Do it Yourself SEO Tools –Is it Worth the Time?

Some argue that setting aside some time to learn SEO would be pointless as it will take ages to actually understand.

My answer to that, is that it is both yes and no.

SEO may take forever to learn and Internet Marketers have been spending years trying to perfect SEO but actually, you only need but to know a few steps and tools to actually get your website on the first page of Google.

To know the full story of what I’m talking about, let’s make sure we cover it from basics which is…

 

What is SEO?

Have you ever wondered as to what is the one thing you can do to get your website ranked on the first page of Google?

Well that ‘one thing’, is not actually a thing at all never mind the number one.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is generally a practice that you keep doing to contribute in getting your website ranked on Google.

It is not just a one-time thing though, you need to regularly update your website because if you don’t, Google will see that you are not as active which will make them rank other websites instead, hence lowering your ranking.

Some people get scared when they hear of all these complex words but really, it is not as hard as it looks as you only need to understand a few jargons which you will be seeing over and over again.

 

Benefits of doing SEO yourself

Okay if you are skeptical in the power of SEO, it’s time for me to brainwash you.

Doing SEO is actually fun and that there are millions of Internet Marketers managing their websites and blogs themselves without paying SEO firms to handle it for them.

Here are some cool facts to help blow you away…

• You will save thousands of dollars – People pay SEO firms thousands of dollars every month to do and check SEO for them.
• You can charge others thousands of dollars – With your newly acquired knowledge of SEO, people would surely go to you to help them get their sites ranked on top too which is an opportunity for you to make some side income.
• You are like a king online – Think about it, you can build as many websites as you want and rank all of them on the first page of Google whenever you wish when everyone else is struggling.
• Opportunity to earn passive income – Many Internet Marketers build websites for the purpose of creating an Online Business. They find something to promote, build a website around it and try to do SEO in order to get visibility (It’s what I’m doing too). You on the hand, have the SEO part done. All you need to do next, is find out what to promote. (A popular method of monetizing a website is Affiliate Marketing, click here to read my blog post on that).
• You will be able to understand and predict Google better thus improving your SEO skills even more – People who have been in the SEO industry for a while tend to read Google’s SEO patterns better and this is important because the ranking system changes every year. Having the ability to understand all of this is something many Internet Marketers are dying to learn.

 

Should You Hire an SEO Expert?

I get this question a lot and my answer to that is Yes, if you have the money.

What, are you expecting a no?

A lot of people have asked me this so I always tell them to go for it as SEO firms are indeed experts in their field.

Although their skills are just as good as any average SEO practitioners, SEO firms tend to charge higher for their services as they need to pay for rents and stuff.

According to a study made by an SEO company called MOZ, the average hourly rate for SEO consultants is around $76-$200.

That is just for an hour, what how much would they cost if your consultation is more than that?

On average, you will need to have consultations every week and then, you will want to ask them to do more tweaking and check on your website which will allow them to charge you even more.

Still, why waste that much money if you can learn the same thing as what those SEO firms are doing?

What makes SEO firms highly sought after is because they not only have the knowledge, but also the tools to show your website’s statistics.

However, most SEO tools are free if you know where to look…

 

SEO Tools of Trade – How to Make Use of it Yourself.

No matter how powerful the tool is, you should know that it is completely useless if you don’t make full use of it.

I could give you a BMW but if you don’t know how to use it, it will be only a decoration at your house, would it not?

Here are 5 SEO tools which you can start using for free and ones that I personally use myself too…

SEO Tool #1 – Google Instant

When you type anything in the Google search bar, have you noticed as to how Google sometimes gives you other suggestions as well?

That suggesting thingy is Google Instant! (Or Google Suggest as most people would call it).

Most people do not know this but Google suggest is a very powerful tool that tells you what other people are searching for at that time.

Using this can find you keywords that people are looking to find answers on which is like reading people’s minds on the internet!

The idea of using keywords that you get from Google Instant is to write an awesome content about it and publish it on your website so that it will appear in Google.

When it appears in Google, people can find it easily when they are looking for answers and your website is going to get traffic (Fancy word for website visitors) like crazy which can help rank your site better in Google.

So you see, it is basic marketing – You find out what people are searching for and then give your perfect solution for that.

Too many times have I seen people write rubbish content just to attract people to their site which is something many people frown upon because not only will you risk yourself look like you’re looking for the easy way out, you are also wasting precious time and energy because all those traffic are never going to convert.

So the better and more convincing your content is, the more likely your visitors are going to convert.

There is actually a way to dig in more ideas on what to write for a specific topic which is something called the Alphabet Soup technique.

Here’s a video to show you what I mean…

Cool, isn’t it?

Wealthy Affiliate is an Internet Marketing education course so there are more where that came from.

The Alphabet Soup technique is something not many know of but it is highly effective in giving you more ideas on what to write or research on.

SEO Tool #2 –KeywordTool.io

Are you running out of ideas on a keyword to research on?

KeywordTool.io is a free tool (And website) which scrapes up all related keywords that people are typing in that big old Google search bar.

If you have a variety of answers which are completely different from each other, then you just know that the keyword you’re searching for is hot in demand.

However if you are searching for something and the answers look similar to each other, then that keyword has very low competition which is a great niche for you to go after.

For example, I typed in “Does anyone use Google Plus” at Keywordtool.io and the search results basically gave me very similar answers but if I look for something else like “How to cook an omelette”, there will be so many questions such like “How to cook French Omelette” and “Japanese Omelette”.

You can get a ton of ideas just from Keywordtool.io which can be really handy for your business.

SEO Tool #3 – Jaaxy

Jaaxy is the best keyword research tool ever to exist on the planet.

