What is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” That means just about as much as “SEO” does to anybody who’s asking what it means. Overall, what SEO essentially comes down to is a collection of practices with the end goal of attracting more customers to a business by taking advantage of online visibility. SEO is the marketing strategy to end all marketing strategies for at least three overarching reasons: 

1. It often encompasses nearly all other marketing strategies, because an SEO may do whatever it takes to get a particular client more visibility. 
​
2. It takes full advantage of Google, the world’s most powerful tool any business can align itself with and learn to use properly to propel its success.

3. On some level, SEO is unavoidable to even those who know nothing about it. 


It’s been said that everyone is a philosopher, in a practical sense, because philosophy is used in every thought, action, and belief we have. Whether you use philosophy or not is not your choice, but only whether you use it well. Similarly, if you are business in 2019, then you do use SEO. Whether you use it well or use it badly is up to you. The ones who use it well succeed, and the ones who use it badly are virtually predestined to fail.

SEO starts the moment you realize your business needs an online presence. It must be done. If you can’t afford to hire someone, then this is the guide for you. ​

The Unavoidability of SEO

Google is unavoidable. This much is obvious. But what people don’t know is that there is a correct way to use Google as a business owner. Google sets guidelines for businesses who post their websites online so that they can ensure their search engine provides searchers with the most helpful information possible. Those who work WITH those guidelines use SEO well, while those who ignore them or work against them are on track to losing all internet visibility, and thus, their customers.

Practically all forms of business in 2019 benefit greatly from having a website - as long as it works. The most successful businesses attract organic search traffic to their site and gain customers through their website without having to reach out to every customer. This is simply how the world works in 2019, and will continue to work going forward. What do you do when you want a product or service? You Google it, and find the best place to get that thing. Google ensures you find the best place by rewarding those who strategically use SEO according to their guidelines. Google is allowing you to post your website on their search engine, so they expect you to follow their rules. 

Business owners all over the world think that by having a website they will attract customers, but this is a terribly misinformed attitude. Websites set up correctly attract customers, while websites that are set up badly repel them. 

Avoid contracting SEOsis by designing your site with SEO in mind

SEOsis is a disease that websites contract by not using SEO correctly in the initial set up of the site. The symptoms? Little to no organic traffic, a slow website that repels customers who do find it, and a perpetual need for paid ads that give no long term benefits, are ignored by 70+% of people who see it, and whose budget is often wasted by competitors’ clicks.

Business owners spend money on a web designer for the creation of their site, and naturally, expect them to make a site that functions well. Unfortunately, web designers are not SEO experts, they are web designers. Web designers also do not write content, yet content is crucial to SEO. A business owner who invests in a web designer but does not invest in SEO-friendly web design and SEO-friendly content has wasted his money and effort on a site that cannot succeed in attracting anyone organically. 

Web design MUST be done WITH SEO IN MIND, or the site is virtually useless. A site built without SEO in mind is almost guaranteed to set up a business with a year’s worth of SEO work that must be paid for and fixed before the site begins to function well. 

Therefore, it is obviously preferable for the SEO to be done in tandem with the initial creation of the website to avoid these tedious problems that can often take months to recover from even once they are fixed. 

Use an SEO-friendly CMS (content management system). WordPress is undoubtedly the best for SEO, as it is the most customizable. It also takes the most know-how and work. Squarespace is also very good, and has good, easy templates to work with. Weebly and Wix work, and have an easier learning curve, but can’t get you as far as WordPress when it comes to SEO-friendliness. As a DIY SEO business owner, it may be worth going with an easier CMS, but if you’re willing to spend the time and effort, WordPress is the way to go. 

Luckily, Tustin SEO has you covered when it comes to SEO-friendly web design. We ONLY create websites that are built with SEO in mind, so you don’t waste your time and money having to go back later and fix everything. This step is crucial to any business that does not have the budget to pay for SEO. Save up and get this done well and the rest should be much easier. It’s worth the investment. Schedule a consultation for a web design package here.

Get an In-Depth, High-Quality SEO Audit

Along with the last step, this is another that MUST be done by an expert. Save up if you’ve got to, but this is a non-negotiable that can set the pace for your business’s entire online presence. 

Once you’ve got your site set up, it is well worth the investment to purchase a high-quality, in-depth SEO audit from an SEO specialist who can help you with a roadmap for your SEO. A good quality SEO Audit can run you $500-900, but can save you thousands. 

