tells us what people are searching for online based on real data. The keywords should align with your page content, so it’s best to take into consideration what the page is about before conducting research.

For example, you may assume many people are using the search query "awesome red shoes." Your keyword research may reveal there isn't much search volume for that keyword, but there is a decent amount for "red pumps for special occasions." That gives you an alternate keyword to leverage and accordingly focus your content.

There are several free and paid tools you can use to help you research keywords. Once you select a tool, use it to research the monthly search volume (MSV) for each keyword. Next, go to Google and type "allintitle:your keyword" into the search bar. The number of results shown is how competitive the keyword will be; the greater the results, the more competition you're up against.

Ideally, you want to use keywords with high MSV and low competition, but this isn't always possible.

If you aren't having any luck with your initial keywords, try variations of them or see if your tool has a feature to expand on your keywords. For example, with a tool like Google Ads Keyword Planner, you can try the keyword discovery function to find alternatives.

2. Assign keywords to each piece of content

The next step in the DIY SEO process is to assign keywords to your content. Your keyword research should give you a good idea of what people are searching for online.

You want to choose two or three of those keywords for each piece of content. By targeting these keywords throughout the page, you keep your content focused. This way, it makes sense to search engines as well as your readers.

It's important to track which keywords you assign to a page so you don't use the same keywords in too many pieces of content. This helps you avoid cannibalizing your content in organic search results and monitor your SEO performance over time. You can set up a simple spreadsheet for this purpose.

If you use a keyword tool, you can even add your keywords and let the program track the performance of your content for you.

3. Develop your on-page SEO

On-page SEO is the optimization work you do on your own website, including the metadata, body copy, and links from one page to another. Each piece of content, whether it's a blog post or a main navigation page, should include these elements.

You should try to include the following metadata elements, also known as meta tags, for every page on your site:

4. Write compelling copy with your keywords in mind

As for the body copy, it's important to let your keywords flow naturally on the page. Using keywords that naturally tie into the content’s title won’t be difficult to incorporate. If the content is about “red shoes for special occasions,” use this phrase a few times throughout. If you use it too many times, you might make the mistake of keyword stuffing, which disrupts the content’s flow.

5. Look for opportunities to add relevant internal links

Finally, look for opportunities to link from the page you're optimizing to another page on your website (known as internal links). This not only helps search engines understand relationships between your content but also facilitates the user/customer journey by making it easier for them to see where to go and what to do next.

6. Develop your off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is the optimization you do on third-party websites (websites other than your own), which is important because search engines are constantly looking for signals from relevant, high-quality sites to help your content rank better.

There are a few ways you can improve your off-page SEO:

• Getting links to your page from another site (aka a backlink and/or link building)

• Obtaining mentions of your brand on another site

• Having your content shared on another site

For example, you may create social media content linking back to your page, answering questions on forums such as Quora or Reddit, and getting listed in business directories.

It's important to check the domain authority of any sites you are using for your off-page SEO. Of course, the sites should be relevant to your industry or niche, but domain authority will go a long way in building credibility for your site. The higher the score, the better.

7. Monitor and maintain SEO performance

Once you have your on-page and off-page optimization efforts in place, you need a way to track the performance of your hard work. Thankfully, there are plenty of user-friendly SEO tools available to help ensure you're meeting your SEO goals.

No matter which SEO tools you use, it's important to find ones that make it easier to carry out your own SEO monitoring. As you view the data, you can see what's working and what's not—and then adjust.

8. Stay in the loop on SEO trends and updates

While good SEO best practices don't change too much over time, there are trends and updates that can affect your search engine performance. Check Google Search Central and Bing regularly for updates.

How do I optimize my website for search engines?

A search engine-optimized website is a website designed with conversion in mind. It incorporates aspects of search engine optimization while remaining user-friendly. You must strike a balance between both to convert the audience your website attracts. 

If you want a website that is both search engine optimized and user friendly, follow these tips provided by Google for website developers^[1]:

• Focus on content: Create compelling content that is consistent with your brand and easy to skim. Break up walls of text with headers, images, and ordered lists.

• Lead with expertise: Google prioritizes website content written by subject matter experts (SMEs), so if you have a degree, diploma, certification, or work experience, make sure to list it in your bio.

• Use a mixture of links: Use internal and external links as anchor text hyperlinks. The information linked should enhance your content.

• Use HTML images: This type of image allows the web developer to embed the image to a page, instead of linking it. This HTML image should be high quality and related to the content.

