Non – Technical SEO

The Guide to Non-Technical SEO

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With over 3 billion daily searches, it’s no surprise that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become one of the most popular tools for establishing a digital footprint. Most business owners seeking help with SEO are often discouraged from attempting optimizations due to the technical nature of what they find.

When searching for tips on how to improve your rankings, it’s common to see articles on website structure, data markup, and link building. While these topics are important, they’re not going to be successful if they’re your only focus.

Here are some ways to help improve rankings for your business without touching a single line of code or begging people for links:

Online directories

Three to five years ago, online directories were a must-do process when optimizing your business for search engines. Directories are a good way to route traffic to your website; however, it’s important to note that search engines like Google don’t value all directories the same.

When it comes to listing your business on these directories, you need to know that a directory will have a positive impact. Some search engines will actually penalize you for overdoing it on low-quality directories that aren’t relevant.

How do you know if a directory is relevant?

That’s answered on a case-by-case basis. For example, if you have a business that caters to tourism, a good place to list your business might be a site like TripAdvisor. But if you sell auto parts, a listing on TripAdvisor might hurt your rankings. If you’re still unsure about a directory’s quality, you’re probably better off not listing your business.

Here are some general directories that work for virtually every business’s Non Technical SEO setup:

• Angie’s List
• Apple Connect
• BBB.org
• Bing
• Facebook (business page)
• Google My Business
• LinkedIn
• Yahoo Local
• Yelp

It takes a bit of work, but listing can be done within a couple of hours. Make sure you pay attention to your email notification settings, and take care that name, address, phone number, and website link are consistent across all accounts.

Web forums

Online forums can make a huge impact with Non Technical SEO. Believe it or not, some companies even pay their salespeople to be active on web forums that are relevant.

In order to list on a forum, you must actively participate in conversations and only plug your website when your products can help solve a problem.

A good example of this would be the auto parts industry. Search for issues that your products commonly solve and give detailed information in your responses with an accompanying link to that product page.

Content generation

Content is extremely critical when you’re establishing SEO and requires virtually no technical know how. Google has even come out and said that content is among one of their top factors pertaining to rank. If you don’t currently generate content for your business, these steps can get you started.

Step 1: Finding a topic.

This can sometimes be harder than it sounds. It’s not enough to have an idea for your content. It’s about your content serving the needs of others.

If you’re struggling to find a searchable topic, you can turn here for inspiration:

• Facebook groups – Join Facebook groups that have a heavy member count. Read through posts and comments until you find a topic you can expand on.
• Google – Google Trends will give you tons of ideas to write about. Just type in your industry and start getting inspired.
• Reddit – Reddit is a great source for finding topics; there’s a subreddit for just about anything. Find a sub that you think aligns best with your customer base and search for questions that you can answer in detail.
• Twitter – Twitter’s trending page is filled with topics that are just begging to be written about. To use this tool, make sure your trending page is not customized to you.

Step 2: Choosing keywords for SEO.

Keywords need to be related to the content you’re posting for them to truly assist with your rankings. Insert keywords as often as possible within your actual content, page/video titles, tags, etc. Make sure they are relevant and appear organically in your content.

Finding the right keyword takes a bit of research.This is where a good tool like Google Trends can come in handy. This powerful tool provides you with rankings and demographic information in relation to the keywords you enter. Let’s say, for example, you’re selling running shoes online and need content centered around this.

You would type “running shoes” into the search and get something like:

As you can see, the popular search terms related to the entered keyword(s) show in the bottom right-hand side of the screen. This gives you an idea of the search terms related to your keyword. In the running shoes example, you could create a comparison between the “yokust running shoes” and your product or include detailed content on how your products are the “best cushioned running shoes.”

Step 3: Creating content.

One thing that needs to be top-of-mind during this process is to ensure your content outperforms the others that rank for the same keywords. This is important for non-technical SEO to work for you business.

Here are some helpful tips:

SEO For written content –

1. The higher the word count, the higher the ranking. A simple Google search will help quantify this. You’ll notice that articles offering similar content are ranked higher when they are more expansive. Adding more words isn’t hard; just make sure you don’t stray from the purpose of the piece.
2. Make sure your content is easy to read. Google favors content that’s easy to follow for its readers. Take care to clearly organize your content and follow the keywords you researched earlier. Double check your grammar and punctuation.
3. Take control of your ads. As your content becomes more popular, you may begin to lease a portion of your page to popular advertising platforms like AdSense or Audience Network. These services allow advertisers to begin paying you to place their ads on your website.

Though this is not something most people will do right off the bat, it’s important to understand how search engines evaluate your site once these are added. In an effort to improve user experience, Google is cracking down on the layout of even its own ads. So, check that your advertising layouts don’t distract or confuse the user.

• Use synonyms. Google actually likes synonyms and favors content that offers synonymous variants for keywords as it pertains to the keywords themselves. Having a healthy balance of relevant keywords and synonyms could help you rank higher.

SEO For image and video content –

Maybe you’re not much of a writer, and your content is heavy on visual pieces. This is okay. You just need to make some slight tweaks to how your content is displayed. For images, something as simple as adding image captions, descriptions, or changing the file name to describe the visual can make a huge difference in your rankings. For more info on this, read Google’s best practices for images.  

When it comes to video, you’ll notice that certain types of searches seem to always trigger a video result. Typically, that trigger is reserved for tutorial/how-to videos and reviews. If this is the topic of your video, you could have a good candidate for a highly ranked video.

Google explains that their search algorithm decides video rankings based on two factors:

1. Title and content that match a search term.
2. Engagement in relation to the search term.

Engagement is often the tiebreaker because it’s the easiest way for a search engine to ensure that the video content is a match for a term. Read more about Google discovery strategies here.

This process, while time-consuming, requires very little technical know-how and can make a major difference with how search engines favor your business. Also, read the Google’s best practices guide for more information.