Why pay for an Audit when you can get a free one? Most SEO companies and hundreds of sites online, including mine, offer a free, automated SEO audit for your site with the click of a button. Unfortunately, the prevalence of these helpful tools has left most people confused as to their purpose. Automated tools are great, but a 5-second cookie cutter bot-check of a website is nothing compared to an audit performed by an expert who will spend hours researching, investigating, and providing actionable advice for your website. 

Take advantage of the free SEO audit, why not? But don’t confuse its effectiveness with a comprehensive, 4-phase audit performed by an expert. Our 4-phase specialty audit covers Sitewide SEO Errors, Page-Specific SEO Errors, a Content Audit, and a Social Media Audit. We provide you with the most in-depth list of SEO problems you could never imagine, along with dozens of actionable tips on how to resolve them and work SEO into your natural website additions in the future, as well as handle your overall online presence with other tools, such as social media and business listings, effectively. 

Once the audit is done, you can keep it forever. We can provide the implementations of the audit, you can hire somebody else to do them, OR, you can do them yourself. 

The rest of the tips in this list are for business owners who want to take SEO into their own hands and do it DIY-style. It IS possible, but it’s tough, and requires lots of time, effort, and tedious work. But it can pay off. The people who fit this description are the ones who need a good quality audit the most, so they can have a reliable, data-based roadmap to follow.

Take Advantage of Analytics

Analytics is your best friend. Google Analytics is how you measure your success as a business with online capabilities of gaining customers. Connect your site ASAP (your web designer should have done this) if it is not set up already. Google Search Console is nearly as important. Connect that, too. Set up goals, learn how to read the data, and use it to perform experiments on your site. Post content, see how it performs. Compare data to previous months and previous methods of content posting. Learn how to use Analytics well and you will out-SEO all of your competitors and be ranked #1 in no time. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 

The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics
How to Set Up Google Analytics in 5 Simple Steps
How to Set Up and Install Google Analytics on Your Website
Using Google Analytics With Squarespace
Adding Your Google Analytics Tracking ID to Your Wix Site

Post Consistently On GMB, Yelp, Facebook, & LinkedIn

Continuous engagement is a staple of SEO in this day and age. SEO has undergone many changes throughout the years. Currently, customer engagement and online visibility go hand in hand. 

Engagement = authority, and authority = rankings & traffic. As long as your site is set up well, rankings & traffic = customers. 

Google My Business is the official business listing of Google. Of course it’s necessary and beneficial for SEO! Create and optimize your GMB ASAP and post often. 2 times per week is ideal. 

Yelp as a company sucks. I’d highly recommend against paying them for anything. But, unfortunately, they are as authoritative as it gets, and that means they are helpful for SEO. It is vital that your business has a Yelp listing and has as many reviews as you can get. We’ll cover reviews more below. Optimize your Yelp listing ASAP. Post content intermittently.

Same goes for Facebook and LinkedIn. These are non-negotiable for the vast majority of businesses. Do research for your industry to ensure these are helpful, but 95% of the time, they are crucial. Post as often as possible on Facebook and LinkedIn to create user engagement and obtain more traffic to your site. Try to send customers from one profile to another to built rapport and trust. Engage with people often and send them to your site using marketing best practices such as landing pages and CTA’s. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
How to Completely Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
How to Get More Customers from Yelp
5 Steps for Optimizing Your Company LinkedIn Page
8 Ways to Boost Your Social Media Conversion Rate

Learn How to Tag Correctly

Google’s bots read your website’s tags, not just its words. If you speak another language, they will ignore you. So, learn their language to succeed. It’s easy once you know how to do it. Look up tagging best practices and learn to use them naturally in your content additions so your whole site is easily navigable by Google’s bots. If Google can find your site and understand it, it is infinitely more likely to direct searching users to your site. If it cannot understand what your content is about, it will be confused and direct people away from your site.

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
H1 Tags & Headings Improve SEO Rankings - Video
2019 Title Tag Best Practices
How to Write the Perfect Meta Description for SEO

Improve Your Site's Speed As Much As You Can

75% of people exit out of a site if it doesn’t load within 5 seconds, and for every second your site takes to load, your conversions go down ~7%! There have been many studies regarding load speed, and they all agree -- All websites should load as quick as possible, or your business will suffer. Google had said explicitly that it does not reward sites that don’t load quickly, and may even penalize them. Don’t expect your site to attract any customers if it doesn’t load in less than 3 seconds. SEO is the antidote to this foundational symptom of SEOsis that plagues nearly every site set up without SEO in mind. 

