What is your top tip for ramping up a company’s SEO at little or no cost to them? The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. 1. Address On-Page SEO We see so many companies that ignore on-page SEO. Some websites, especially those in low competition industries, can experience a strong organic presence with solid on-page SEO. Make sure your website performance is up to par (use GTMetrix and Google’s PageSpeed Insights test) and if you need help understanding what elements make up on-page SEO use Moz’s on-page grader to help. – Jonathan Long, Market Domination Media 2. Write Content People Care About It’s simple: you need to write content that people are searching for. Make it your goal to deliver one 2,000 word article per week, specifically chosen based on keyword research. Then, send emails to influencers in that space who might share the article and ask for feedback or quotes to add to it. This process costs you nothing but a few hours of work each week. – Joshua Dorkin, BiggerPockets 3. Leverage Your Contacts For Links Make a list of all the connections you have in your industry. Approach them, and ask to write an expert piece of well-researched, interesting content on any topic of their choice. This will increase your chances of securing the offer. Request a link that points back to your site within that content. Accruing just 5-10 of these links per month over time will drastically increase your site’s authority. – Alex Miller, PosiRank LLC 4. Focus On High-Intent Keywords The value of a keyword like “widgets” is much different than that of “buy widgets.” Sure the “widgets” keyword probably has a greater volume of people searching, but “buy widgets” shows a much higher level of consumer intent. When working to optimize your site, make sure you are also focusing on ranking for high-intent keywords and not just high search volume keywords. –Nick Reese, BroadbandNow 5. Use Blogger Outreach for Content Amplification Bring someone on board who can start promoting all of the great content you’ve been creating. By connecting with others in the industry and letting them know about your content, you can start attracting links and social shares, without risking problems or penalties. Use email and social media outreach so you can also earn shares and links. – Marcela DeVivo, National Debt Relief 6. Use Long-Tail Keywords A company can utilize long-tail keywords to boost their SEO strategy. For example, instead of “coffee mug” you can use “coffee mug with funny quote.” Long-tail keywords are less competitive, and since they’re more specific, it’ll often generate higher conversion rates. – Shalyn Dever, Chatter Buzz 7. Use Free Backlink Databases Know what you’re working with by putting your site through the ringer on SEO Points, and then try Open Link Profiler. It’s one of many free backlink databases which will offer you and your site some all-inclusive filters for your business. The best part, I think, is that you can even download hundreds of thousands of backlinks for other websites using this tool. – Cody McLain, SupportNinja 8. Internal Content Generation High-quality content is the best way to do well in search. You could outsource, but the people who know the business well and have the deepest understanding of its clients are best positioned to create relevant content. Encouraging employees to take a couple of hours to blog or publish on social media is low-cost way to engage with users, leverage internal expertise and be competitive in search. – Vik Patel, Future Hosting 9. Add Alt Text to Your Images This is an easy piece of on-page SEO that any company should practice on their site and on their blog. Make sure every image on every page has an alt tag that’s descriptive of the image, and also hopefully related to the keywords you’re trying to rank for. It’s a very simple tip that’s brought us a huge increase in our blog traffic. – Jared Brown, Hubstaff 10. Don’t Point All Your Backlinks to Your Homepage If you’ve got any kind of back-linking strategy where you can control where your backlink is landing, such as when guest blogging, try to spread the love around your site. Almost by default, the backlink will go to your homepage. But Google likes to see a diversity of landers to strengthen your domain authority rather than just your page authority. – Fan Bi, Blank Label 11. Change Your Metadata Tags Our product is a web-based solution for finding venues and planning events. With our business being 100 percent online, SEO is extremely important for the business’ success. We are regularly updating and changing our metadata tags to attract more customers. – Jayna Cooke, EVENTup 12. Get Traditional Media Exposure Old fashioned PR is experiencing a comeback when it comes to SEO. The old methods of stuffing keywords and buying links will get you penalized. Earn your traffic and links by being a press-worthy company. This will not only lead to better SEO rankings, but better growth opportunities too. – Elliot Bohm, Cardcash.com