Expert Tips For 10 Ways to Do SEO on A Budget
As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to save money. But did you know that you can do SEO on a budget? In this blog post, we’ll share 10 ways to get the most out of your SEO efforts without breaking the bank. So, whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking for ways to optimize your current campaigns, we’ve got the tips that will help you achieve results no matter your SEO budget.
For a deeper dive into how much you should spend on SEO, check out Agency Partner Interactive’s guide to How Much to Budget for SEO.
SEO Audits Are Your Friend
To make things better, you have to first understand where it is you’re going wrong. Your first step should be to run an SEO audit to check for…
- any broken pages
- error alerts
- content duplicates
- domain and page-level factors
- and more
There are both free and paid tools for doing this SEO audit plus outsourcing options, depending on what your budget allows.
Agency Partner is always available for a consultation to help you figure out what options will work best for your needs!
Get Bigger by Starting Small and Local
Start with where you are. Target your local keywords first. Optimize your searchability in local directories. Naturally, build up your review history in your area. And don’t forget to register your listing on Google My Business with your location in the title tag.
What Have You got That Your Competitors Don’t?
Something clearly works for your competitor, but that doesn’t mean they have the entire range of the marketing edge covered.
Pay attention to their content and social strategizing. Read the comment feedback from their audience for ideas on where to capitalize that they are missing. Conduct a content gap analysis to guide your marketing where you have the best opportunities for breakthrough.
Guest Blogging Is Still a Thing That Still Works
Once you’ve done the analysis and written those freshly tailored blogs, reach out to related content scopes. Begin by building a relationship with the admin through engaging with their content as you would like them to engage with yours. Then approach with your proposal. This is a chance to reach a brand new audience and position your brand as an industry thought leader.
Remember: Guest blogging needs to be mutually beneficial in some way when you approach another digital platform to write for.
DO NOT Keep It Short and Sweet
When you’re on a budget, don’t waste your limited resources by trying to compete with the big guys and their short-tail keyword domination. You won’t win… not yet, at least.
Do your keyword research and figure out what phrases people find you at with all the niche details – but not so detailed and niche-y that you end up with no one being able to find you.
For example, you’re not just a shoe retailer – you specialize in women’s ballroom and salsa dance heels. Use all that balanced info to your advantage when strategizing your SEO.
Rev Your Load Time
This tip does mean you need to first check your analytics to know where you’re starting from. If the current load time is longer than 3 seconds, then this approach is critical for you for sure – anything longer than 3 seconds is inherently damaging to your UX conversions, statistically speaking, and Google definitely doesn’t like that.
Look into…
- simplifying your HTML and CSS code
- allowing compression
- avoiding redirects
- optimizing images, and
- upgrading your server response time
This may require a larger portion of your available budget (especially if you’re not super code-savvy yourself), but we can promise the results will be worth the expense.
Use ‘Fetch as Google’ to Re-Optimize Your Pages for SEO
Google finally made fetch happen. (Yes, a Millennial wrote this.)
It’s a tool that lets users test if Googlebot can ‘fetch’ a URL and show how it’s rendered. If it works, then you can request Google re-crawl your site for better SEO and maybe even re-index it. This can make a massive difference in your SERP ranking at no cost at all.
Identify Any Orphan Pages
You may have some pages that lack internal links directing users to them, known as orphan pages. This can be a problem dragging down your site’s effectiveness, as those OPs don’t benefit from the associated authority of your homepage. From there, you can choose to either remove it entirely or revise your sitemap.
U Got a Bad URL?
It may seem insignificant to you, but that URL of yours that looks more like a scrambled coding language may be part of what’s holding back your SEO efforts. Your URL has to be simple enough for search engines to understand and obvious enough to the user what the page is about. You want people to confidently click through to your link, not worry if they’re about to fall for a phishing scam.
Links on Links on Links
Work smarter, not harder. You’ve already put in the work with initially creating your blog content; now get the most out of them by linking internally in later relevant blogs. If you do it smartly, it’s a great traffic driver and can be a nice boost in both your Average Time on Page analytic AND how easily Google can crawl and index your site.
Just don’t overdo it, okay? Google doesn’t like that either.
Is SEO Optimization Worth It?
As long as you’ve got an effective strategy, SEO optimization couldn’t be a wiser investment. It’s estimated that about 92% of online activity starts with a search engine. Add in a partner like the team at Agency Partner to help you maximize that strategy, you’ll be set for a very successful return on any sized investment!
Send us a message here to get your site and SEO perfected for Search Engine Success ASAP!