Using images can help SEO and positively affect the user’s experience greatly, but if they aren’t used correctly, they can slow down your site a lot, which is terrible for SEO because it is terrible for the user. This applies to videos and unique fonts, too, among other things. Even without that stuff, a site is unlikely to load quickly unless specific SEO practices have been used on it with the express aim of speeding up the site. You’ve got to figure this out. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
Website Load Speed Checker
2019 Page Speed - Site Speed Best Practices
How Page Speed Affects SEO & Google Rankings

Make and Optimize Lots of Citations

A citation is an online listing that includes your business’s NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number). Each one of these is an opportunity for your company to be found when someone searches for the industry you’re in. The more citations, the better. Industry-specific ones are ideal, and paid listings are almost always a good idea as they are authoritative and exclusive. People rely upon websites that provide citations, and they are great for SEO because they are usually the first ranked result when searching for local businesses. This can be tedious work, but there are many online opportunities for these to be managed by someone else. Otherwise, you’ve just got to be willing to invest some time in making these online listings. You never know when someone will follow a link from a citation to your site. Conversions from citations are good to track on analytics, too. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
Citations for Local SEO
Citations by Category
Where to Get Business Citations
White Label Local Citation Service CitationBuilderPro (ask us about receiving a discount on this!)

Generate Positive Reviews and Respond to ALL Your Reviews

Google has confirmed that local reviews for your site improves SEO. Statistics show that 68% of consumers are influenced in their buying decision by online reviews. Google has also confirmed that a business may not get the full benefit of a positive review until it has been responded to by the business! It is obvious that positive reviews can lead to more customers and that negative reviews can repel customers, but in the current SEO environment, reviews do more than just that. They are an actual ranking factor. Look up any local business keyword and you’ll likely see that the first business in the Google Maps listing is the one with the most positive reviews. 

Everyone agrees: do whatever it takes to get as many positive reviews on as many online listings as possible (prioritize GMB, Yelp, and Facebook), respond to every review, and NEVER pay for a review. This one’s going to take some time to build up, but as your reviews increase, so will your rank. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
The Relationship Between Local Reviews and SEO
How Local Businesses Can Boost SEO
10 Ways to Get More Google Reviews

Eliminate Duplicate Content

Google has confirmed that duplicate content is BAD for SEO. Besides the header, sidebar, and footer, the content of your site should be unique for every page. There is some confusion out there about what kind of duplicate content hurts your SEO and what kind is okay. Just try to make sure you’re providing useful, unique content that is relevant to the topic at hand on each page, and you should be fine. Do some more research on the topic when you tackle this one, but unless you’re copy/pasting paragraphs of text, you should be good!

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
Here’s a good guide to managing duplicate content in 2019
Use Copyscape to check your external duplicate content
Use Siteliner to check your internal duplicate content ​

Keyword Research: Go for the Long Tail WITH Proper Intent

Keyword research is the act of researching what phrases are being searched in your industry, and targeting the ones that you can provide the answer to. There are short tail keywords (think “vacationing in Italy”), and there are long tail ones (think “rental cottage on the coast of Italy”). Intent is also important. You usually don’t want to rank for something that won’t convert a visitor into a customer. A customer searching for a long-tail keyword with intent to buy something is the type of customer you want to attract with your content, because they’ll provide you with a return on your investment (the content). 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide
Long Tail Keywords: Why They Deserve Your Focus
11 Reasons You Need to Focus on Long Tail Keywords for SEO

Copy your top competitors’ SEO without duplicating content

There are dozens of useful tools available for free or for cheap that can make the difference between a ranked site and an invisible one. Take advantage of tools that can tell you what your top competitors are and what their most successful content is -- and copy it without plagiarizing. Publish content often, and make it unique, relevant, and helpful. Make it as in-depth as possible, even if it means re-explaining some things, just be sure not to copy and paste. Rewrite things in new ways and Google will consider your content publishable and new. Content is absolutely vital to business success in 2019 and going forward; do not neglect it. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
SEO Cheat Sheet: Steal Your Competitor's Rankings
Steal Your Competitor's SEO Strategy

Build Authority: Use social media often and well

As I stated earlier, engagement = authority, and authority = increased traffic. Engage with customers often. The more often you do, the more they will grow to trust you, and when it comes time to search for a service or product you provide, they will remember you and it will make a difference. This one is worth repeating. TV commercials work more on the subconscious than on the conscious level. People rarely see a commercial and go straight to the restaurant they saw. They remember it later as they drive by or are trying to decide what to eat, and the choice is almost made for them. Post often on social media and respond to comments and reviews and Google (and searching prospects) have more opportunities to see you and trust you. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
Increase User Engagement for SEO
How Social Media Helps SEO

