Overwhelmed by SEO? Make it easy, start with your homepage

If you’ve ever looked at your to-do list, seen “do SEO” listed, and thought, Where do I even start with SEO?, you’re not alone. SEO can feel like a big, overwhelming project when you don’t know where to start.

SEO is a powerful and effective marketing tool that can help grow your business online. I also know that it can feel scary or overwhelming to the point that you may be putting it off or avoiding it completely because you don’t know what to do first.

Here’s what you may not know: You don’t need to do everything to start seeing results. You can get started with a few simple steps that will help you begin to increase your visibility. You don’t have to do SEO on every page on your website or blog in the beginning. You can start doing it on your new pages, and in time, go back and update it on the old pages.

Here are the three things I recommend you start with if you’re feeling overwhelmed by SEO. Let’s just start with your homepage. Yes, even one page can make a difference. I have a student who ranks in position #1 for a bunch of keywords related to her business, and her revenue increased more than 50% in the first year due to the homepage rankings. Your homepage can rank high and drive sales for your business too.

Let’s make it super easy by starting on your homepage only. Rather than feeling like you have to do everything, start with one page.

What about homepage keywords?

The nice thing about your homepage is that you can use your business name as your keyword, so you don’t have to do as much keyword research. If you want to use another keyword that ties to what you do, for example, marketing coach, SEO services, life coach for entrepreneurs, sourdough baking expert, etc., you can do that too, but it’s not required.

If you can find a non-brand keyword to use, it will give you a bit of extra visibility, but it’s not required. Sometimes, the keywords we’d love to use on our homepage are just too competitive for us to rank. For example, I can’t rank for SEO. It’s just too competitive, but I can rank for my name, my business name, and marketing coach, so I use those terms on the homepage.

Optimize your Homepage

If you were able to find a non-brand keyword that you have a good chance of ranking for, review your homepage and see where you can use it in your headers and copy. You’ll want to use it a few times throughout the page to help Google and now AI search engines understand what your content is about and what your business does. Also include information about what your business offers and who you serve. You want to think about what information your visitor wants to find when they land on your homepage.

If you want to grow your email list, you also want to have your opt-in there so they can find it and sign up. Technically, your opt-in has nothing to do with your homepage SEO, but it’s important that we convert the people who land on our websites, so make sure it’s there.

You’ll also want to write a title tag and meta description for your homepage. Again, if you have a non-brand keyword you are targeting on this page, include it in both the title and description. If not, use your business name.

Do Image SEO on your homepage

Also, optimize the images on your homepage. Go into the files and rename them, remove the original pic6789 or image 5678, and use a keyword-rich file name instead. Google will read the image file name to understand more about the image, so you want to make sure it’s optimized. If you’re using a non-brand keyword, use that in the image file name; if not, use your business name or your name and include a hyphen (the one that looks like a minus sign) between the words. Google reads it as a space. For example, the keyword for my homepage could be Rachel-lindteigen-marketing-coach.jpg. If you serve a specific local market, you can include the location in your file name too.

Local SEO tips for your homepage SEO

If you’re a local business and serve people in a specific market, it’s a good idea to include your location information in your title tag, meta description, and on page copy for local SEO and simply because it helps your ideal customer. If you don’t serve a specific market, you don’t need to include location information.

If you’re ready to get started with SEO, I have several resources for you. Get the Beginner’s Guide to SEO or AI SEO here. Simple SEO Content is taught live a few times a year. Plan on joining the next time, and I’ll teach you how to do this step-by-step in an 8-week, live cohort course. If you are interested in working with me 1:1 as your marketing and SEO strategy coach, let’s chat. I only work with a few clients at a time to maintain the level of support that I want for them.