Ask any professional seo services company, it’s no secret that search engines favour big brand websites with lots of links, well-known names, and big budgets for creating great content. There are even SEO specialists who offer their services only to start ups. This is why it can be daunting to launch a startup and succeed at SEO. But when a startup does well with its SEO, great things can happen including driving the necessary traffic to the site to make those much- needed sales.

If you’re starting a new business and don’t have the budget to hire an SEO expert to get you the results you need, you can still get your website pages ranked high in the search result pages so your targeted audience can find and connect with your business. And don’t worry that it will cost you a small fortune to get ranked high in the SERPs because the following tips can be done without hiring a professional SEO expert.

Check Your Design

The first thing you need to do is to make sure you have a well-designed site because a bad design will harm your SEO. Your website design should: 

• Be well structured, with a simple layout that’s easy to navigate

• Without flamboyant ads and annoying pop-ups

• Have large enough print that’s easy to read

• Feature a pleasant, eye-catching design with colour

• Have good load times

In a nutshell, web design matters to SEO and it matters a lot. Your site’s design plays a major role in how your brand is perceived by both those who land on your site and the search engines that crawl it, so get it right from the get-go.

Target Your Lower Competition Keywords First

Even if your low competition long tail keywords aren’t the ones that best describe your business, it’s best to start focusing on them first. This is because it can be extremely difficult and even impossible to compete against the big brands with competitive keywords.

Even though your long tail keywords may not get you ranked in the top search results, they can increase your traffic, attract paying customers and grow your brand. To find longer variations of your main keywords, use Google’s Keyword Planner, type in your keyword, then scroll down to “Get ideas”.

Generate Content & Different Kinds of It

Now it’s time to start churning out content which can include any of the following:

• Blog posts

• Guest posts

• Podcasts

• Videos

• Tools and web apps

You need to focus more on just producing content for your shopping pages, product pages, etc because that type of content can only give you so much traffic. When you publish a nice variety of content, your site will attract more attention in the form of links and repeat traffic, which is awesome for your SEO.

Gain Authoritative Links

A rock-solid SEO plan involves getting some valuable links from authoritative sources like well-known bloggers in your industry, journalists, big brands, and leading organizations. When you get these types of authoritative sources to link to you, you’ll get some referral traffic and increase your brand exposure.

To gain authoritative links, mention or reference the sources you want links from in your content. You can also address questions, problems, or topics that interest these influencers. Putting out a press release to share business or product news is a good way to get picked up the media, which could could result in authority sites linking back to you.

Conclusion: You can’t expect your new business to compete with the big guns right out of the box. Your big competitors have more power than you do and you won’t beat them until you establish yourself as an authority. When tackling your search engine optimisation, focus on small, manageable wins. Create content your audience will care about and never pay for cheap SEO services that promise you the world.

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Website owners cannot afford to ignore search engine optimisation because nearly all internet activity begins with a search engine. Plus, nearly half of all ecommerce traffic comes from search. While it’s possible to generate leads using a winning PPC campaign, most internet users today don’t pay much attention to ads they see in search results. 

If you’re running a business and want to drive traffic to your site, you must put a priority on SEO. If you happen to have a WordPress site, there are some great SEO tools and plugins you can install that will help you out. Below are some of the most effective plugins to consider using.

The SEO Framework

This WordPress plugin is designed specifically for smaller businesses as opposed to major corporations. When integrated with WordPress the UI blends in nicely, looking and feeling as though it was there from the start. This plugin’s goal is to help your content rank better and it’s chock full of features you’d expect from a top SEO plugin. For example, you can set custom titles and meta descriptions for your content and see where your content is falling short in relation to SEO.

The SEO Framework plugin is a great tool to have in your arsenal if you aren’t all that SEO-savvy because it’s easy to use and is focused on simplicity.

Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress has been a favourite choice for longer than a decade, with millions of websites installing it. This plugin helps you identify and avoid duplicate content so you’ll never have to worry about being slapped by Google. It also offers templates for titles and meta descriptions, which will make your pages look better in the search engine result pages.

One of the most loved things about Yoast SEO is that it makes managing sitemaps easy. This plugin will automatically generate a sitemap, once you enable XML sitemap functionality. Your sitemap will update as you add new content and ping search engines once your fresh content is there.