Include Calls to Action on all high-traffic pages

Similar to how traffic gained through keywords with no intent to buy doesn’t do much for you, it is no help to you if you are attracting customers who get what they want from your site and leave. You’ve got to grab them somehow, so include a Call to Action somewhere in your sidebar or somehow on every high-traffic page of your site so that anytime a user engages with your site, they are encouraged to join a mailing list or otherwise somehow give you their info so you can provide them a paid service in the future. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time with a website. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
21 Call to Action Examples
7 Tips for a Killer Call to Action

Do Research on How to Increase CTR: This is what you want, not just traffic

Again, you don’t want to spend very much time attracting customers if they aren’t somehow leading you to a return on your investment. Organic traffic isn’t much help if it’s for useless keywords. SEO’s have a terrible reputation because some guys like to rank their clients for things that only 2 people search per month. It’s not helpful to be ranked #1 if nobody is searching for that phrase. Do research on how to increase your Click Through Rate and increase Conversions. These are the things that make you money. Incorporate this with your Calls to Action and link it to your Analytics Goals and follow the data where it takes you. It’s the most reliable way to go. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
13 Ways to Improve Your Organic Click-Through Rate
What is Click-Through Rate? Learn How to Increase it

Internal Linking for SEO

Internal linking is when you link from one part of your site to another. It’s usually recommended to link from the new content to another high-ranking piece of content or your home page within the first few sentences of a page. Linking to and from your own pages provides Google more chances to crawl your site and become familiar with it. It also pairs your own pages with each other and the more content is referred to by other content the better. Learn more in the following articles.

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
Internal Links for SEO: An Actionable Guide
Internal Linking and Anchor Text

Site Architecture for SEO

It’s a good idea to make your site look like a nice pyramid-shape. Your home page is the top, and as you get into more specific content, you go down into specific, though natural categories. There are also ways to ensure that your menu is set up in a way that is user-friendly & SEO-friendly. Check out the links below for more.

Helpful links to accomplish this tip: 
Site structure: the ultimate guide • Yoast
Optimizing your website menu • Yoast

Manage Broken Links ASAP

As it can take 4-12 months after implementation of the solution to fix a broken link, this step may have been worth putting much higher in the list of DIY SEO tips. Any link that is broken on your site can cause you to get penalized by Google. Avoid penalties at all costs! Fix those links ASAP!!

Helpful links to accomplish this tip:
What is Link Reclamation & How to Regain Lost Link Value

Optimize for Mobile Search

Nearly 60% of searches nowadays are performed using a cell phone. Therefore, websites must be able to function at 100% efficiency both on desktop AND on mobile. Make your website mobile responsive so it changes with whatever device the user is using, or you will lose customers.

Helpful links to accomplish this tip:
How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices
Learn Mobile Optimization

Build external links when you can, but don’t get caught up on it or buy links

Backlinking is helpful, but not necessary. Plenty of SEO’s succeed without having to spend all the time and effort it takes to get backlinks. That said, when you get an opportunity to get a backlink, take it! Check out your competitors using those tools we talked about, and see if where they’re getting links from. Recreate their content (but make it better!), reach out to the poster of the link, and let them know you’ve improved upon the content your competitor is providing them. They may just replace the link with your site. DON’T BUY BACKLINKS. 

Helpful links to accomplish this tip:
How to Get High Quality Backlinks in 2019
11 Creative (But 100% White-Hat!) Ways to Earn Backlinks in 2020
How I Rank Without Backlinks in 2018 (This still works now, this guy is an expert and still ranks sites without link building)

Take advantage of the best free SEO tools

• Tustin SEO’s Free Audit tool

• Tustin SEO’s Free SEO Consultation Call & Free SEO Report

• Neil Patel’s UberSuggest/SEO Analyzer all-in-one tool

• SEO Site Checkup’s Quick & Free SEO Audit

• Website Speed Checker Tool

• GTmetrix website load speed tool

• Page Speed Insights ​
• SEOlium's Rank Tracker Tool

Learn to do SEO for free (YouTubers and companies)

There are plenty of great SEO’s offering free tutorials and guides online. It is definitely something you can learn and become somewhat proficient at for free if you’re determined and have the time. Check out these guys.

• Chase Reiner
• Search Engine Land
• Moz

• Backlinko

• Tommy Griffith

• Ahrefs Blog

Reach out for consulting when necessary

Tustin SEO offers Consulting and Hourly SEO Work for whenever DIY doesn’t cut it. Contact us anytime for help. 

So What Are You Waiting For?

Get Started With An Audit or Consultation Today and Map Out Your DIY SEO Plan