Improving your success with organic search rankings is a smart move for small businesses. About 50% of websites in a recent survey reported that search engine optimization delivers the best return on investment, more than paid ads (19%) and social media (18%) combined. There’s just one problem: Big-name SEO services don’t always fit small marketing budgets. Can you learn SEO yourself, save money, and still get good results?
How Hard Is It To Learn SEO?
Learning SEO is a lot like DIY home improvement or car repair. Picking up the basics isn’t difficult, especially if you already have experience creating or managing content for your website. In fact, following good SEO practices is something every site can and should achieve.
More advanced techniques take longer to understand and implement, and there’s a difference between average and amazing SEO. To get excellent results, you need:
- Time: Practice makes perfect, whether you’re optimizing blog posts, researching keywords, or improving the user experience.
- Effort: Effective SEO is a long-term investment, both in terms of work and rewards for your site.
- Dedication: You can learn SEO in a few days, but mastering it doesn’t happen overnight, and you may need to shift your strategy if the first approach doesn’t pay off.
- Resources: To avoid SEO mistakes, it’s important to have a trustworthy source of information, easy-to-understand explanations, and up-to-date recommendations.
If you have a complex niche, it can take some trial and error to connect consistently with your audience. To compete with the big dogs, you may need to use SEO software for keyword planning.
Can SEO Be Self-Taught?
You don’t need a university degree to learn SEO. There are plenty of free resources online for search optimization techniques, and it doesn’t take long to learn how to improve your site’s search rankings.
Where should you start? Here are a few ideas:
- SEO “academies”: Keyword platforms like SEMRush, Moz, and Ahrefs all have free courses (under 10 hours) that cover foundational SEO.
- Blog articles and guides: Our SEO article series answers questions website owners have about search-optimized content, including technical improvements like schema markup.
- Videos: YouTube is a great place to find walkthroughs for SEO techniques, such as how to set up Google Analytics and track traffic metrics.
- Practice: After brushing up on the basics of researching keywords and creating a strategy, jumping in feet first is one of the best ways to get experience.
If you’re worried about doing something wrong, don’t be. As long as you avoid blatant mistakes like using bot networks or stuffing keywords into error-filled content, any SEO efforts only help your site, not hurt it.
How Hard Is SEO for the Average Small Business Owner?
Most of the time, SEO isn’t hard for small business owners to understand. If you have the skill to run a company, manage employees, and keep customers happy, learning marketing concepts isn’t anything you’re not used to.
The main issue is that SEO tasks can be time-consuming. There are ways to streamline analytics, content creation, and site maintenance — including AI tools — but some parts of SEO require good old-fashioned hard work.
Need an SEO Personal Trainer?
To achieve sculpted SEO abs, there’s no substitute for consistency and planning. At BKA Content, we’re experts at all things SEO, from local traffic for small businesses to top-three rankings for B2B companies.
How Do You Learn SEO Best Practices?
The first step in learning SEO is setting goals. Who is your audience, and what do you want to accomplish? Following SEO for local service businesses is different than optimizing for B2B marketing or e-commerce sales.
Next, focus on understanding the seven basics of SEO:
- Keywords, search volume, and keyword research tools
- User search intent and search ranking factors for Google
- Content creation best practices, like avoiding fluff
- Page optimization, such as title tags, meta descriptions, and headings
- Key performance metrics for SEO
- Technical improvements, including image formats for fast loading times
- Internal links and backlink building
Mastering SEO is a question of digging deeper into each of these areas. The better you get at understanding why specific search engine results pages are ranking highly, the easier it becomes to apply the same strategies for your site.
Does Learning SEO Get Easier?
Don’t get discouraged if some areas of SEO take longer for you to learn. For example, building a strong backlink profile can be challenging for SEO DIYers. But hitting bumps in the road is normal, and there’s nothing wrong with asking for help from an experienced team.At BKA Content, we’re happy to answer your questions and provide creative solutions. Learning SEO isn’t hard with our friendly team by your side. Find all the SEO resources you need quickly and easily.
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