We know that search engine optimization or SEO is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing tactics for small businesses. But that doesn’t make it simple to operate on a $1000 budget, which is still relatively small when compared to the capital that many companies can deploy.
However, it’s not impossible; but the money needs to be used more carefully to ensure that every dollar counts. It’s critical that you hire a company or freelancer who has experience and whom you’re confident can generate tangible results. Those in Minneapolis, for example, might choose a reputable Minneapolis SEO Marketing firm, while a competitor in Texas would probably benefit from working with a local business that is easy to get in contact with.
Spending the Budget Efficiently
To do SEO on a limited budget efficiency is critical to ensure that the higher results are generated per dollar spent. When you look at the factors that are known to move the needle, there are only two that are worth considering, content and links. Content such as blog posts and sales pages are indexed by Google, allowing them to consider ranking your pages from a more significant number of keywords.
While the right links will encourage Google to rank those pages higher for the same phrases. Both are important, but deciding where to use the budget is important because an even split is rarely the right answer. For a company with little content, investing in more is likely the superior choice. While for a business with a good content presence on their site but little traffic, carefully targeted links can make a tangible difference.
Both can move the needle, but depending on your current situation one is likely to be more critical. Studies have also shown that a crucial factor in ranking high in Google is the word-count of your content, which is why it’s advisable to invest in long and quality posts rather than a greater quantity of shorter articles.
If you decided to spend $600 on articles, it would probably be wise to opt for three pieces rather than six, giving you double the length in each. It’s often a sensible strategy to create content that is between 1.2x and 2.0x the length of the top ranking pages for the keywords that you’re targeting. Doing so all but ensures that your material will be preferred by the search engines, all things being equal.
Creating Content for the Right Keywords
But it’s not just length that matters; content is worthless if it’s not targeted to a specific set of keywords that can drive dollars to your bank account. You should commission articles that focus on buying or research phrases that will bring hot and targeted traffic to your website where they are likely to convert into paying customers.
Phrases such as “best bicycle” or “fix my transmission” are likely buying and research phrases, which one could assume are being searched by consumers who could become customers. While other searches such as “how to fix my own transmission” or “free bicycles” are highly unlikely to lead to increased revenue for your business.
Getting Quality Links
The same can be said when it comes to building links, which are known to have an impact on your rankings, but which need to be first and foremost of high quality. Getting links from poor and irrelevant sites is going to have little effect while one or two references from a website in your industry could boost your pages up to the top rankings and allow you to generate more targeted traffic.
But perhaps even more important is deciding which pages the links should point to. In an ideal world, you’ll be able to dictate to your hired freelancer or company, which pages you want the new links to aim at, allowing you greater control over your business’s future.
To have the most significant impact on your traffic and rankings, you want to send them to pages which are on the verge of ranking highly for the kinds of keywords that you care about. You might be on page two or low on the first page, and a few links could push you up towards the top few spaces which are where you will be able to generate a tremendous amount of traffic.
