7 SEO On-site Page Optimizations You Can Do on Your Own

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DIY SEO – 7 Tips To Do It Yourself

Although 15 or 20 years ago being present online was enough to be noticed and reached by potential customers, the situation has changed. Now, SEO is a must if you want to keep up with your market rivals and stay in the business.

SEO (search engine optimization) consists in adjusting the website and its content (including images) to the requirements and guidelines of the search engine to achieve the best possible positions in the search results.

The question is can I do SEO by myself? Even though the process is complex, there are thousands of factors that require our attention and it’s best to commission the task to specialists, there are a few modifications and adjustments you can implement on your own. So, how do you do Google SEO yourself? Keep reading!

1. Analyze

It’s impossible to determine areas for improvement without proper analysis of the market, your website, its content, and users. That’s why you should start your DIY SEO with analysis.

Set up Google Analytics and Check Your Website’s Search Position

To start with, it’s worth setting up a Google Analytics account that will provide you with valuable data and information about your performance, audience, keywords, channels, and acquisition. This tool can give you valuable insight into your website operation and can help you pinpoint the first weak points that you should work on. Moreover, thanks to keeping an eye on your page and its position, you’ll be able to easily determine if introduced changes bring any results and help you improve your rankings.

Use SEMRUSH To Analyze Your Domain and Competitors

SEMrush is a professional tool that is a rich source of knowledge. If you aren’t sure whether DIY SEO is for you, benefit from a free trial and see for yourself that this solution can take your entire strategy to the next level.

With SEMrush, you can thoroughly analyze your domain, its positions, keywords it’s displayed on, organic traffic, domain and page authority, backlinks, and more. Moreover, the tool offers the so-called “keyword gap” functionality which helps you determine which keywords are used by your competitors but aren’t on your website.

Taking your time to get to know SEMrush will surely help you implement modifications that will improve your rankings.

2. Keyword Research

Content alone, be it of the highest quality, isn’t sufficient to reach top positions in the search results. Key phrases, also known as keywords, are crucial here. Keywords are the very words users enter into the search engine in order to get results about specific products, services, or pieces of information. Stay keyword-oriented when optimizing the page and creating the content. According to various sources, the correct keyword density amounts to approximately 5%. However, this depends on the particular key phrases.

Keywords frequently used by your market rivals should appear in your content more often. On the other hand, the less competitive ones can be used less frequently. Don’t forget to take into account the text volume. It’s best to create longer texts, as Google algorithms see them as more valuable, and, as you may guess, the longer the text, the more place for keywords it offers.

But how to determine which keywords you should apply in your content? This is when keyword research comes in handy.

Tools

To find out which keywords are important for your business, benefit from tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, KeywordTool.io, MOZ, and many more. You can also use “related searches” displayed below the search results. Thanks to quality tools, you’ll be able to determine the needs of users and tailor your website to the expectations of potential buyers.

Long Tail

If you’re just starting your adventure with e-commerce or your website parameters aren’t too impressive and the market competitiveness is huge, go for long tail SEO. What does it mean? Instead of focusing on phrases like “red dress” or “women’s boots”, you should describe your range in detail as “midi red dress for a wedding” or “brown leather women’s boots”. Although such an approach means that you’ll reach fewer recipients, it also means that you’ll reach those potentially interested in buying specific products from your offer.

Long tail SEO means focusing on keywords that consist of three, four, or even more words. This way, it’s possible to reach users likely to convert.

3. On-Page SEO – Create Keyword Rich Content

You’ve probably heard on numerous occasions that content is king. In other words, it means that it’s crucial for your website. Internet users are basically always looking for information. They also generally like it to be unique and useful. And since Google puts users first, websites with the most valuable content tailored to the needs of recipients are displayed first. Google algorithms determine the most unique, up-to-date, and query-relevant content on the web. That’s why creating content is very important when you’re doing DIY SEO.

