You will read about the basics. The foundations that I help build for business owners. We all need solid foundations online that will work for us in the future and generate “free” organic traffic. SEO will do that.
In this post, I speak to those who want to improve their on-site SEO. You will read criticism; however, criticism is not my aim. I aim to help business owners with their websites by giving them essential hands-on SEO tips.
For starters, let me clarify one thing.
SEO is not what you think.
It is a vast subject, like marketing. Everybody thinks they know it. And everybody thinks they are doing it; the reality is that they are far from that. In this 2 minutes article, I have explained What SEO is in the simplest way possible.
Now back to the main subject, hands-on tips.
SEO done from Asia could cost you more.
For a business owner, SEO could cost thousands of dollars. Even if it is done, say, from India, where it suppose to be “cheaper”.
Well, possible it will not be cheaper, for two reasons.
- Business owners (or, in fact, most people) have yet to learn what SEO exactly means. With the lack of this knowledge, they cannot possibly check what an SEO service provider is doing for their money.
- They sold them “the-SEO-fluff” over a phone call, and when they realised this, months passed by, and they were almost ten thousand dollars lighter than before. At that stage, they are back to square one, as they need to find SEO help again (this time trustworthy, possibly local help). They often drop the ball at this stage based on their negative marketing experience and do not even start.
I call these clients marketing-damaged business owners.
And unfortunately, there are a ton of them.
Don’t you agree?
There is good news, though.
In New Zealand, what blows my mind is the number of website builders and marketing agencies. Not only where I live, in Christchurch, but across New Zealand in general.
Having a lot of service providers is excellent. It shows me that business is booming for many people, which is fantastic.
All this is dandy, but there is a catch. Here it comes.
I want to remind you, from here, I will refer to service providers offering search engine-optimised websites to their clients.
Spy on competitors.
I like to spy on my competitors.
For one, I still try to understand the market because I only returned to New Zealand twelve months ago.
And two, whoever I help with digital marketing is pretty basic I spy on their competitors anyway.
So, when I perform a quick one-minute audit on those who offer SEO services, like the above-mentioned agencies, freelancers etc., do you know what I see?
I notice that even THEY fail to do the very basics on their site in terms of SEO.
What service do they provide for their clients for thousands of dollars then?
I do not get it.
Clients do not know SEO, so they cannot possibly check who is trying to sell them “the-SEO-fluff”. I am here to educate those clients.
Basic SEO practices even marketing agencies miss.
What are those basic SEO practices even marketing agencies miss, you might ask? I’ll tell you now.
With your own SEO, ensure you have the following checked
(start with your homepage and go page-by-page):
- One H1 tag per page. One! Do this on each page.
- Add a meta description (to each page).
- Add a title as well (to each page).
- Add an alt description to your images.
- Include your keywords and key phrases in the above four points.
- Have Schema codes added to your site.
- Update/set up your robot.txt.
- Update/set up your sitemap.
Most marketing agencies promising you SEO for thousands of dollars in 99% of the cases misses these points on their own site! Which is odd, right?
Be different, fix these on your website, and your on-site SEO will be better than 99% of SEO service providers.
Follow this blog as I share hands-on marketing tips with readers that I would find helpful.
Thank you for reading my post.
I am Shopi.
I help businesses build solid online foundations.
