Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a complicated process and shouldn’t be attempted on your own if you are not absolutely sure what you are doing. An error can be misinterpreted by search engines as an attempt to deceive them or make it difficult for the web spiders to crawl your website. If SEO would be that easy, no one would be paying thousands of pounds to SEO specialists. If you aren’t one yourself, you are recommended to leave over the whole SEO thing to a professional.
Although DIY-SEO often results in a professional repairing the damage and starting with SEO from the start, there are a few things you can do on your own to improve your website’s search engine rankings including:
Understand how search engines work. Major search engines such as Google use a website ranking system that is primarily based on content and inbound links. These are interpreted as a sign of popularity. Therefore, the more the backlinks (quality ones!) you have the greater the value of your website at search engines. Keep in mind, however, that search engines have the tools to recognise natural from non-natural links. Any attempts to trick them into thinking that your website is hugely popular with the web users sooner or later lead either to demotion or elimination of the website from the indexes.
More content. Search engines love websites with unique, quality content. And so do web users who are looking for valuable information and interesting content. As much as both search engines and web users are concerned, there can never be enough of quality content. So start writing or hire a quality writer to regularly supply you with original, up-to-date and relevant content for your website. Poorly written, unoriginal content can be equally damaging as unethical link building.
Make a keyword research. Search engines list websites in search results according to the keywords or keyword phrases that are entered by their users. For that reason it is worth to take time to find out which relevant keywords and keyword phrases are most often entered by web users (you can use Google Keyword Tool) and make sure that they are included on relevant pages. This will make it easier on web spiders to connect your website with particular keywords and subsequently improve your rankings. Just be sure not to use too many keywords as the search engines may think that you are trying to manipulate them.
Make sure there aren’t any technical errors. These can make it difficult for web spiders to crawl your website which in turn can negatively affect its rankings in search engine results pages. So make sure there are no technical errors or have a web designer review your website from the technical aspect.
Be patient. Most of the websites you regularly see on first page of Google search results needed several years to get where they are today. So be patient and continue to develop your website to make it even better and more attractive to both search engines and their users. It is only a matter of time before they will recognise the value of your website.