How to do SEO Yourself: 8 DIY SEO Tips

Whether you’re a small business owner looking to boost organic traffic or you’re looking to get started in the world of digital marketing, learning how to do SEO isn’t just a valuable skill to have; it’s a necessity. 

At the same time, trying to wrap your head around keyword research, content optimization, and technical issues can be a challenge for even the most dedicated and ambitious marketer or entrepreneur. 

The good news is, this guide is here to help with practical, actionable tips on how to do your own SEO. 

Here’s What You’ll Learn: 

• How to do a site audit and get a concrete foundation on your rank, as well as who your competitors are.
• How to research keywords while creating and optimizing content for the best possible results.
• How to handle technical SEO even if you’re not a programming wiz.

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1. Audit Your Site & Check Metrics

You can’t expect to succeed with DIY SEO if you don’t know where you’re starting from or who you’re up against. 

That’s why the very first step, before you even research a single keyword or optimize a single piece of content, is to get a baseline of where you are versus where you want to be. 

• The first step should always be to install Google Analytics on your site to track traffic and user behavior. 
• Then, connect your site to Google Search Console as well. 
• This will tell you if Google has encountered any critical issues or crawling problems as it explores your site. 

From there, you’ll want to use tools to crawl your site. These tools will let you know if there are any broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags or slow-loading pages. 

Note the following metrics to establish a baseline that you can improve over time: 

• Organic traffic
• Bounce rate
• Average session duration
• Keyword rankings 

2. Check Out Your Competitors

Next, it’s time to check out what the competition is up to. Search for your target keywords and list the top-ranking websites. 

Use keyword research tools to help you spot which keywords your competition is using, what their backlink profiles look like, and what sort of content strategies they’re using. 

This information will help you find gaps in their content where you can outperform them. 

3. Conduct Detailed Keyword Research

Once you have a solid baseline of what you’re working with (and who your competition is), it’s time to start doing keyword research. 

One of the best keyword strategies is to use topic clustering and target long-tail keywords. 

You can use online tools like AnswerthePublic or Google’s “People Also Ask” to help you brainstorm topics as well as see what questions people are asking that you can help answer.

Then, look at important metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty. By focusing on long-tail keywords, you’ll have a better chance of ranking well and then building on that rank over time. 

Don’t forget to group your keywords by search intent (informational, navigational, transactional) to make sure your content matches what people are looking for.  

It's a good idea to keep your keyword research in a spreadsheet where you can map each keyword to specific pages or content ideas. 

Create columns for: 

• Search volume
• Difficulty/Competition
• Search Intent
• Target URL

This will help you stay organized, especially as you continue to add pages over time. 

4. A Quick Technical SEO Intro

Let’s take a quick look at some technical SEO tips for DIY SEO:

• Clear, easy-to-follow site architecture: make it as easy as possible for people and the search engines to find your content.
• Keep your URLs short and descriptive: so that readers can tell at first glance what your page is about. 
• Consult a web developer if you’re unsure: they can evaluate whether your site is mobile responsive and use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test how quickly your page loads on various devices.
• Create a sitemap: so that search engines have an easier time crawling and ranking your content. 

While that’s just a brief overview of technical SEO, it can help you get started on the right path to creating a more optimized site.

5. On-Page Optimization Made Easy

The next step of the process involves optimizing the content you already have to make it rank as best as it can:

• Write unique, keyword-rich title tags that are around 50-60 characters.
• Write engaging meta descriptions of 150-160 characters.
• Follow a logical page structure and use H1 for the page title, as well as H2 and H3 for the subtopics.
• Focus on writing in-depth, well-researched content and check it for readability.
• Add keywords naturally, so they don’t distract from the content.
• Link internally to other, relevant pages to help readers navigate easily to related content.

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6. Creating and Optimizing Your Content

Creating great content takes work, so it’s a good idea to create a content calendar you can work with. 

Schedule in:

• Regular updates
• Blog posts and articles 
• Guides
• Videos
• Infographics
• Podcasts

In particular, you’ll also want to focus on creating evergreen content; that is, content that continues to be relevant over time. 

You may need to update it periodically, but the underlying message doesn’t usually change much. Make sure to share your content on social media and elsewhere, aiming to earn backlinks from reputable sites in your niche to help boost your backlink profile. 

7. Off-Page SEO and Link Building

Speaking of backlinks, part of DIY SEO is having a backlink strategy and taking care of your off-page SEO. 

With this in mind, there are lots of ways to earn reputable backlinks. You can reach out to influencers or industry experts for collaboration, or create newsworthy stories and submit a press release (with the bonus being that you may get even more media attention as a result!). 

One of the best ways to earn those backlinks, since these people get pitched quite often and may not reply, is to take the time to do the research or find out the information that people want to know in your niche, in depth. 

8. Monitoring Analytics and What Happens Next

Once you’re all set up with your DIY SEO, it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating these options periodically to see how your site is performing with metrics like traffic, bounce rate, session duration and conversion goals. 

There are plenty of SEO tools out there which can also help you monitor your keywords and domain authority, including SEMrush and Ahreefs. 

You’ll want to periodically do detailed content audits to spot any slow-loading pages, broken links or other issues that can detract from your ranking. 

Also, this is the perfect time to explore conversion optimization and A/B testing. 

Split testing different parts of your page, such as different headlines or page layouts, can help you see what resonates more with your ideal customer. You may be surprised by the results! 

Keep in mind, too, that search engine algorithms and SEO trends are always changing and evolving with the times. What works this month may be old news the next. It’s a good idea to keep up with industry-leading blogs to stay up-to-date and make adjustments and course-correct if need be. 

Remember, SEO is Never Done

This list of DIY SEO tips sounds like a tall order to fill, but when you break it down into individual steps, it’s easy to start and make excellent progress on your search engine ranking strategy. 

As you keep creating new content and seeing what resonates with your ideal audience, you may find that they prefer certain types of content over others. 

The key is to look at what your metrics are telling you, for example: 

• Has traffic been steadily increasing, stagnant, or declining over the last 30 days? 
• Which pages have unusually high bounce rates? What’s happening to cause it? 
• What are the most common paths that users are taking to land on key pages?
• Which keywords have gained/lost rankings recently? Does that correlate with changes in traffic? 
• Are my top-performing keywords still aligned with users’ search intent?
• Are there long-tail keywords we haven’t targeted yet?

By keeping these points in mind, you’ll have the knowledge and action plan you need to turn DIY SEO into better rankings and higher-converting content. 

Get a best-in-class suite of tools for your content marketing strategy! Check out Originality.ai’s Predictive SEO Tool, AI Checker, Plagiarism Checker, and Grammar Checker.

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