If you’re new to SEO, you would be forgiven for thinking it’s something that must ALWAYS cost you a fortune. After all, as a business owner, you may have been inundated by emails from “SEO experts” who claim to be able to get you to number one in the search engine listings for an eye-watering cost. While we wouldn’t advise believing in things that sound too good to be true (such as unachievable promises without any data to back them up!), it is possible to get started with SEO without having to pay through the nose for it.  In this guide, we take a look at the basics of SEO you can learn without having to lay out any of your marketing budget. We also explore the pros and cons of attempting to do vital SEO work for free.

How to learn SEO for beginners

If you’re looking to learn how exactly SEO works, or about the search engine optimisation techniques you can educate yourself on and implement free of charge, there are some useful resources that can help.

For Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves optimising your website for the search engine crawlers and for user experience. Think site speed, architecture and accessibility. Free resources such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb can help with this.

You can practice this on a site you have built yourself, or gain some experience on this by offering to help family and friends with their websites.

For on-page SEO

On-page SEO involves making your site useful to both search engines and users who visit your pages. There are free guides you can use for on-site optimisation that talk you through identifying keywords and optimising your website content for them. You’ll also be able to find insight into metadata and using headers too. SEMRush and Google itself provide some useful resources. 

For off-page SEO

This involves ensuring your website has a good reputation and a strong sense of authority. Techniques include using backlinks and social media marketing as well as online directory listings to build confidence in your site. 

Pros and cons of doing SEO for free.

Obviously, there are several positive aspects of learning SEO via free resources and implementing it on your own website.

These include:

• You will have a better understanding of SEO practices, and how to implement them on other websites.
• You will obviously not have to use a chunk of your budget to make small changes to your website.

However, there are also some drawbacks to implementing SEO for free. For example:

• You will likely be competing with experts who have a deeper knowledge and understanding of the ever-changing aspects of SEO. If you’re not willing to commit to a full education, it’s unlikely you will see the same results they do.
• You may make mistakes. It’s not possible to educate yourself on every aspect of SEO in a short amount of time. If you are not absolutely certain about what you are doing, you may make a mistake that could impact your site rankings negatively.
• You may not have time. As a busy business owner, you may have to wear several different hats. You may have heard of the phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none”. Unfortunately, SEO and it’s evolving nature requires a master so if you don’t have time to dedicate to this it may not be a good idea.
• You’ll have to keep on top of it. As well as learning and implementing SEO techniques on your website to improve your rankings, you will need to tweak as algorithms change. This can be very difficult to do as algorithms can change quickly and significantly so if you are unable to keep up to date, you may find your rankings suffer.

To sum up, it is possible to do SEO for free to some extent. However, with SEO being vital for most businesses in terms of raising brand awareness and driving sales, can you really afford to get it wrong?

Far from promising you the world for an extortionate sum, we at Brand Nova Digital, appreciate you may be working under a tight budget. We will be happy to discuss a strategy for your site with you. Our experts can help you improve your position in the search rankings so you can concentrate on running your business.