Top DIY SEO Tips from Experienced Marketers
How long do bright ideas last?
For an experienced SEO specialist to discover a real innovation is rare. The word innovation suggests utterly new technology or techniques. What tends to happen in the field of search engine optimisation is that the discovery tends only to be unique to the one discovering it.
SEO Innovation is rare, and even then, rarely shared soon after discovery. As with all secrets, the information leaks slowly, then suddenly all at once. This spike in awareness is thanks to the viral nature of the internet. Once ‘everyone’ knows about a new technique and starts to use it, the effectiveness dwindles since a higher level of competition makes it harder to get to page one.
Then there’s the next consideration, whether the SEO innovation that you are learning about is applicable for your business:
- Some tactics and techniques are potent for a short period but then result in search engine penalties or de-listing.
- Other techniques work well in lower competition niches or local niches but not for a more significant niche or location.
- Some tactics involve a high cost and level of human resources that might not give a satisfactory ROI for you. These same tactics might be golden for plastic surgery, insurance or finance niches.
- Some tactics work well for one industry or location but are pointless for others. There’s no magic SEO bullet that works everywhere and for everyone.
- There are keyword density levels and backlink profiles that will help you rank in one niche, but make your website tank in another.
Did anything that you’ve just read confuse you at all? Perhaps not, but as you dig deeper into the world of SEO, you’ll potentially lose countless hours and get very confused. Often reading about things that you will never take action on, or that would help your business if you did.
You can quickly do some SEO Innovations on a DIY basis
This is the reason for this section of our website. We’ll publish posts about tactics and processes that are likely to be useful to you for your business.
Why do we know this? Because you’re likely to be in the energy industry. Search presence is our specialist area. We know what is expected to work for your website. Our confidence is based on years of extensive SEO experience, as well and almost as many working with clients just like you.
SEO Innovations for energy companies to maximise their online presence. These posts can give you help for your DIY SEO efforts, or you can leave it to us.
Either way, these posts will be explained in as simple terms as possible, and contain references and examples of companies like yours.
This list of innovations will grow over time
When this post was getting written, there weren’t any innovations mentioned at all — just a seed of an idea that would grow. Over the years, this post will get updated with an ever-expanding list of hints and tips. One day there’ll be plenty of SEO innovations that can help you in your online efforts.Most of these suggestions will not be innovations to SEO consultants. They might be innovations for your business, and changes that can easily be made by you, or your company webmaster or IT person.
Click on a box to open it and see the tip:
Check your keywords – Relevance over buzz!
Most business writers tend to include a lot of non-industry related buzzwords to make product or service descriptions more appealing. We want our customers to know that we’re ‘dynamic’, ‘energetic’, ‘professional’, ‘synergistic’ and perhaps ‘leading’ or ‘respected’.The problem here is that search engines will often struggle to identify what you do, and who you do it for if too many generic words get included. Any page, post, or bio needs to have plenty of specific (but varied) keywords in there.The added benefit is that a web surfer or time-constrained visitor can easily see what you do, and for whom you do it. You might have the perfect market solution. If it’s drowned out by phrases such as ‘step-change’ ‘forward-thinking’ or ‘head of its class’, then the visitor might not easily differentiate what you’re offering.
Ask existing clients/customers to help you
By definition, your clients or customers usually aren’t your competition. They’re likely to also appreciate how hard it can be to get noticed online. You should be able to help each other out.
Think of online exposure swaps of similar value. They could write you a testimonial, and you can link to them when publishing it on your website. They could link to one of your articles in their blog, in return for you sharing their services on social media.
You have an area of reach online, and so does everyone you know. Reviews on Google, Trustpilot or on Facebook can help SEO. Any additional citation, review or link can help SEO, and directly lead to click through enquiries. Set aside time for mutual back scratching!
Get more social media exposure even in ‘boring industries’
Over time, we’ve seen plenty of social media trends, and have enough data to view insights. A couple of important observations are that in many industries, companies struggle to get organic growth; and that often, you need to ‘pay to play’ via advertising to gain traction.Did you know that only a fraction of your followers will see your posts on FB if you don’t pay to ‘boost’ them? Did you know that postings get lost in the ‘stream’ like a paper boat?One tip to help organic growth is to realise that in addition to being social media platforms, these websites are search engines too. When you search on LinkedIn or Twitter, you don’t leave the site and go to Google, do you?To leverage these search features, design or re-design your social media pages using keyword-rich text. Including your solution or a searchers question in the URL, description or name of the site can create a steady stream of followers.We created two oil and gas recruitment/jobs pages on FB within a month. A year later, with the same posts, one gained 1000+ followers, and the other has less than 50. That’s 20x the result by including the keyphrase ‘oil and gas jobs’ liberally. These followers came through search!
Give a boost to older content
Rather than thinking of new ideas for your content marketing strategy, see if you can optimise and update what you already published.Go to your Google Search Console, and look at all of your website pages that are on page 2-5 of the search results. Isolate the ones with decent search volumes or buyer intent keywords. Then, check the first-page competition and expand your pages to cover the topic better. Finally, focus your sharing, promoting and link building outreach efforts on these pages, make them into cornerstone content and main traffic drivers. Getting a couple of ‘out of the money’ pages to page one, will be far more successful than adding more pages to 2-5 or the results. Some of your earlier content will be more relevant and prized, worthy of invigoration.
Capture more online real estate
Some SEO hacks don’t involve doing anything to your main company website. When you search for a product or company, how does the first page of Google look? Sometimes we see competitors ranking higher, or even worse. Complaints!A smart business owner will want to capture as many of these top ten spots as possible. The easiest way of doing this is to create company profiles on websites that Google loves.You can create a profile on a few more of the big social media sites. You might think that your company isn’t relevant to Pinterest or Instagram, for example. But, with a bit of creativity, you can take another couple of slots on the top rankings of the search results.Another great idea is to look for business profiles such as the ones on Inc.com or Angel list. Here’s our profile on Angel List!
Hint: you can go there right now and create a couple of profiles!
Create mini niche sites for your products or services
As far as Google and the other search engines are concerned, they might see your main website in a macro sense. For example, you might get identified as ‘oilfield services’ or ‘solar panel retailers’. What are the chances of you getting to page one of a search for related terms? Unless your company name is in a similar class to Weatherford or Amazon, you’ll struggle to rank.If you drop down a few rungs on the ladder, then there are terms for which you can rank. For example, you can niche down to an area or region, or for specific product names or services. You can create new mini-websites that focus on lower competition keywords. These can still supply leads, or refer visitors to your main sales pages.Relevancy is vital in search. A small website with ten pages just about a single product or service will often rank better than a 1000 page website that discusses a wide variety of topics.
Replicate the back link profile of your competition
We all know that dominating the search engines is down to 3 main factors:
- Publishing great content.
- Gaining more high-quality backlinks than your competition.
- Being the biggest/best/most awesome in your niche.
For most SEO practitioners, backlinks are the number one priority.
The types and proportions of websites that link to other sites are different in each sector. Some major news and media outlets link out regardless of industry. But for your niche, there will be an ecosystem of links that your competitors have.
The only ones that matter is the inbound links to your top ten or twenty competitors. You can find these, put them on a spreadsheet, delete duplicates, then have a list of places that you need to build or earn links, to be number one.
The other 10, will have a Venn style crossover, but if you aim to get all of these domains linking to you, then how can you fail?You might have less of a brand footprint. Your company may not be quite remarkable enough yet. Having all of the same links as all your main competition is an unbeatable SEO innovation.How can you find your competitor’ backlinks? The best tool on the market for this is Ahrefs who offer an inexpensive trial.
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
