Why You Don’t Have to Be Techie to Do SEO (You Just Need This)

If you’ve ever thought, I’m not techy enough to do SEO, it’s OK. Most people do, but you honestly don’t have to be techy to do SEO at all today. Sure, years ago, technical SEO was a lot more involved and honestly intimidating (at least to nontechy people like me), but today’s SEO is about content much more than technical. 

Can I Do SEO If I'm Not Technical?

So, if you are still thinking SEO is technical, let’s chat about what it really takes to rank at the top of Google and get free traffic to your website, because it’s probably a lot easier than you think right now.

I am not technical at all; my BA is in journalism, and my strength is in content strategy. I fell in love with SEO because it allowed me to get more people to the content I created. It definitely wasn’t because I wanted to learn how to code. Fifteen years later, I still don’t know much about coding, and I’m OK with that. It’s not required to succeed with SEO today.

There’s a Little Bit of Tech You Need for SEO, but it’s Minimal

There are a few things your website needs for technical SEO, but they’re easy to do, there are tools to help you with them, and they won’t take long. They’re important because a site that’s easy to crawl and understand is one that has a better chance of ranking higher in Google and on ChatGPT, and in AI Search.

This isn’t a section to skip, but it’s also not something to be too worried about or intimidated by. When I was at the agency, we had to learn about all sorts of crazy, involved technical SEO items, but as a small business owner, you don’t. You likely don’t have the same site in multiple languages or 10 versions of the same product in different colors, or things like that, which make technical SEO harder. You likely have one website with less than 10 pages and a blog with lots of content to help drive traffic to your site.

Here are the priority technical SEO items for a small business owner:

Your Website’s Speed Impacts Your SEO Performance

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites high in the search results because it knows people don’t wait for slow sites to load. Users want the information to be displayed quickly, and because of that, Google does too. If you want to learn more about page speed and why it matters, check out this blog post – Why Google Likes Speedy Sites. It shares a bit more information on this topic.

You’ll want to check your website’s speed and see how you’re doing. Be sure to check out both mobile and desktop speeds to be sure you’re good at both.

Try these tools:

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Pingdom Website Speed Test

What if Your Website’s Speed isn’t Fast Enough? How do you Fix It?

Look at how quickly your site loads. The reports will tell you what’s slowing your site down and how you can fix it. The most common issue I see is large image file sizes that take a long time to load. If you haven’t yet minfied or reduced the size of your images, that’s likely going to be your first step to increasing your page speed. More on that in a moment. The other issue you may see is with your website hosting; if you’re on a shared server and the other site is getting a lot of traffic, it can impact your site. If you have issues with this, you may want to look into a different website hosting option.

The Size of Your Images Impacts Your SEO

The next thing you’ll want to do is minify your images. I know that word might sound technical, but it’s not. It simply means to reduce the size of your image files so that your site loads faster. Large image files are often the reason sites load slowly. Sometimes, if you have done your base SEO on all pages but aren’t seeing results, all you need to do is reduce the size of your images, and you can start to see better SEO performance because your site provides a better user experience, so Google rewards you. If your site is already optimized using keywords you have a good chance of ranking for, and you’re not seeing movement, this is something to look into on your site.

You can use different tools to help you do this. Some website builders like Wordpress, ShowIt, or Kajabi can do this automatically or through plug-ins. If you don’t have a site that can do it for you, you can use an external tool like Jpeg Mini. It doesn’t matter which tool you use; they all do the same thing. Choose one you like and are comfortable using.

If you’re creating images in Canva, I know it always says to save as a PNG. It’s the “recommendation” when you go to download files, but you don’t need PNG files unless you have a transparent background in the image. If you have a regular picture or image, a JPG will work just fine. It is a small file size, which will load faster.

Don’t just upload photos from your camera or phone directly to your website; the files will be too big. Reduce the size and optimize the images too. Image SEO is really easy to do. The most important thing will be to rename your file with an SEO friendly name that includes the keyword you’re using for the page. You can learn more in this blog post.

Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?

