I don't call myself an SEO but most of my websites do pretty good when it comes to local SEO rankings. What I do best is implement good On-Page SEO, focus on core web vitals and Google’s best SEO practices.
Over the past few years working as WordPress Developer, I have learnt a lot from both reading best practices around SEO and implementing them. What I found really interesting were websites that rank by just following Google’s guidelines, mainly focusing around long tail keywords.
This leads to the discussion that there are some myths that we all believe in SEO that exist and I am sharing some of the interesting ones that were broken.
Here are some myths that I personally found pretty amazing, and worth sharing.
Only long form of content ranks
I was on the same boat with most of the others. When it comes to ranking I thought only longer forms of content ranked well. I had been experimenting with all forms of content including under 500 words, 1000+ and 1500+ word articles.
Being honest, ranking can be really challenging. But to my surprise, most of my articles that bring more than 40% of traffic to my site are under 500 words. But these are more technical writing than just focusing around the basics of WordPress or SEO.
My suggestions
If you are a business owner, it is good to write some blogs based on your experience and around technical stuff that people are looking for or something that will help them to know about that particular area.
It’s hard to compete with bigger players
Everybody wants to rank their site in Google as higher as possible. And most of the businesses do spend on marketing - really big budget or decent one.
When you are in same niche as big names, they do have fair bit of advantages over your business such as:
- Budget and resources
- Brand value and name
- Domain authority
- Site traffic
With my experiences of working with some local big brands here in Sydney, I found few things that were really interesting such as:
Brands that worked together as a team did SEO really well. All the departments such as copywriting, SEM marketing and email marketing worked together. Results these teams got were amazing.
But others did exactly the opposite.
Also to talk about the development and website strategy, some of my best results were ranking sites for long tail keywords such as home loans sydney and office cleaning sydney all based on implementing On-Page SEO. The latter one had a blog post once every month.
What I am trying to say here is that websites that are built properly with best practices around SEO will rank sooner or later. And yes, they can compete with bigger brands too.
My suggestions
If SEO and rankings are important and you don’t have a huge budget, hire a web developer that is good on on-Page SEO. Solid On-Page SEO will help you rank higher, and this will grow over time if done correctly.
I need a copywriter
Based on my personal experience, I would recommend publishing at least 2 blogs a month. Publishing relevant content in your niche does help to increase your site’s visibility in SEO.
You can get content for your website in either 2 ways:
- Hire a writer or
- Write some unique content yourself
My suggestions
Unless you can find a good writer in your niche, I personally suggest writing some articles on your own. No one knows your business and client (including future clients) like you do. And, you can explain the technical side of your business to normal readers a lot better.
SEO can be really expensive
SEO can be expensive. From hiring a designer, developer, copywriter to spending on social media, SEO can take a large chunk of your marketing budget. To make matters worse, if it's done wrong, it doesn't yield any results either.
Without being too explanatory here are some of the suggestions to reduce your budget or start your website SEO at least cost.
Find a good designer and developer who understands the basics of SEO or go with a Full Stack Developer like myself. On-Page SEO really helps for your website growth.
Find a good writer and publish regularly. Or, if budget is an issue try writing on your own too. I ask my clients to write regularly on their own if SEO is their priority.
Images can be downloaded for free. Use website like Unsplash to get high quality images, but do confirm the license for use too
My suggestions
At least hire a good web developer or full stack designer developer to work on your website.