• Make your website device-responsive: A responsive website changes orientation depending on the device accessing it. For example, if someone is accessing it from a smartphone, the website font should appear larger, and clickable elements should be large enough for a finger to tap.

These tips are a great start in optimizing your website for search engines, but there are a few additional things to consider:

1. Choosing the right SEO keywords

Finding the right keywords is one of the most important if not "the" most important, aspects of SEO for beginners. These are keywords that not only highlight the subject of your content but also draw the right audiences to that content.

In the beginning, doing SEO by self can be challenging since knowing what keywords to look up first is difficult. To make it easier, use seed keywords. A seed keyword is a word that reflects a topic in general. This word leads to a web of more specific keywords. For example, "shoes" is a seed keyword that leads to more specific keywords such as "high heel shoes," "running shoes," and "trending shoes in 2024".

If you run a brick-and-mortar store, your SEO keywords should contain local search terms. According to Gartner's research into Fundamental SEO, 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information, and 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles. This makes local keywords a must for any brick-and-mortar SEO strategy.^[2]

2. ​​​​​​​​​Writing SEO-friendly content

SEO-friendly content should reflect any keyword a visitor typed to find it. It should also contain a natural keyword saturation.

The next most important thing to remember, especially with do-it-yourself SEO, is that your content should be well-written. Google places a strong emphasis on good grammar and thorough research. Be sure to use a header and run your content through a grammar checker before submission. 

Lastly, avoid using AI programs to create your content when it comes to do-it-yourself SEO. The information might be inaccurate, out-of-date, or plagiarized, and in many cases, it isn't written to Google's experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EEAT) standards. Websites that use AI-generated content to manipulate rankings violate their anti-spam policies, which could get your website blacklisted by the search engine.

3. Optimizing your website's structure for SEO

Aside from keywords and content, how your website is organized greatly affects how it's ranked in a search engine. The best practices for optimizing a website's structure for SEO include:

• Use a heading hierarchy that includes H1, H2, H3, and H4s.

• Use a shallow click depth, allowing site visitors to find what they need in less than four clicks. 

• Link to other pieces of content within each blog to make them easier to crawl
  Crawling is a form of scanning that certain programs (in this case Google's bots) do to index data from a website.
  . 

• Use keywords in your URLs and separate each word with hyphens.

• Create pillar pages
  A pillar page provides an overview of a specific topic. It is also known as a content hub.
  that provide a topic overview while linking to other pages for more detail.

4. Promoting your blog posts for backlinks

To obtain backlinks for your website, you must promote it – but before you do – be sure your content is high-quality, up-to-date, and relevant. Once your content is edited and updated, proceed with the following tips to promote your blog for backlinks.

• Add link-worthy resources such as infographics, case studies, and interviews. 

• Quote bloggers, industry specialists, and social media influencers in your content.

• Reach out to these influencers and promote your content.

• Share your expertise and blog content in online communities.

What are some common SEO mistakes to avoid?

To make the most of your campaign and to avoid potential penalties, steer clear of these common SEO mistakes:

There are billions of websites on Google; unfortunately, a small percentage of them implement these tactics to rank. They may get away with it for a short while, but when Google's bots crawl these websites, they are promptly penalized with a decreased ranking or removed (deindexed) from the search engine.

How can I measure the success of my SEO efforts?

There are multiple metrics used in determining an SEO campaign's success. However, when learning how to do SEO on your own, you only need to focus on metrics that relate to SEO performance. To measure your SEO success, focus on these four metrics:

• Search traffic: If your blog content performs well, you will have an increase in traffic and a good clickthrough rate (CTR).

• Keyword position: This will let you know how many people searched for a particular keyword and how your website is ranking for that keyword on the SERP.

• Conversion tracking: This is the best way to determine the ROI on your SEO campaign. To begin, you must set up conversion tracking using directions from Google’s PPC dashboard, then navigate to the conversion tab to view your organic and search conversion metrics.

• Link-building metrics: If you have an increase in the number of backlinks to your content, your campaign and tactics are working.

Get started with your SEO

As you can see, learning how to do SEO on your own is a long-term process that can deliver incredible benefits, including greater brand awareness, visibility, and traffic for your website content. Start by researching the best SEO tools for your business, then begin a deep dive into keywords that will attract your audience. Lastly, consider the above eight listed steps to keep your website user-friendly and algorithm-approved. With consistency, your page will see significant movement in the SERPs.