DIY SEO: Learn How To Do SEO Yourself

Many of our clients ask: Can I do SEO on my own?

The short answer is Yes!

Then why work with your agency?

Good question!

Well, you can actually do (basic) SEO on your own if you have the time and mind for it.

Better said, if you are building a small website, you (or your staff) can do some reading and create some optimized texts and pages. Before that though, you need to collaborate with a discerning developer to ensure technical SEO fundamentals.

But for large-scale websites or very competitive niches, you are much better off managing your company than dealing with page speed and keywords.

As SEO pros, what we advise our customers to do is monitor their SEO results whether they do optimizations on their own or collaborate with an agency.

And there’s a good reason for it.

Monitoring your organic search progress offers you valuable insights to better understand:

• prospects and customers
• online presence
• marketing efforts
• user-behavior changes
• new trends
• and also come up with new advertising ideas

So, if you decide to set up and run SEO campaigns on your own, read on for some basic tips.

8 Tips To Do SEO Yourself

To give your website an extra boost in search results, here’s a basic checklist for DYI SEO (or self SEO, as many call it!).

Build A SEO Friendly Website

SEO starts long before your site goes online.

At this stage, it’s worth partnering with a knowledgeable developer who is willing to apply technical SEO basics.

If you are building your website yourself, you must ensure your pages abide by fundamental technical SEO aspects that are hard -if not impossible- to fix later on.

My best piece of advice is to prioritize quality over looks.

Here’s what you need to take care of at the design stage of your site:

1. Create An SEO-Friendly Architecture

As with any project, a good website starts with proper planning ‘on paper.’ 

You need to consider how to group and prioritize all the information in a logical way; in other words, you need to build your site architecture.

The basic idea is to create a few broad categories with some more specialized subcategories linked to them in tree-style hierarchies.

This will help your users quickly find what they are looking for and it will also help search engine crawlers navigate through your content quickly and easily.

Once your website is up and running, you can then link pages with one another as references for users to find out more about a subject. This is called internal linking. It also helps search engine bots see the relation among pages and consider your website as a valuable and concise entity.

It’s worth finding out more about website architecture, but as a self-SEO, there’s one main thing to keep in mind: always give search engines (and their crawlers) what they want and keep them happy.

2. Check Page Speed & Responsiveness

Make it simple but make it fast. And also user-friendly.

Indeed, speed and responsiveness are vital in SEO.

As you build your website, check that both desktop and mobile versions load fast. You can get a rough estimate via Google’s free page speed checker tool.

Ideally, any speed score below 90 means there are issues to fix. This speed checker shows some core problems that affect speed. You’d need to sort them out as soon as you spot them.

Your website must also look good and function well on all screen sizes, whether phones or PC monitors. Your CMS should have a responsive view function; if not, use a free responsive testing tool.

Once your website goes live, here are the main things to do as part of your DIY SEO project.

Set Up Google Search Console & Analytics

Whether you do your own SEO or not, monitoring your site’s performance in Google Analytics and Search Console will give you a good idea of how your pages are doing.

Both platforms provide detailed information on the quantity and quality of the visits to your site. This helps you make informed decisions on how to deal with your SEO and other digital marketing initiatives.

Moreover, Google Search Console and its Core Web Vitals sections offer deeper insights into possible technical SEO drawbacks that need fixing.

Apply On-Page SEO Elements

This is an easier task for DIY search engine optimization.

Even though on-page SEO includes a long list of things, here’s what you don’t want to miss.

1. H Tags

Users and bots skim your page content by reading your H tags, which are your main and secondary headers.

These are denoted, by order of importance, with H1, H2, H3, and H4 (further H tags are rarely used).

So, in an SEO article, for example, the title should be in H1 (you should only use one H1 per page). The main sections of your text need to be marked with H2 tags and their subsections with H3.

You can have as many H2s and H3s as you want, but all your H tags should appear in hierarchical order.

2. Optimized Images

All your images should be lightweight.

For better SEO performance, use image file names that describe what’s in the photo with 2-3 words separated by dashes. Don’t forget to add a more elaborate description of each image in the alt tags.

3. Page Titles & Descriptions

Each page should have a page title and a meta description that briefly describes its content in search results.

Your CMS should have an obvious meta title & description field to quickly add your texts.

Ideally, you should use wording similar to your H1 title. Try to make it informative yet inviting for users to click on your page.

4. The Right Keywords

If you’re doing SEO yourself, finding the right keywords can be tricky. You would actually need to purchase a professional SEO tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush.

However, if you run a local website with low competition, you can use various free keyword research tools to see what keywords can help you rank better.

Another thing you can do is brainstorm various search terms and then google each one to see what your competition is doing. Google search suggestions, People Also Ask section, and Similar Searches also provide valuable keyword ideas.

You can mention all these keywords in your pages and also choose some focus keywords to write keyword-optimized content. Just remember to focus on one main keyword in every article.

When you prioritize your content, start by writing about more general keywords with medium to low competition. This will slowly increase your topical authority.

Once you mastered that, write about more specific subjects closely related to your products or services. Don’t forget to include long tail keywords that usually have less competition.

Keep on monitoring your blog and enhance the articles that do better than others.

Spread The Word With Backlinks

This is the part where your expertise and PR skills can make a difference.

To improve your SEO, other websites must mention your pages with a link. A good backlink score of 60+ is a major sign of quality for search engines.

Things you can do include:

• Write compelling content that interests your target users.
• Demonstrate expertise through your blog.
• Get active in relevant discussions where your audience hangs out.
• Contact website owners who host articles from guest authors.
• Compile informative case studies and publish them in online press.
• Post articles on your social media accounts.

But remember: Not all links raise your rankings so you also need to check the link equity of your linking webpages. Plus, you can investigate various free and paid link opportunities as part of your overall parasite SEO strategy.

Audit Your Website’s SEO

Auditing your website on a regular basis protects you from SEO pitfalls and fixes errors before they grow big.

There are various free SEO audit tools that send automated reports on your site’s performance.

It may take some time to decipher all their warnings and suggestions, but you can also work with a developer or an agency to help you through it.

Mastering SEO On Your Own

On top of the above, you can do many more things to master DIY SEO.

But to spare yourself hours of studying and experimenting, you could also partner with an SEO agency and share the work!

Actually, this is a viable and low-cost solution if you have a limited budget or want to do SEO on your own while learning from the pros.

Ready to start?

At Atropos Digital, we offer flexible SEO plans tailored to your needs. If you wish to take advantage of all search engine optimization has to offer, give us a call!