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Free SEO: How to Grow Your Site Without Paying an Agency

AKADATA

27 Sep 2025 • 8 min read

DIY vs. DIFY: Two Paths to Success

Parable of the Two Builders
Two people built houses: one on shifting sand and one on solid rock. The storm came; only the house on the rock stood firm.

So it is with your website: build on a strong foundation of clear, truthful signals to search engines and it will endure beyond the storms of changing algorithms.

https://search.google.com/search-console

https://trends.google.com/trends/

Before diving into tools and tactics, here’s what you are about to gain. This guide shows how anyone, from a single‑person startup to a growing company, can build strong search visibility without paying for expensive SEO services. You will learn why these steps matter, how to apply them, and when each action drives the greatest benefit. The skills you pick up will help you grow traffic, understand your audience, and keep control of your own digital presence.

At Breath Technology we hold to two simple principles:

DIY – Do IT Yourself: You control your own site and learn the craft. Many agencies will happily sell you SEO services, but this guide shows how to achieve the same foundation for free. Learning these steps protects you from unnecessary costs and gives you direct control over every improvement.
DIFY – Do IT For You: We handle it for you when time or resources are short. We are not a SaaS provider and we avoid the lock‑in that comes with many hosted platforms, Google Search Console being the exception because it is free to use and costs nothing. If you try the DIY steps and still find them challenging, this is where DIFY exists: to help and support you without pushing unnecessary paid services. We build rather than knock, for foundations built on a rock need no mocking; our role is to support, not to criticise.

This article shows how fast organic growth can happen without paying anyone to “boost” your SEO. The results on articles.akadata.ltd speak for themselves: steady, compounding clicks and impressions using only free tools.

Google Search Console: Your SEO Control Room

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free dashboard that tells you exactly how Google sees your website.

Verify your site: Add your domain and follow the DNS or HTML verification steps.
Monitor performance: Clicks, impressions, and queries show where traffic comes from.

Submit new URLs (step‑by‑step), Each time you publish or update a page:

Where: Go to Search Console and select the correct Property (domain).
Action: Sign in and choose the verified site.
Why: Ensures actions apply to the right domain/subdomain.
Where: The Inspect any URL bar at the top.
Action: Paste the full canonical URL of the new/updated page (e.g., https://example.com/path).
Why: Fetches the current index status for that exact URL.

Where: URL Inspection → status panel.
Action: Review messages (e.g., URL is on Google / URL is not on Google). Click View crawled page or Page indexing to see details.
Why: Identifies blockers (noindex, robots.txt, server errors, canonical mismatches).
Where: URL Inspection → Test live URL.
Action: Run the live test.
Why: Confirms Google can fetch the latest version and that fixes are visible now.

Where: URL Inspection.
Action: Click Request indexing.
Why: Places the URL into Google’s priority crawl queue.
Where: Indexing → Sitemaps.
Action: Make sure your sitemap is submitted and includes this URL. If needed, update your sitemap and Resubmit.
Why: Sitemaps speed discovery and help with large sites.

Where: Performance → Search results.
Action: After publishing, set date to Last 7 days, add a Page filter for your URL, and watch Impressions/Clicks.
Why: Measures impact and signals whether a rewrite or richer markup is needed.
Where: Enhancements / Rich results (if available for your site).
Action: Check for Article/Product/Event structured data warnings/errors and fix them.
Why: Valid structured data can unlock rich snippets.
Where: Links.
Action: Ensure the page has internal links from menus, hubs, and related content.
Why: Internal linking improves discoverability and ranking context.

This prompts Google to crawl your content quickly.

Enrich Your Pages with JSON‑LD Structured Data

Structured data tells search engines what your content represents and why it matters. By giving Google and other search engines explicit signals about the meaning of your content, you help them create richer results such as enhanced snippets, product boxes and event listings.

Why use JSON‑LD: It is the format recommended by Google, easy to maintain, and it separates structured data from your visible content.

When to use: Whenever you publish or update pages where context is important, articles, products, events, recipes, or anything you would like search engines to feature more prominently.

How to use: Place a <script type="application/ld+json"> block in the <head> section of your HTML. Inside it, use the Schema.org vocabulary to describe the page type.

Site Search (SearchAction on WebSite)

Use JSON-LD to declare a site-wide search so Google can show a search box under your result.