Blog

Writing a business blog is a perfect first step of your DIY page optimization process. To have a successful blog, firstly you have to think about your potential customers and their interests. Perhaps you’ll have to put a lot of effort into the process before Google appreciates your hard work. However, it’s worth being persistent as quality activities will translate into desired results sooner or later.

Also, remember that Google likes its top-ranking sites to be up-to-date. Try to publish unique, up-to-date posts on a regular basis. This will attract both new and returning users who might decide to visit other subpages of your website.

Product Descriptions

Make sure that products and services in your range are described in a unique way. Create quality texts that focus on important functionalities and features. Use benefit-driven language and show people why it’s worth purchasing your goods. Going over in detail about the product’s features will make your potential customers satisfied. So it will do for the search engine algorithms, which will claim your content valuable.

Want to learn how to write attractive product specifications? Visit our blog!

Category Descriptions

Describe your categories in a unique, user-friendly way. They’re an extra space for keywords important for your business. Remember to avoid the so-called keyword stuffing! Also, if your product category descriptions are unique and fresh, readers and customers will love them. To conclude, taking your time to create quality product category descriptions will bring you SEO benefits and satisfied users.

EAT Principle

Have you heard about the EAT principle? This acronym stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It became famous in August 2018 when Google introduced the Medic Update. The EAT principle is described in detail in Google’s Search Quality Rater guidelines. However, in a nutshell, it means that website owners should offer their users truthful, quality information written by real experts in the field.

Although EAT isn’t categorized as a direct ranking factor, Google benefits from other metrics that allow it to determine if your website is a quality source of knowledge and these metrics are ranking factors.

4. Optimize Your Content

Apart from your product and category descriptions or blog entries, there are other website elements that also need to be optimized to help you reach top positions in the search results. When it comes to DIY SEO refinements you can implement on your own, it’s worth mentioning optimization of meta tags and images.

Meta Tags: Titles / Descriptions / Headers / URLs

Page title is a very important website element, yet, we don’t always devote it enough attention. Based on its content, the search engine determines the main subject of your website. The page title is also displayed directly in the search results. You can find it just above the page URL. The title is also what is shown after hovering the cursor over the page tab in a browser. When optimizing your title, think about a keyword that best describes your page. Also, always keep the title unique. It should be different from both your competitors’ titles and other titles on your own page.

Meta description is also displayed in the search results. You can find it below the title and the page URL. The description should attract the users’ attention. It may significantly increase the number of clicks on your site, which in turn leads to an increased position of the page in the search results.

Don’t forget that creating valuable content isn’t enough – proper text formatting needs to be applied too. The text should be transparent and as reader-friendly as possible. These are the features appreciated by Google algorithms. Each piece of content should be divided into paragraphs. For longer blocks of text use headers H1, H2, H3… etc. in descending order (HTML markers defining the structure of the text).

Remember to always put the reader first and keep both your keywords and headers natural. Otherwise, you may discourage users, and they may leave your website.

Lastly in this part, we need to mention URLs. Correct website addresses should provide information about site content so that the user knows where he or she will be redirected after clicking the link. Although you should avoid special characters in your URL, it’s worth including an important keyword in it. While signs like “?”, “$”, or language-specific characters can cause Google indexation errors, properly structured addresses with dashes that separate individual keywords ensure that Google robots will access your website and index it as a user and search engine-friendly.

An ideal URL should have approximately 100 characters.

Images – Sizes / Names / Alt Descriptions

Don’t underestimate the SEO significance of images on your site. Especially if your page includes a large number of photos. Photographers’ portfolios can serve as an excellent example. Too “heavy” images will negatively affect your website loading time, which is also an important ranking factor analyzed by search engine robots. Moreover, it’s worth keeping in mind that modern users are rather impatient and they’ll quickly leave your page if it doesn’t live up to their expectations. Try to keep your image size under 200KB.

