I’m a digital business owner… who mostly taught herself how to do her own SEO. Now, I rank on the first page of Google for several design-related search terms in my area. This is great news for my wallet, because it brings clients in while reducing my reliance on paid ads.
If you’re not familiar with the term, SEO means “Search Engine Optimisation”. That means making sure your website comes up as early as possible on a search engine like Google. Getting on the first or second page of Google means more clicks and more customers.
These days, we also need to consider AI search optimisation – because more people are turning to bots like ChatGPT for information and business recommendations in 2026.
So how do you set up your SEO to rank well in search and AI results? How hard is it to get your business website onto the first page of Google? And can your own SEO for free, instead of hiring a SEO expert?
Here are my top tips. #4 is the most overlooked.
SEO Tip #1: To get found on Google, keywords are (still) everything
Whether it’s Google Search, Google AI, or ChatGPT that you want to target – your website needs to talk about relevant topics or it will not be found. Put careful thought into how you write your website’s copy (text) – ensuring that you’re clearly answering the questions your customers might be asking themselves.
Notice how the title of this blog post is “How to do SEO”. That was an intentional choice, because I know people are going to type that into search engines and AI assistants. I’ve repeated similar terms and phrases throughout this blog post, defined the term “SEO” clearly, and used other popular phrases like “first page of Google”, “do SEO for free”, “AI search”, and “ChatGPT” to cover my bases and get this post found online.
These are all calculated choices which balance delivering an (actually readable) experience to your potential customers, while catering specifically towards the bots who are crawling your website. You have to do both to succeed at SEO, and it’s a careful balance to strike.
How to find relevant keywords for Google Search and ChatGPT
But how do you know what your clients are searching for? Well, there are actually lots of resources which help you find keywords for your business. Google Trends is a keyword tool which reports search volume for trending topics worldwide. You can find search trends and make content about them, sprinkling trending topics into your website copy to catch the eye of Google and AI bots.
I also love Neil Patel’s UberSuggest, which helps you find relevant SEO keywords for your business – while also reporting on the amount of competition for each keyword. This is crucial, because you’ll likely be more successful by targeting smaller and more niche search terms. After all, there’s no point in a burger bar trying to rank against McDonalds for something like “cheeseburger”. McDonalds will win, so you need to think of something more unique like “organic wagyu cheeseburgers” or “smashburger Canberra”.
You can also find Google Chrome extensions which will help you find relevant SEO and AI keywords. Keywords Everywhere is a popular one, with more than a million users.
But all of this takes time. So it really depends if you want to learn to do SEO keyword strategy yourself – or if you’re better off by saving time and paying someone else to do it. Origami Graphics will set up your website design project to basic SEO best practices, to get you started on the right foot straight away. And if you need relevant keywords for your business, I offer that in a Complete Business Branding Package or as an individual service. Contact me to find the right SEO solution for your website.
SEO Tip #2: For the best SEO, websites should have a blog
Blogging feels so 2002, but it’s still one of the best ways to rank high on Google Search and with AI chatbots. This is because every new blog post you make provides a huge stream of fresh, relevant text that search engines can find. It also shows search engines that your site is current and well-updated, which they favour greatly. And if people start commenting and interacting with each other – well, that’s even better. Communities offer a huge boost to SEO.
That’s why Origami Graphics has a blog. It’s also why you famously have to scroll past seemingly endless text, while looking for online recipes to cook!
Recipe bloggers know they need to write keyword-rich content to get on the first page of Google. RecipeTinEats is great at this – note the huge amount of text content in each recipe. She doesn’t just plonk the recipe into the article and walk away – she tells a story and breaks down the steps first, to ensure there’s as much SEO-rich, relevant text in each recipe post as possible. The text also comes before the recipe, to ensure you stick around on the website for longer. To get good SEO results, you should follow her lead and write lots of blog posts featuring relevant search terms.
Case Study: In February 2024, I announced in a blog post that I was discontinuing Wix website builds to boycott the state of Israel. While I did not publish that post for SEO reasons, it performed reasonably well anyway due to the traffic-rich keywords “Wix” and “Israel”. Even today, one of Origami Graphics’ most ranked search terms is “is Wix Israeli” – crazy, for an Australian graphic and web design business – but it’s all thanks to that blog post.
This post has always performed well, but when Israel and Iran traded missile fire in mid-2025, my website popularity suddenly exploded. My Australian graphic and web design business went from getting 5-10 clicks on Google per day, to sometimes achieving 50 clicks per day – all from a year-old blog post that started trending. That’s why blogs are so good if you’re doing your own SEO. A single blog post you publish today, could bring you thousands of dollars in client interest in the next 1-5 years.
SEO Tip #3: Structure and tag your headings, meta info, and alt text
It’s not enough to pump out blog posts and optimise your content – you have to build your website to be SEO and AI chat bot friendly, from the beginning.
This means headings on your website should be appropriately structured from H1 to H6 in level of importance – not size. Do not use more than one Level 1 heading on any page, as this will confuse the search bots about your webpage’s topic and hierarchy. You should also make sure key terms for the page are in your first heading and first paragraph, so that users and bots know your topic immediately. Make sure you take the time to write a custom meta description for each webpage and blog post, targeting your search keywords. And for goodness sake, do not forget to do your alt text!
