How to do SEO yourself - without costly tools
The expert SEO advice on the Internet revolves around costly tools for keyword research. Ahrefs, Semrush and similar tools are good; but they can burn your pocket quickly.
I've been a student of SEO for nearly 20 years. I built and grew my first online community from zero to 400,000+ members using organic growth and SEO. No ad spend.
The fact is, you do not need costly tools or subscriptions to do SEO yourself. In this guide, I'll teach you how to use Google Search Console (GSC); a free tool from Google to understand and improve your website.
I don't expect any SEO expertise from you to follow this guide.
Also, everything shared here applies to any content website; including any Jatra-powered community.
The next section covers the basics. I'll encourage you not to skip it. We'll keep it short.
Why Google Search Console
GSC contains the actual data Google collects about your website. What people searched, whether your page showed up, and whether they clicked. Paid tools estimate this data. GSC doesn't estimate; it's Google's own record.
GSC gives you a lot of useful data to work with:
Search queries people use to find your content
Clicks and impressions for each page
Average position and click-through rate (CTR)
Errors Google has encountered on your website
Crawl statistics
Devices and countries your visitors search from
GSC gives you far more data, but the list above is sufficient to get started.
Setting it up
If you haven't set up GSC yet, go to search.google.com/search-console, add your domain and verify ownership. Then submit your sitemap under the Sitemaps section. For most websites, it's at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Data starts showing up in a few days.
The Content Plan
I'll assume you have access to a basic content management system (CMS) to manage your content. For example, WordPress, Ghost or an SEO-optimized community platform like Jatra.
This is important because the platform takes care of the technical SEO. It automatically manages canonical links, meta data, image SEO, semantic HTML, pagination, faster page loading and more.
Once the technical SEO is handled, you can focus on the content.
Brand new website
If your site is new and has very little or no content, you'll need to build a content map.
A content map is a cluster of topics and sub-topics related to your website's theme. For example, if you run a website (or a community) about hair care, your content map could look like this:
Hair care
Causes of hair fall
Natural remedies
Products in the market
Hair care for specific hair types
...and so on.
Start with a few articles that people with immediate buying intent will find useful. Don't start with articles that only educate. Write articles that make people take some action.
For example, "What is dandruff?" is an educational article. Hundreds of big health websites already answer it, and the reader leaves the moment they get the definition.
Compare that with "Best anti-dandruff shampoos for oily scalp under ₹500" or "Minoxidil vs biotin: what worked for our members".
The person searching these is about to buy or decide. They're far more likely to click, read and join the conversation.
Educational content has its place. Add it later, once your action-oriented pages start getting impressions.
No data yet? Use Google itself
A new website has nothing in GSC. You can still find what people search for, for free:
- Google autocomplete: Type your topic in the Google search box and note the suggestions. Add a letter after your topic (a, b, c...) to get more.
- People also ask: The box of questions in search results. These are real questions people search.
- Related searches: At the bottom of the search results page.
- Google Trends: Compare two topics and see which one people search more.
- Your own community: The questions your members ask in the forum are the same questions people type into Google. Every good thread is a potential page.
Website with content
If your website has some content, GSC is what you should focus on. Open Performance → Search results and find:
- Pages that bring a lot of clicks
- Pages that get impressions but can bring more clicks
- Pages that serve commercial intent
Before you start, change the date range from the default 3 months to the last 12 or 16 months. GSC keeps 16 months of data. More data means more queries to work with.
Now look at the GSC data for the Jatra community in the screenshot below.
This is what the screenshot tells me:
"jatra forum" and "jatra community" are brand queries. People already know us and search for us by name. When brand queries grow, word-of-mouth is working.
"flarum vs discourse", "xenforo alternative" and "xenforo vs discourse" are commercial queries. People searching these are choosing a community platform. That's exactly who we want. "flarum vs discourse" gets about 7% CTR (10 clicks from 141 impressions).
"open source community platform" got 812 impressions but only 6 clicks. That's under 1% CTR. Google thinks our page is relevant; but searchers aren't picking it. This is the biggest opportunity on the list.