Website loading speed (both desktop and mobile) can be monitored with the use of the Page Speed Insights tool. Apart from the data about loading time, the tool provides tips on how to streamline the page. A result below 60/100 should be a red flag for you (actually, the tool even marks it with red).

When it comes to image names, it’s generally better to avoid automatically generated file names, as these elements are displayed to both search engine crawlers and users. Keep your image names natural and remember to include important keywords in them. The words in the file name should be separated with dashes. Also, avoid any special characters and keep the name rather short. For instance, an appropriate image file name can be: hanging-lamp.jpg.

And last but not least, let’s talk about alt descriptions. They allow users to find out what’s in the pictures, charts, etc. When your website is loading, alternative descriptions are displayed instead of images. It’s also worth mentioning that they’re a significant facilitator for visually impaired persons. Alt descriptions should briefly describe the content of the pictures. Apart from helping users, they also inform Google robots about your content and make it easier for them to understand your website.

5. Link Building

Link building is the fifth element you can focus on when doing DIY SEO.

External Links – Backlinks

As part of the DIY SEO process, you can acquire backlinks to your website from valuable domains with high parameters. This way, you can improve your DA and PA parameters which also have an impact on the positions in the search results. If other websites link to your page, it’s a sign for Google that your content is a valuable and quality source of information willingly quoted by others. Moreover, backlinks on popular platforms can help you reach a wider range of recipients and potential customers.

Find out more about link building process here: https://delante.co/quality-link-building-essential-guide/

Internal Links

The main purpose of internal links is to make it easier for search engine robots to crawl the site smoothly. The number of internal links positively influences the site’s search results ranking. Therefore it’s worth referring users to other valuable pieces of content on your website.

To incorporate internal links naturally, you can benefit from attractive CTA buttons or phrases like “contact us,”, “learn more, “visit our blog.” Internal linking allows reusing pieces of content written, for instance, a year earlier. It’s also a way to bring the updated versions of old blog posts to the users’ attention. Think about implementing a menu redirecting users to particular content categories. This will streamline website navigation and support the SEO process.

6. Technical Issues

Although not everyone is a computer-literate person, there are a few technical issues that can be easily solved without specialist support to improve your positions in the search results.

Errors

Check if your website generates any errors. Perhaps some of the products or services were withdrawn from your offer and internal links to these URLs result in 404 errors? In this case, it’s worth refining your website content or applying redirects. Errors are perceived negatively by both users and search engine robots, so focus on this element. You can verify your website manually or use special tools that offer broken link checkers (e.g. SEMrush, Sitechecker, Google Webmaster, Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs).

Page Speed

As mentioned above, website loading time has a crucial impact on the rankings and users. It’s been reported that even 53% of users browsing the net on mobile devices decide to leave websites if they load longer than 3 seconds. To increase your page speed, enable compression, reduce the number of redirects within the site, get rid of render-blocking JavaScript, optimize your server response time, benefit from the content distribution network, optimize images, and leverage browser caching.

These are only some of the measures you can take to improve your website loading time. Want to learn more? Check out our entry: Website speed importance in SEO.

7. Stay Relevant – Keep up with Trends and Changes in SEO

There are plenty of ways to optimize your website. The ones presented here can be carried out by each and any of us. The presented SEO tools are user-friendly and intuitive.

However, before getting down to performing first activities, focus on the most important thing. Readers and customers always come first. Their satisfaction should be your utmost priority while creating articles, home page, category page, or product page content. Make sure that your website is a quality source of information willingly quoted by curious users. Follow trends and changes in the SEO world to ensure that your page lives up to the expectations.

Take care of long tail keywords and refine the elements mentioned in today’s entry to quickly observe the first improvements in the rankings. Remember that SEO is a process and huge changes don’t happen overnight. If you’re still in two minds and you don’t know how to do SEO on your own, contact our specialists who will be more than happy to help you devise a strategy tailored to your needs.

This is an update of an article published in 2018.