SEO For Amateurs – Where Do I Begin?

For the amateur digital marketer, the word ‘SEO’ can conjure up feelings of confusion and despair. What does it even mean? Silly Electronic Organisation?

How can I achieve SEO objectives, and more importantly, how can I do it on a minimal budget?

Here a few ideas for developing a winning SEO strategy (which, for future reference, actually stands for Search Engine Optimization) on as little a budget as possible:

Update Your Old Content

The simple truth is that Google ranks websites according to how fresh and relevant they are, so even if you don’t have time to develop new, ‘fresh’ content – updating your old content to give it a fresh twist can be just as effective for SEO purposes. Best of all, this is incredibly inexpensive to do and will take just a short amount of time to achieve. 

Pay Attention To Internal Linking

What marketers seldom realize is that proper linking within your website can get you brownie points with Google. What this means is, make sure you not only link your website’s content to popular external websites but also ensure you have cross-linked from each of your pages to the other. This is an on-page SEO element that will help you improve your search engine ranking. 

Make Sure You Are On Social Media

The more social media widgets connected to your brand are mentioned on your page, the higher you will rank in Google’s search rankings. This is the result of the very obvious partnerships between Google and social media platforms which encourage organizations to have a presence on platforms like Facebook and Instagram to guarantee a stronger digital presence all around. 

Invest At Least A Small Sum In SEO Services

This doesn’t mean forking out your annual marketing budget on an award-winning SEO services agency but hiring a company to support you with one area where you believe your strengths do NOT lie. Content creation, for example. You might have a very fancy looking website that functions perfectly, and you have strong internal linking, but if your content is outdated, irrelevant, and dull then it is not likely you will get the rankings or attention you are seeking. By hiring an agency to help with this aspect of your digital presence alone could make a huge difference.

Focus On Your Keywords

Take a detailed look at your site and you’ll probably notice you tend to use similar words across the site – these are your keywords. Now sit back and reflect on what you believe your target audience is typing into Facebook when they are seeking services such as yours. For example, if you are a car dealer, your target consumer is probably typing in “buy a car” or “auto dealer”. Now, go back through your website and ensure that these keywords are mentioned often. Don’t necessarily spam your site with content featuring those words over and over again, but make sure those keywords are mentioned organically across several of your web pages. This will definitely help your SEO ranking.

Increasing your SEO shouldn’t be overly expensive, complicated, or unachievable. However, not paying attention to your SEO could mean the difference between bringing in the big bucks or failing miserably as a business in the 21st century, so it is definitely worth focusing on as you strategize for success in the future.