As a freelance SEO consultant, my goal is to help clients not just optimise their websites but to also empower them to manage their SEO confidently. The truth is, anyone who knows how to use a website CMS can learn the basics of SEO and create a meaningful impact on their online presence.
Why Self-Sufficiency in SEO Matters
SEO doesn’t have to be a mystery or something you constantly outsource. By learning the fundamentals, you can take control of your website’s visibility, saving time and money while ensuring your site reflects your goals and priorities. With a little guidance, you can turn SEO into a natural part of your website management routine.
Understanding the Three Levels of SEO
To simplify SEO, I divide it into three groups:
1. The Basics
These are foundational tasks anyone can do with a little guidance. They include keyword research, and on-page techniques including optimising page titles, headings, content, images, and metadata. These efforts provide a solid starting point for improving your website’s visibility.
2. Technical SEO
This involves more in-depth work, often required in more competitive SEO landscapes. Tasks include improving website speed, ensuring mobile-friendliness, fixing crawl errors, and implementing structured data. Technical SEO requires a deeper understanding of how search engines interpret your site. There are some more technical tasks which are easier to implement including optimising your XML sitemap and robots.txt file.
3. Advanced SEO
When targeting niche or highly competitive keywords, advanced strategies come into play. This includes building high-quality backlinks, optimising for voice search, leveraging AI-driven analytics, and crafting content clusters. Advanced SEO is about fine-tuning your approach to outperform competitors in a specific area.
The SEO Basics: A Strategy-First Approach
At the heart of effective SEO is strategy. Before diving into technical details, start by defining your target keywords. These are the search terms most relevant to your business and the ones your audience is likely to use. The right keywords will make the biggest impact on your search rankings and overall visibility.
Here’s how to apply these keywords across your website - but remember;
- Target each page with a unique set of keywords to avoid overlap and maximise relevance.
- Focus on natural integration of keywords. Keyword stuffing not only feels unnatural but can also harm your SEO. Instead, ensure that keywords flow seamlessly within your content.
Page Titles
- Each page should have a unique, descriptive title that includes your primary keywords.
- Keep titles under 60 characters to ensure they display fully in search results.
Heading Tags
- The main h1 heading on your page should incorporate your keyword naturally.
- Use only one H1 per page for clarity and structure.
- Ensure every page has an H1 heading
- Break your content into sections using subheadings (H2, H3, etc.).
- Include keywords in these headings to emphasise relevance.
An example of a keyword rich heading would be "Cambridge SEO training" instead of "Training" or "About Us"
Content
- Write engaging and informative content that naturally includes your target keywords.
- Aim for quality over quantity. Each piece of content should add value to your audience.
- Keep sentences short, check out how the BBC do this on every article, they avoid long blocks of text which look ugly and are less easy to read.
Image Names and Alt Tags
- Use descriptive, keyword-rich file names for your images (e.g., “christian-SEO-training-session.jpg” instead of DSC109109.jpg or stock-image-library-123456.jpg).
- Alt tags should also include keywords where relevant, ensuring accessibility and SEO benefits.
Internal Links
- Link between pages and posts on your site using keyword-rich anchor text.
- Ensure the links are relevant and enhance the user experience.
- Don't add links to generic text like read more or click here. Instead use; Learn more about my freelance SEO consultancy services.
Meta Titles and Descriptions
- Craft compelling meta titles and descriptions for each page.
- Include your primary keyword and keep the description under 160 characters.
Developing Your SEO Workflow
To make SEO a sustainable part of your website management, integrate it into your content creation process. For example:
- When writing a blog post, start by identifying a target keyword.
- Structure your content around that keyword, ensuring it appears naturally in key areas.
- Use an SEO checklist to review elements like titles, headings, and meta descriptions before publishing.
Why SEO Training Works
With the right training, you can:
- Understand how search engines work.
- Spot opportunities to improve your website’s visibility.
- Monitor and adjust your strategy as needed using tools like Google Analytics or Search Console.
Learning SEO basics doesn’t mean you’ll never need expert help. Instead, it equips you to handle the day-to-day essentials while knowing when to call in a professional for more advanced strategies.
SEO training quicklist
Here is a quick recap:
- Define your target keywords for each page
- Weave your keywords into;
- Page titles
- Heading tags
- Content
- Image names
- Image alt tags
- Internal links (to and from)
- Meta titles
- Meta description.
Ready to Learn?
If you’re ready to become self-sufficient in SEO, I’d love to help, please get in touch. My training sessions are tailored to your website, goals, and level of experience. Together, we’ll demystify SEO and give you the tools to succeed.
