DIY SEO for local businesses: Articles, tools and resources to get you started

You want more leads from your website, but you don’t have the budget to hire an SEO expert.

Here are some tools, articles and resources that I’ve hand-picked so that you can learn, then apply to your website, without any help.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not an SEO expert. I know enough to get me through and figured you could use the following to improve your Google rankings.

 

Free tips on how to improve your Google My Business

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.


Research your keywords

First of all, it’s all about the keyword research.

For a comprehensive guide to all things keywords, I recommend reading this https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research.

Add the Keywords to your site

Now that you’ve picked your keywords, they need to go on your website.

The following article is a deep-dive into on-page SEO and essential reading for anyone learning search engine optimisation https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/on-page-seo.

If you have a WordPress website, I recommend reading this article as well, as it show’s how to use Yoast plugin for on-page SEO https://yoast.com/focus-keyword/.

Link building

Link building, in a nutshell, is getting other websites to link to yours.

It’s the best way to move your site up Google’s ladder. If a popular website with relevant content links to yours, Google likes this and rewards you with a higher ranking.

Here is an excellent introduction to getting backlinks. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/295253

Link building can be a tedious process, requires a fair amount of time and effort, and not always successful, so instead, you can use a paid service to get backlinks.

Fat Joe: They offer a range of services. I’d recommend using the local business citations product. https://fatjoe.com/link-building/

Tools for managing SEO

Here is a selection of the best SEO tools in the business, and they all offer free trial periods.

Moz: https://moz.com/

SemRush: https://www.semrush.com/

Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/

If you want to learn more about SEO, I highly recommend https://therecipeforseosuccess.com/, which is another excellent resource for learning SEO, especially for beginners.

Hopefully, you’ll find the above useful and give you enough information to get stuck in and apply to your website.