Ready to learn how to do SEO on your own?

You need analytics tools to measure all these SEO metrics, which is why DIY SEO starts with setting up your analytics platforms. Even if your business already has website analytics platforms like Google Analytics set up, you’ll want to double-check the setup before getting started with SEO.

For the best results, start with these platforms:

For example, use Google Tag Manager’s preview mode to confirm your Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration tag fires — this tag is critical because it powers your Google Analytics 4 account! You’ll also want to check Google Search Console for any errors, especially those related to indexing.

The next step in our do-it-SEO checklist will also help you catch issues, so keep reading!

Complete an SEO audit
The second step in how to do SEO on your own is to 50 of the Best Digital Marketing Tools To Use In 2025
use a free tool like Screaming Frog to audit your website’s SEO and find the following:

On-page issues, like missing title tags
Technical issues, like canonicalized URLs
Branding issues, like outdated brand mentions
Use Screaming Frog’s installation guide to run your first site crawl. Once your crawl finishes — which can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on your crawl settings — you can review your audit.

Since you’re doing DIY, you’ll need to pick and choose which SEO issues get your attention.

The following questions can help you prioritize:

Is the issue preventing the site or URL(s) from appearing in search results?

s the issue site-wide or affecting a large number of URLs?
Is the issue affecting a bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) URL?
How much time will the issue require to fix?
Who is needed to fix the issue?
XML SITEMAP

As an example, say you have the following SEO issues:

A new folder on the site is blocked from indexing
A few URLs have title tags over 60 characters

A 404 error is appearing for one of your best-selling productsI

Based on the earlier questions, you can prioritize the issues as follows:

A 404 error is appearing for one of your best-selling products: One of your pipelines for driving revenue is shut off. Fixing the 404 error will allow you to re-open the pipeline and resume product sales.
A new folder on the

site is blocked from indexing: Since this issue affects multiple URLs, you’ll want to prioritize updating your robots.txt file. Once your update goes live, search engines can start crawling and indexing that folder’s content.
A few URLs have title tags over 60 characters: While important, this update will likely  have a lower impact than the changes above. Decreasing your title tag length (in this instance) could help click-Keywords are your gateway to reaching users via search engines.

You can get started with keyword research by using these best practices to guide your research:

Focus on long-tail keywords: At three to four words, long-tail keywords bring more qualified traffic to your site. While long-tail keywords get fewer searches, they’re less competitive, making them easier to rank than short-tail keywords.

First, you search “fix flat tire” on Google Search. Here is what you see:

Google Search example for DIY SEO

You notice a few things:

If you view the search results, you see the following:

Google search results example for DIY SEO

Here, Google provides transactional and informational results, listing products and guides for fixing tires. You also see some bigger sites in the results.

Based on this information, you have some concerns about the keyword, like:

With Google Keyword Planner, you can confirm your suspicions:

Google Keyword Planner results for DIY SEO

The keyword receives up to 10,000 searches per month and boasts a “High” rating for competition.

So, what do you do? You use a free keyword research tool, SEO.com, to find longer-tail keywords:

SEO.com results while doing SEO

From SEO.com, you can research a competitor’s keyword rankings and filter them.

 informational topics like:

Return to Google Search to Canada Phone Number Data evaluate the search
Check the keywords’ search volume and ad popularity with Google Keyword Planner
Once you find a keyword that fits your business well, you can use FAQ Fox for content research.

FAQ Fox results for DIY SEO