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You don't have to be a professional to improve your SEO performance.
But trying to figure out what to do and when to do it can be difficult.
Using these five steps, you'll be able to boost your organic search ranking with no previous experience required:
Let's get started!
Step #1: Complete A Basic Competitor Analysis:
SEO competitor analysis enables you to use the competitor's expensive marketing team to your advantage.
It will tell you what keywords you should use, what backlinks to build and what content to produce.
In three simple steps, you'll be able to outrank your direct competitors at their expense.
Perform Keyword Analysis: Keywords tell search engines what to rank you for and inform customers about what you sell. It's pretty easy to find out what keywords your competitors use. Once you know, you can outrank competitors by upgrading your titles and content with optimal keywords your competition has worked hard to find. This can be done for free with the Google Keyword Planner or WordStream free keyword tools.
Perform Backlink Analysis: Backlinks are upvotes that Google uses to determine where you should be ranked. If you have more links than your competitors, you will most likely outrank them. Simply find out your competitors' backlinks and get those same links for your website. This again can be done for free using the Hoth's free backlink checker.
Perform Content Analysis: You don't need to be a professional writer to create great content. Simply review your competitor's blogs (if they outrank yours) and identify topics you can also write about. Don't plagiarise, but do mirror structure, length and format and make sure it is written a little better than theirs. You can do this by reviewing your top five competitor's blogs on their website.
Last but not least, write your findings down.
This will cover all keyword, backlink and content goals for at least three months.
In short, you're killing three birds with your competitor's expensive stone, which will see your results skyrocket!
Step #2: Make Your Website Secure:
Google will literally slap your website down if it's not secure.
What's more, if you think that customer service is tough now, wait until you need to tell your customers that you've been hacked.
However, making your website secure is simple and can be done in five minutes. This can be done for free with an SSL certificate by following these four steps:
Verify your website information through ICANN Lookup
Generate the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on DigiCert
Submit CSR to the Certificate authority to validate your domain
Install the certificate on the backend of your website:
Go to the cPanel under the Security tab
Click the SSL/TLS upload button
Complete the required steps, and your secure
Alternatively, check out HubSpot's detailed SSL guide if you have trouble completing this step.
Step #3: Improve Website Speed:
It's a documented fact that Google ranks websites faster higher.
However, a shockingly low amount of blogs describe how to improve site speed.
In fact, this is a very simple thing to do and can be improved in a day.
Let's walk through three simple steps to improving site speed:
Compress Images and Videos: Take all image and video files and run them through compress2go and reupload the compressed files to your site.
Avoid Third Party Plugins: Where possible, avoid or remove third-party plugins that provide extra functionality to your site, e.g., calculators, form builders, search bars etc.,
Use website caching: In the back end of your website, find the caching settings and ensure your website caches data for long periods of time. If not, increase the amount of time in the settings.
Step #4: Use Structured Data:
If Google doesn't know what your website is about, it will most likely de-rank and send you zero traffic.
Structured data makes it easier for Google to understand what your website is about.
In fact, it will help Google send the people searching for your products or services directly to you. All you need to do is follow two simple steps:
Check If You Already Have Structured Data: To get started, use the free Google Structured Data Testing Tool to identify if you already have an implemented schema markup. If so, you're done!
If You Don't Use Structured Data Current: Use the free Google guide to implementing a Schema markup that will explain the steps you need to take.
Step #5: Learn More About SEO:
You don't need to hire an expensive SEO professional to win leads and sales organically online.
However, even if you hire an agency or SEO pro, you'll still need a baseline knowledge of what SEO is and how to do it properly.
The future of business is online, and although it may feel like there's more to learn about than you could possibly comprehend, you can still get a headstart on your competitors, as SEO has only just begun.
Using our mini curriculum and resources below, you'll be able to improve your knowledge, beat Google update impact, and outrank your competitors.
SEO Fundamentals: Check Google's panda guidelines which serve as the SEO equivalent to the ten commandments.
SEO Skills And Techniques: Check out ahrefs SEO beginners guide to get a comprehensive understanding of all elements of SEO.
SEO Performance Monitoring: Keep track of the impact of your learning in real-time by analyzing your website's performance with Google Search Console.
SEO News And Updates: Subscribe to Google Search Central for news about upcoming core updates that can affect your site's SEO performance.
If, however, you are like most people and it all gets a bit much, get in touch with Innovation-X, and one of our dedicated SEO pros will help solve your problem or get you to the top of search results.