Did you know that more than half of website visits happen on mobile devices for many small businesses? My website is the opposite; most people visit it on their desktop, but many of my students have 70 or even 80% of their website traffic coming in from mobile devices. Because of this, we want to make sure our sites look great on different screen sizes. Today, this is mostly handled by your website design or template. Years ago, companies had to have separate mobile and desktop sites, but that’s not generally the case today. If your template is what’s called responsive design, you’re probably OK, and most of the major website builders like Wordpress, Squarespace, ShowIt, etc. have responsive templates, but it’s good to double-check. 

If your site doesn’t look good on a phone, you may lose visitors and rankings.

Do a quick check:

• Open your site on your phone. Can you read the text? Are the images too large? Do the menus work well?

• Can you see your opt-in or most important information on the homepage without scrolling on your phone? If not, you should adjust this. It’s not specifically for SEO, but it impacts user experience, and that impacts your rankings.

• Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test for a more detailed view of your website’s mobile friendliness.

What SEO Is Really About

SEO for small businesses isn’t really technical. It’s a lot more about your content and keyword strategy.

It’s about helping search engines like Google and AI platforms like ChatGPT understand your content and know when to show it to the right people.

Search tools want to recommend high-quality content that clearly answers a question or provides value. Your job is to create that content and organize it so that it is easy to find.

A Simple SEO Plan You Can Start Today

If you're new to SEO, here’s a very simple plan you can follow to start getting more traffic to your website.

Think About What Your Audience is Searching For

What would your ideal customer search for on Google or ask ChatGPT to help them figure out? Start by generating a list of ideas for blog posts that you could create to help your ideal customer.

Choose One Keyword Per Blog Post

Go through your blog post ideas and look to see if there are keywords you could use for them that your website has a good chance of ranking for on Google (ChatGPT will work similarly, we’ll format content differently, that’s all), and that your ideal customer searches for. You want to choose the best options for your website, which means focusing on the keywords with the highest search volume that you have a chance of ranking for on Google. If you’re not sure how to figure that out, take my free class, and I’ll walk you through how you decide which keyword is the best opportunity for you.

Create One Helpful Blog Post

Create a great blog post that helps your ideal customer, provides value, and anticipates and answers their questions. There’s no ideal word count you need to hit for this post; what’s more important is that it’s the information your ideal customer needs.

Help Google and AI Understand Your Content with SEO

Create a title tag and meta description for your blog post. Use your keyword naturally throughout your content. Just like there’s no specific word count, it’s the same with the keyword; there’s no specific keyword density score that you want to aim for. You want to use your keyword naturally and weave it through your copy. Be sure to use your keyword in your first paragraph of the blog post, and also in your header tags (those are the larger font lines that separate the content on this page), use it in your image file name (if you’re not sure how to do that, this blog post walks your through what to do). Verify that you’ve used your keyword in the places Google will look for it on the page. Get a copy of my Beginner’s Guide to SEO here, and it will walk you through how to do this.

Everything you do for Google SEO is also helpful for AI SEO. What you’ll do specifically for AI SEO is format your content with keyphrases in your header tags. Consider adding an FAQ or recap section at the bottom of your post with information that’s easy for AI to reference. AI search isn’t about keywords like Google SEO but rather about looking for a content match for what it thinks the searcher wants.  

You’ve Got This and I Can Help You

You don’t need to be techy to learn SEO. You simply need to identify the content ideas your ideal customer is searching for, create great content that helps them, and make it easy for Google and AI engines to understand.

If you’re ready to learn how to do this for your website, join me in Simple SEO Content, and I’ll walk you through the process step-by-step. I’d love to help you learn how to do this.

Quick Recap: Can I Do SEO If I'm Not Technical?

Yes, you can absolutely do SEO without being technical. Here's what to focus on:

• You don’t need to know how to code — today’s SEO is more about content than tech
• Check your site speed and use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom
• Minify your images to help your site load faster and improve user experience
• Make sure your site is mobile-friendly — responsive design is key
• Choose one keyword per blog post and use it naturally in your content
• Use proper formatting (H1 for the title, H2 for sections, H3 for subpoints)
• Write helpful content that answers your ideal customer’s questions
• Create a title tag and meta description so search engines know what your post is about
• AI and Google both value clarity — the easier your content is to read and understand, the better

If you’re ready to get started with SEO, get my Beginner’s Guide to SEO, take the free course, or join me in Simple SEO Content, and let’s work on this together.