"how can i add 5000 members in whatsapp group" shows up twice; once as "5000" and once as "5,000". Together, that's 886 impressions and 11 clicks. We never set out to rank for this. But the person asking it runs a group that's outgrowing WhatsApp. That's a Jatra buyer.
Also note the bottom of the screenshot: 980 queries. The screenshot shows only the top 10. A lot of gold sits further down the list. Click Export at the top right and send the data to Google Sheets. It's much easier to sort and filter all your queries there.
Note the Queries
Now, focus on the queries that bring traffic. You'll be surprised: GSC shows queries you never intended to bring traffic for.
This data is gold! You should now focus on bringing traffic to existing pages that don't cater to these keywords; but have a high potential to rank.
Work through these steps:
1. Turn on all four metrics. At the top of the Performance report, click Average CTR and Average position so they show up in the table next to clicks and impressions.
2. Remove your brand queries. Click the filter icon, choose Query → Custom (regex) → Doesn't match regex, and enter your brand name. For us, that's jatra. What's left is how strangers find you. That's the traffic you have to earn.
3. Find the page-two queries. Filter Position to greater than 8. Queries sitting at position 8 to 20 are close to page one. A small update to the page can push them up.
4. Fix low-CTR pages. High impressions with few clicks means people see your page but don't click it. Rewrite the page title and meta description so they match the query and give the searcher a reason to click.
5. Update pages with the queries they already rank for. Click a page in the Pages tab, then switch to Queries. You'll see every query that page shows up for. Add the missing ones to the page; in headings, in the first paragraph, or as a new section that answers them.
6. Check for cannibalisation. Click a query, then switch to the Pages tab. If two or more of your pages show up for the same query, they're competing with each other. Merge them into one strong page, or make each page clearly about a different thing.
7. Build new pages for uncovered intent. If a query brings impressions but no page answers it directly, write one. Treat variants like "5000" and "5,000" as the same intent. One page covers both.
8. Find question queries. Filter Query → Custom (regex) and enter ^(how|what|why|which|can|is|does) . You'll get every question people asked before landing on your site. Each one is a potential article or forum thread.
9. Link internally. Link from your high-traffic pages to the pages you want to push up. Google follows these links, and so do your readers.
Don't chase every query, though. If the people searching a query will never become your members or customers, skip it.
Extra tips for community owners
A community gives you an advantage most websites don't have: your members write content for you.
- Rename thread titles to match queries. Members write titles like "Help needed!!" Nobody searches that. If GSC shows the thread ranking for "how to fix frizzy hair after keratin", rename the title to that.
- Start threads from question queries. Take the questions from step 8 and post them in your community. Let your members answer. You get real experience from real people; which is exactly what searchers want.
- Update old popular threads. Add a summary of the best answers at the top of threads that get lots of impressions. The searcher gets the answer quickly; and stays for the discussion.
Look at countries and devices
The Countries tab tells you where your searchers are. If most of your impressions come from India but your pricing and examples are in dollars, fix that. Or the other way around.
The Devices tab compares mobile and desktop. If your mobile CTR is much lower than desktop for the same pages, check how those pages look on a phone.
Find pages that are losing traffic
Pages lose rankings over time. Newer articles come up, and the information gets outdated. Refreshing an old page is faster than writing a new one.
Go to Performance → Date → Compare, and compare the last 3 months with the previous 3 months. Open the Pages tab and sort by the clicks difference. The pages at the top are losing traffic. Update them with fresh information and add the queries they rank for.
Measure and Repeat
After you update a page, paste its URL in URL Inspection (top of GSC) and click Request Indexing. Google will re-crawl it sooner.
Then wait 3–4 weeks. Go to Performance, click Date → Compare, and compare the last 28 days with the previous 28 days. Check clicks, CTR and position for the pages you updated.
Once a month, also open Indexing → Pages. It lists pages Google did not index, and why.
That's it. Do this every month. No subscriptions needed.
If you run a Jatra community and have questions about your own GSC data, ask in the comments below. FYI - Jatra is an SEO-first community platform designed to make your community's public content readable by Google and LLM crawlers.