Search engine optimization is notorious for being an expensive form of marketing (despite its awesome potential ROI), however, there are many free and easy ways that you can improve your SEO performance online.
While it is always recommended that you outsource some of these responsibilities to a professional SEO agency, it’s worth researching and exploring the various things that you can handle in-house.
1. Find niche keywords
Using free tools like Google Trends and Google’s Keyword Tool in AdWords, you can identify keywords and search terms that have fewer competitors and are much closer to your specific niche. With all of this free data you can take control over your keywords and ultimately boost your conversions.
2. Refresh your content
Take the time to go through all of the content associated with your brand and refresh it where possible. First and foremost, you must delete any and all duplicated content as this can hinder your performance. Then, look at old blog posts and breathe new life into them.
3. Write attractive meta descriptions for every page
A meta description is the text that features beneath a link to a website in a Google SERP (search engine results page). Unless you actively edit these, Google will automatically pull text from your website which tends not to work well. Instead, edit and create a compelling description of the page itself in order to increase your click-through rates.
4. Add to your blog regularly
Ideally, you should be adding fresh content to your blog every week. If you don’t have a blog, get one installed and start populating it ASAP! Not only will this help you build authority in the eyes of Google, but it will attract more visitors to your website as well.
Nobody knows more about your industry, products, or services as you do. So, write about it!
5. Link internally
Good internal linking is a great way to improve the overall user experience on your website. This is particularly helpful on blogs.
For example, if you are a San Diego based water sports rentals company and you have various blog posts about the importance of environmental protection, the many pristine beaches in San Diego, or the physical & mental health benefits of kayaking, link internally to your service pages. It creates a better user experience and increases the likelihood of new bookings.
6. Always cite (and link to) your sources
Another great (and free) way to build authority and trust is by citing your sources online. For example, if you were writing a blog post about the importance of local SEO for businesses in San Diego and you throw out a statistic like: “Local queries account for almost half of Google’s two trillion searches per year” – back it up with a link to the authoritative website where you found the statistic.
Conclusion
There are many free ways you can improve your SEO:
- Fix 404 errors
- Create unique title tags
- Clean up your URLs and slugs
- Include the relevant headers in your content
- Optimise your images accordingly
- Work on your page loading speed
- Go mobile first
- Work on external link building
- Remove any bad links
- And so much more.
Of course, just because you can do something in-house, it doesn’t always necessarily mean that you should. The fact is, when executed properly, quality SEO is time-consuming. So, if you’d prefer to focus your time and efforts on your business, we’d recommend that you consider hiring a San Diego SEO company with a reputation for delivering results to help take the strain off of you.