It can give you an accurate number of searches as well as competition on any keywords which is very powerful in helping you find a niche you are interested in.

How I build up my blog is actually through Jaaxy because by using it, I was able to find keywords with high traffic but at the same time, low competition which is very important for me since at that time, my website was nothing.

From having only 5 visitors on my site every day, I managed to increase it to at least 30 visitors a day in just 1 week!

Sure that isn’t much, but if you keep using Jaaxy to research and create contents around your newly-acquired golden keyword, your posts are going to rank up high in Google fast!

One of the reasons as to why your website can never rank in Google in the first place is because as juicy as your keyword may be, you may never know how competitive it actually is.

With Jaaxy, You can now find out just exactly how much competition you are facing which can give you a heads up on whether or not you want to target that particular keyword.

Take a look at this…

As you can see from my search result above, “Does anyone use google plus” has got 96 searches with 25 QSR (Quoted Search Results which in other words means competitors).

I have a guide on keywords that I made for you here.

This is actually a good keyword because a rule of thumb to always bear in mind is not to exceed 300 competitors for a certain keyword and according to that search I made, my competitors are only 25 which is pretty good.

When your competitors are really low, this is what we call a low-hanging fruit because it is easily rankable within Google.

And if you look closely at that image above, I can literally reduce my competitors to only 14 if I change “Anyone” to “Anybody” which is really unexpected.

It is amazing how even one word in a sentence can determine how many people are searching and just how many competitors you’ll be facing which is why Jaaxy is a very powerful tool.

Google also has a keyword planner but I don’t find it as effective compared to Jaaxy as it is not as accurate.

Have a keyword you’re just dying to find out? Have a go at it here…

SEO Tool #4 – Google Webmaster & Google Analytics

Both Google Webmaster and Google Analytics are used by every Internet Marketer on earth to study their website statistics.

Since all websites are on Google, it is a very important tool to know of so much so that even web developers and designers learn about these tools in colleges which I just recently knew from my nephew.

There are many uses of your website statistics and those are…

• It allows you to study where your most valuable customers are – Every website appeals to a certain number of people and in some cases, demographically. This is valuable as you can alter your content to suit more people in that area. For example, if you find out that a majority of people from India likes your blog, you can put pictures of Indian cuisines or even add in Indian language choice there to make them love you even more and build trust.
• Identify which pages are visited the most – Those pages are popular for a reason and knowing this can allow you to update your content even more to increase conversions.
• Identify new and returning visitors – Most Internet Marketers do not like it when their website do not have anyone returning again. This will allow them to study more on why people leave which can help you in trying to get back your customers whether through email marketing or discount deals.

There are so many possibilities you can do when it comes to statistics and people pay thousands just to get data such as this but as an Internet Marketer yourself, you can get this for free.

To get these statistics for your website, you need to connect your site to Google and here’s a video on how…

Do take note that clicking on that video above, it will bring you to Wealthy Affiliate as it is one of the lessons made by my friend for the community which is uploaded there.

The process is simple and all you need to do is connect and you’re done!

Just be sure NOT to check it every single day because it can get addictive at times 😉

SEO Tool #5 – Alexa.com

Alexa does not have much use though, except for showing you your website Global rank.

It’s not really important for most people, especially for a new website such as mine but it can serve as an inspiration for you get rank higher.

For example, MyInternetQuest.com now ranks 1, 783, 059^th most popular websites on earth.

Although it doesn’t sound like much, my website used to be above the 2 million bar which is something to be proud of especially knowing that I’ve just cut at least 300,000 websites in line!

This serves as motivation for me knowing that my work isn’t in vain and slowly but surely, my site is ranking in Google and getting a steady stream of visitors.

Take a look at this…

As you can see, my website used to be so low in rank and traffic that I was starting to lose hope in my abilities but after a while, my website shot up and is now growing steadily which helped regain my faith.

Building a website is easy, trying to get it ranked on Google is the most difficult part.

Too many times have I seen bloggers stopping halfway before their website started growing and it is important for you to keep moving on despite the odds.

I wished I had someone who gives me encouragements back then but now, I am the one who encourages people 😉 .

Never give up on your website, you may never know when you are actually reaching the success bar.

 

Sharpen Your SEO Skills – Learn From the Best!

Having all the tools in the world can be useless if you don’t really know how to make full use of them which is why I’m recommending you to check out Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is an Online Business training course which teaches you how to build a website and make money from it.

From there, you will learn everything you need to know to make your website loved by both Google and customers alike because it is with these 2 things that your website can finally grow.

Your visitors will love what your website have to offer and Google loves helping beneficial websites gain good rankings.

Initially, I had no idea on what SEO is or even how to build a website until I met Kyle and Carson which are the owners of Wealthy Affiliate.

After finishing the course and building this website, I had the confidence to build other sites too which are KamiraEvents.com and Relationshipable.com and now, I’m using my newly acquired knowledge to help you out.

I even managed to score first page on Google on the exact keyword we were working on just now…

Although not all my blog posts are on the first page of Google yet, more and more of them are rising up which gives me confidence that I can be successful online.

Despite the lessons and tools available, personally I find that the community itself is the best feature there as they are all helping each other to grow with tips and tricks of their own!

If I see you inside, I will personally help you out as how they have helped me so what are you waiting for?

 

Conclusion

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Many people do not know that there are many free SEO tools around but really, what use are those if we don’t really know how to use them?

Learning about SEO and website building will greatly help you not only to understand the use of SEO tools better, you will also tend learn how to unlock new abilities by using simple tools which can save you a ton of time and money!

If you’re interested in learning more about unlocking the potential of SEO tools, check out my #1 recommended program here.

Thanks for reading, don’t be afraid to drop down any thoughts you may have below as I’ll be more than happy to reply 🙂