Why to use: Enables the sitelinks search box in Google, helping users jump straight to internal results and improving CTR.
How to use: Add a WebSite entity with a potentialAction of SearchAction that points to your search results URL and query parameter. Place it in the <head> of your homepage (and any main template).
When to use: When your site has a working search page (e.g., /search?q=term) that returns relevant results.
When not to use: If you don’t have a real on-site search, or your search requires JavaScript-only rendering that crawlers can’t access, or it’s blocked by robots.txt.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "url": "https://www.yoursite.example/",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "SearchAction",
    "target": "https://www.yoursite.example/search?q={search_term_string}",
    "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
  }
}
</script>

Common Types

**Article: ** This JSON-LD example declares that the page is an Article. Use it whenever you publish a blog post or news story. Search engines can then display rich snippets such as headline and author. Place it in the <head> of the HTML so it is always read by crawlers when the page is indexed.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "Free SEO: How to Grow Your Site Without Paying an Agency",
  "datePublished": "2025-09-27",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Breath Technology"
  }
}
</script>

Product: This JSON-LD example declares that the page represents a Product.
Why to use: use this when you have a product, physical or digital, that you want search engines to present with rich details such as price or availability.
How to use: place it in the of the product page and fill in the name, description, and offers fields accurately.
When to use: when you have an actual product listing, not a service or generic article.
When not to use: do not use this markup for services, blog posts, or informational pages that are not selling a product.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Breath Card™",
  "description": "A dignity-first prepaid card rooted in trust and community support.",
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "priceCurrency": "GBP",
    "price": "0.00"
  }
}
</script>

Event: This JSON-LD example declares that the page represents an Event.
Why to use: use this when you are promoting a real-world or online event and want search engines to show details like date and attendance mode in search results.
How to use: place it in the of the event page and fill in the name, startDate, and status accurately.
When to use: when you have scheduled events, workshops, webinars or conferences.
When not to use: do not use this markup for ongoing services, general informational pages, or when no specific date-based event exists.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "name": "IPv6 Workshop",
  "startDate": "2025-11-15T10:00:00+01:00",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode",
  "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled"
}
</script>

Person: This JSON-LD example declares that the page describes a Person.
Why to use: when you have a personal profile, author bio or team member page and want search engines to show details like name, job title or contact information.
How to use: place it in the of the profile page and include properties such as name, jobTitle and url.
When to use: when describing a real person or author.
When not to use: not for organisations, products or events.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Andrew Smalley",
  "jobTitle": "Director, AKADATA LIMITED",
  "url": "https://www.breathtechnology.co.uk"
}
</script>

Add these snippets to the <head> of each page to help Google create rich search results. The <head> is preferred because search engines reliably read it before rendering the page. You can also inject JSON-LD dynamically through server-side code or a front-end framework such as Node.js/Next.js, or generate it from a database and output it as a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag.

The key is that the structured data must be present in the final HTML source at page load so that crawlers can parse it. Whether you hard‑code it, pull it from a database, or use a reusable SEO class to automate it, ensure the final HTML contains the valid JSON-LD when the crawler visits.

Use Google Trends to see what the world is searching for and to guide what you publish next.

Why to use: It reveals real-time and long-term interest levels, showing you which topics are rising so you can write content when demand is high.
What you can do with it: Compare search terms to see which keywords are gaining traction, identify seasonal spikes, and discover related queries you might never have thought of.
How to act: Visit the "Now" trending page and filter by region or category. Look for patterns that match your industry or niche and plan new articles or updates around these rising interests.
Why this matters: Publishing while a trend is growing helps your pages get indexed and ranked while competition is still forming.

Breath Technology is building a free tool to track these trends and show where your own site ranks against them. Watch breathtechnology.co.uk for its launch.

Upcoming Free Tools

SEO Indexing Report – check how search engines are indexing your website and generate a detailed report.
Search Engine Submission – submit your site to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex, then track your indexing progress. Your first submission is free after sign-in.

These tools will automate what you’ve learned above, giving you insight and control without cost.

Call to Action: DIY or DIFY

Free SEO works when you apply these steps consistently. If you’d rather someone else handle it, Breath Technology offers DIFY – Do IT For You. We apply the same proven process so you can focus on your core work while we grow your visibility.

Start now: try the free tools, monitor your growth in Google Search Console, and when you’re ready for the next level, contact us to let our team take it further.

DIY vs. DIFY: Two Paths to Success

Google Search Console: Your SEO Control Room

Enrich Your Pages with JSON‑LD Structured Data

Discover Trending Topics

Upcoming Free Tools

Call to Action: DIY or DIFY