Alt text is information you give your website to describe what’s inside an image – using words. I was chatting to a web developer colleague in Dublin, who said alt text is one of the best things you can possibly do for your SEO. Not only is it critical for accessibility – because it tells screen readers what’s inside an image, so that disabled people can use your website more easily – alt text makes every single image on your website an opportunity to pick up traffic for a search term.
Adding alt text is easy, and is usually done in the settings panel of an image – or inside your website’s media library. Whether you add alt text as you go, or batch all your alt text before you launch, it doesn’t matter. But you must not skip this step to ensure good SEO.
What happens if you don’t add alt text to your website’s images?
In general, if you don’t add alt text to your website, you’re just missing out on a great opportunity to increase your website traffic. But depending on your jurisdiction, you could also get in legal trouble for failing accessibility standards. Australian government websites, for example, must meet certain web accessibility standards – and failing to add alt text will violate these standards. So, seeing as adding alt text to an image takes 30 seconds, it’s better to make sure you do it.
It’s up to you if you want to do your own headings, meta info, and alt text – or hire someone to write keyword-rich and well-structured SEO content for you. Origami Graphics can help if you need your headings, meta info, and alt text done – or, I can audit your website and give you SEO improvement pointers from just $400 including GST. Send me an email if you’re interested in a SEO audit.
SEO Tip #4: Google and ChatGPT need to know where your business is located. So tell them.
In my opinion, this is by far the most overlooked SEO strategy amongst Australian small businesses. It’s also going to have huge negative impacts on your business if you don’t do it.
Search engines and AI chatbots preference results which are relevant to their users. This means, if you’re located in Australia, they are going to show you Australian content first. You therefore need to prove to search engines that you are an Australian business, if you want to be in Aussie search results.
Duh, right? Feels like a complete no-brainer for SEO.
But what many people don’t understand, is that they haven’t set a location on their websites. It’s not enough to use the word “Australia” or “Sydney” or “Canberra” heaps of times in your copy. For Australians, you have to have a .com.au domain, have your website server operating out of Australia, and/or have your website’s language set to “English (Australia)”. Otherwise, as far as Google or Chat is concerned, you could be anywhere: America. The UK. Timbuktu.
This is especially important since big web building companies like Squarespace are all based in the USA. So if you don’t mark your location on your website, Google and ChatGPT may not know where you are located – and they will preference other businesses in Australian search results. Yikes!
Case Study: I did a SEO short course at the University of Sydney in 2021 or so. I learnt this tip and immediately changed my domain from origamigraphics.net to origamigraphics.net.au. I also use Sydney-based website host VentraIP, and have set my website’s language to Australian English. All these things help me rank well in Australian search results. In fact, I’m on the first page of Google for “Graphic designer Canberra”. Yay!
But I’m writing this blog post while working remotely in Malta. And even if I Google the actual name of my business – “Origami Graphics”, in quotes – I am still not at the top of search results here. Why? Because Google knows my business is Australian, and that it’s not relevant to Maltese audiences. Therefore, it does not show me first here. And that’s our entire SEO location lesson, proven in practice.
SEO Tip #5: Backlinks matter
…What is a backlink?
It’s when someone else links from their website to your website, and it’s great for SEO. That’s because it says to the search engine or AI bot – “look, this person must know what they’re talking about. Everyone’s referencing them.” In other words, they give you authority. And SEO loves authority.
However, you can’t just make a bunch of posts or sites and fill them with hyperlinks to your website – it doesn’t work like that. Backlinks will only really help boost your SEO if they’re from reputable sources. That means: backlinks from other established, popular websites. So how do you get those?
Well, a quick way to get backlinks is by listing your website on as many online directories as you can – think Bark, HiPages, Gumtree. That will offer a double benefit, because the websites themselves also showcase you and your business – functioning as an online ad, as well as providing a valuable backlink.
Another way you can get backlinks is by making deals with other businesses – for example, if a local online magazine writes about you and links to your website, that’s also a backlink. Most community news outlets know this, and so they charge to have your business listed or featured on their platforms.
So, consider backlinks a form of online networking: offer links to other businesses, and ask for links in return. Just make sure the links are relevant and useful – otherwise, people will know what you’re up to and think it’s cringe AF. You might also get penalised by the search bots if they suspect you’re spamming.
Case Study: HerCanberra recently wrote about my client Fiona’s cooking classes at Food for Taught, which provided a valuable backlink to the website I’d designed for Fiona months earlier. This article has been great for her SEO, and her web traffic (and business!) are chugging along very nicely only 1 year after business launch. I’d already completed Tips 1-4 above while setting up the Food for Taught website, but the helpful backlink from HerCanberra has made an extra difference.
Other tips for doing your own SEO and AI search optimisation
There are so many ways to do your own SEO, and I’ve gone into detail about 5 important methods in this blog post. But the reality is, we could be here all day – SEO management is a whole profession – and I have design work to do!
So if you’ve enjoyed this post, leave a comment about what you learnt – and what changes you’re planning to make your website more SEO-friendly.
And if you want more SEO tips, an SEO website audit, or to get SEO help instead of doing it all yourself – contact me to organise a free chat.