12 Top Tips to Improve a Business’s SEO at Little or No Cost

With so many brands vying for attention in the digital space, attracting potential customers and retaining their attention can sometimes come at a high cost. To keep expenses down, many companies have turned to search engine optimization or SEO to boost their position in search results and drive more traffic to their website and content.

Determining which small but necessary changes will be most beneficial requires thorough consideration of your target audience. To help, 12 Newsweek Expert Forum members each share one tip that business leaders can leverage to improve their business’s SEO at little or no cost.

1. Incorporate Relevant Keywords Throughout Your Website

SEO optimization helps businesses to increase lead generation and improve their digital footprint. Professional SEO optimization can range from $800 to $2,000 per month up to $30,000 per project depending on scope and duration. One top tip to improve SEO at little to no cost is to incorporate relevant and high-traffic keywords throughout the website through content headings, descriptions, tags and titles. – Lillian Gregory, The 4D Unicorn

2. Craft Content With Your Customer Base in Mind

Utilize the concept of behavioral keyword alignment. By understanding customer psychology, we can uncover needs that are reflected in their search behavior. Craft content that addresses these hidden desires using common language rather than technical jargon. This natural alignment with the users’ mindset enhances relevance, improves SEO without any expenses and adds a human touch to the brand. – Dr. Kira Graves, Kira Graves Consulting

3. Leverage Social Media Platforms

My top tip would be to leverage social media platforms creatively and effectively. Engage authentically with your audience, create and share valuable content and build a strong online presence. Doing this can increase visibility and drive organic traffic to your website without significant expenses. – Anna Yusim, Upper East Side Psychiatry

4. Focus on Earned Media

Earned media is a great way to improve your business’s SEO. By landing pitches and focusing on building relationships with writers, you can achieve some pretty great press coverage at little to no cost. Make sure your pitches make sense and would be of interest to the writers you are requesting coverage from. – Christian Anderson, Lost Boy Entertainment LLC

5. Find Opportunities to Grow Links to Your Site

Increasing the authority of your website is vital, and authority primarily comes from links. Start looking for opportunities to grow links to your site. PR and guest postings are two practical ways to achieve this. As you grow the authority of your site, all of your content will rank higher in search engines. – Krista Neher, Boot Camp Digital

6. Have Backlinks on Various Sites

It is good to have backlinks on multiple websites. For example, joining conversations in various forums and sharing ideas with industry peers can be very effective at no cost. The more backlinks a website has on other pages, the more traffic it gets. – Krisztina Veres, Veres Career Consulting

7. Leverage User Data

Leverage your user data to create content. This enables you to develop a content strategy that resonates with your audience and enhances their experience. Ultimately, having a data-driven SEO strategy ensures that your content is relevant and valuable, both of which are critical factors in SEO. – Gergo Vari, Lensa

8. Create Valuable Content

Creating high-quality and relevant content consistently is a top tip for improving SEO at little or no cost. It’s effective because search engines prioritize valuable content, leading to increased organic traffic, better user engagement and higher search rankings. – Alan Wozniak, Business Health Matters (BHM) Executive Consulting

9. Optimize Content Before Publishing

When producing content, make sure the content is optimized properly before publishing. Going back later to optimize is more expensive and less effective after the content has already been developed. Build your content with the end in mind, not vice versa. – James Fox, EVBox

10. Keep an Eye on Trends

Become a student of hashtags and trending topics. The research is free, and the results will be higher ROI for any content you create. – Karen Mangia, The Engineered Innovation Group

11. Examine the End User Experience

Focus on the end user experience. Keep your content simple, essential and consumable. Use keywords to provide content value, and refresh your content frequently with new ideas. You should ideally have client reviews that say in their own words what value you brought to their experience and then capitalize on those reviews for SEO. – Margie Kiesel

12. Leverage User-Generated Content

Use customer- or client-generated content. Not only is this content you did not pay for, it is also the most genuine type of content you can publish that simultaneously provides you with sales-boosting social proof. Analyzing what your audience says or posts about your brand will inform you about how they use it, what they love about it and what you can do better moving forward. – Ryan Carroll, Wealth Assistants