Broken Link Checker

Considering that Google penalises for broken links, the Broken Link Checker plugin for WordPress is a must-have. If you’re like most people, you probably have lots of internal and outbound links. While you can keep an eye on your own site for broken links, doing the same on other websites is something that’s out of your control. Broken Link Checker will keep tabs on your links and notify you when it finds a broken link. Then it’s easy to remove, edit, or dismiss the problem altogether with just a few clicks. This is a great SEO tool to use that will also provide benefits to your visitors and nobody likes clicking a link to a page that’s not there.

All in One SEO Pack

With well over 3 million active WordPress installations, All in One SEO Pack is a very popular choice. This plugin has a nice, easy-to-use dashboard that’s clean. The free version of this plugin should suffice if you’re a startup or have a basic blog to maintain. There are two paid upgrade options to choose from if you’re running several sites.

Once you’ve installed this plugin, you can begin to optimise your site through the general settings, which all come with a tooltip that provides info on their purpose. The free version works with custom post types as well as the standard blog posts and pages. You’re also given the option of optimising your online store and your products for search engines. You can also integrate your site with Google Analytics and Webmaster tools if you’d like.

If you have a WordPress site and are serious about doing well online, you should definitely be taking advantage of some of these SEO plugins. There are many more SEO plugins and tools out there if these don’t meet your requirements. The value of WordPress SEO plugins can’t be underestimated so check out all your options!

Just getting started with your site? Read about our start up SEO tips.

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If you’ve spent any time at all in online forums where business owners are sharing SEO information and tips, you know that many people say SEO is so hard to do because it’s always changing. This train of thought has been around for just about as long as SEO has been a thing; people have been saying that the concept of SEO is an ever-changing landscape that’s difficult to keep up with.

Even though there’s a widespread belief that SEO is difficult to tackle because it’s always changing, the truth is that the basic fundamentals of SEO remain unchanged. While Google’s algorithm methodology is always getting more advanced, the basic principles have forever remained the same. This means the search engine is always focused on helping those involved in SEO with:

• Getting their sites’ content noticed or crawled by the search engine
• Seeing to it that their content is organized and prioritized correctly
• Making sure their content has a defined purpose or focus with keywords
• Ensuring that their content provides trustworthy information

These are the basic concepts needed to master SEO. However, there’s lots more you can do in terms of optimising all these areas and more. Here are a few more things you can do to help with your SEO efforts.

Clean Up the Structure of Your Site

Your website’s structure should be a key part of your SEO strategy. Google needs to understand the hierarchy and importance of the content on your site. This means you need to structure your site so the search engine knows which are the most important. You can do this by emphasising your most important pages by creating links for them directly on home page. You can also show Google your most important pages by putting links to them on every page like in the navigation bar. Remember that Google works to help users quickly find the content on your site by saving them a few steps.

Make Your Content Shine

One phrase that has always been used in SEO circles is ‘Content is King’. This is because content is what makes the internet what it is. Content is extremely important in helping you build credibility and trust, both with Google and online users. Your content should always be of the highest quality and offer readers the information they’re looking for. Put yourself in the readers’ shoes: You certainly want to consume content that keeps your attention and which gives you the info you need.

Be Keyword Smart

Keywords are used to tell Google what each page is about so it can rank your content for search queries which are relevant to your site. Google frowns upon the overuse of keywords aka keyword stuffing. What it wants from your keywords instead is for your keywords to answer the questions searchers are looking for. Google also wants your keywords to be the actual worlds people use to refer to your topic. So give it some thought and use keywords actual people are using to find what you’ve got to offer.

Build Links

Links have always been one of Google’s key ranking factors. If you have no links or too few of them, your search result will be at the bottom of the pack. When you have links from high authority sites, Google is told that you’re trustworthy. You can build links in a number of ways ranging from guest blogging to submitting your site to directories. Take a look at what marketing guru Neil Patel has to say about building links.

Don’t believe everything you hear about SEO being too complicated to keep up with. Stick to the basics and give Google and your targeted audience what they want. The times are changing but some basic search engine optimization principles will always be around. Finally, make sure you make use of the services offered by the best SEO companies who can help you start up your site.

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