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DIY SEO

These days, an online presence is an absolute necessity for virtually any type of business. A surprisingly large fraction of the world’s population is now online, and they use the web and search engines to find anything they need. While any business can create a website and add content, search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary in order to compete with other businesses and ensure your website is visible to your online audience. While SEO can be a complicated endeavor, you can perform SEO for a website on your own with some initial training. Do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO is popular among small business owners as it gives them the ability to market their brand online for little cost. Organic search, as it's called, is the most popular form of SEO and can be done on your own with the right knowledge and resources.

As you learn and implement some of the DIY SEO tips in this article, you’ll then need to track your successes and failures with StatCounter to ensure you’re going the right direction with your SEO strategy. We offer a number of metrics and dimensions to help you identify tactics that are working well and others that can be improved. Before you get started, let us explain some of the best DIY SEO techniques you can use on your website.

SEO Content Writing

One of the most important aspects of SEO is the written content on a website. Not only will this benefit your website’s search result rankings, but quality content will also further enhance the user experience on your site. The easier your site is to use and navigate, the more likely users are to remain on your site longer, visit additional pages, and complete contact forms or newsletter sign ups.

Keyword Research

While the benefits of quality content are far reaching, it all begins with keyword research. Creating quality SEO content requires a fair amount of keyword research to determine which search queries to focus your attention toward. You will need to choose keywords that are relevant to your industry and create content based on these keywords to improve search result rankings. While this seems easy enough, you will need to choose keywords that your website can realistically rank for. Not only that, but the content you create from your selected keywords needs to be relevant for the web user as well. That is, it should closely match their search intent. If you’d like more insight as to how to find and select the appropriate keywords, view the pages below for additional help:

Pro Tips

While you can use a range of keyword research tools, search engines like Google are a perfect place to find relevant keywords. Simply type a keyword you have in mind into the search bar, and check the suggested searches at the bottom of the results page. In doing so, you’ll also see what kind of pages and content Google provides for that term.

Once you have researched keywords extensively and you know which ones you want to try to rank for, you will need to begin writing your content. Keyword density, or the number of times you use the keyword in your content compared to the overall word count, is important when writing content for your website. Use the keyword too much and search engines will view your site as spam. Use them too little and search engines may not think the page is informative enough to rank. A sound median is 2% keyword density.

Building Backlinks

Upon updating your website with keyword-rich content, you can begin building your backlink portfolio. Backlinks help to build a website’s domain and page authorities, which contribute to search engine results rankings. In addition to helping improve the authority of your site, backlinks also give users another avenue to find and visit your website.

Real World Application

Let’s say you run a local flower shop and recently published a blog post on a new species of lily. A florist then decides to link to your article from their site because it’s authoritative and accurate. With this, you’ll have acquired one backlink, or inbound link. Visitors to that site may be more inclined to view your blog post because of the trust they have with that florist, which can bring you additional traffic.

Of course, there are many ways to build backlinks and improve your site’s domain and page authority. Online directories, such as Yellow Pages or Yelp!, provide your site with a high-quality backlink as well as a place for customers to leave reviews about your products or services.

You can also reach out to other websites in your industry about writing a guest blog for their site with a backlink to your website included in the content. While some sites may decline this offer, many will oblige seeing as they receive “free” content in exchange for a backlink.

Social Media Marketing

By The Numbers

Global Social Media Stats - 2016

  • Approx. 2.5 billion people use social media
  • Over 90% of retail companies use social media
  • On average, each web user has over 5 social media accounts
  • Nearly 80% of web users have a Facebook account (1.8 billion login daily)

Another aspect of SEO is marketing your content on social media platforms. Search engines now rank social media business pages in their search results pages, which provide users another way to find your business. Plus, as you can see by the stats listed above, social platforms can provide great opportunity in this regard. Of course, different social media platforms work better for certain businesses, and choosing your social media presence can help target specific audiences. For example, Pinterest is popular with arts and crafts websites, but technology websites don’t perform nearly as well on that platform. You should do some research to see which platforms will work best for your business.

Managing your social media pages is something that can easily be done with DIY SEO. While some aspects of SEO, like keyword research and backlink building, are inherently complex, nearly everyone is familiar with social media sites like Facebook or Twitter—which are great options for any business.

In addition to sharing content organically on social media, you can also purchase advertising space on various platforms. You can even choose which demographics to focus your advertisements toward so they will perform better. If you choose to go this route, be sure to test different versions of each advertisement to see which version performs best, and be prepared to spend a little bit of money. This will also ensure your ad reaches a wide demographic and converts well with your targeted audience.

Track Your SEO Progress with StatCounter

Like we said before, it’s important to track your progress in SEO to ensure your strategies are performing well. In doing so, you’ll be able to gauge what’s working on your site and what isn’t, so you can then make educated decisions as to where to go next. In this regard, StatCounter allows you to track important and insightful metrics to ensure your website is optimized correctly.

If you have questions or comments, you can contact customer support by completing the form below.

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