Affordable Search Engine Optimization

You maybe wondering if  affordable search engine optimisation is possible? Doing SEO can become an expensive task, especially for a newbie. If you know what you are doing then your search engine optimization can be affordable. If you don’t know what you are doing, then follow my advice on finding low cost and reliable SEO

Why you need SEO for your site

As the internet grows everyday it is becoming more and more important to employ search engine optimization to help increase your rankings. One of the most important factors that Google has clamped down on is the quality and relevancy of your content on your site.

Before commencing with any kind of SEO campaign you must make sure that your on page content is of the highest quality.

Getting high positions in the search engines can attract thousands of new visitors to your site on weekly or even daily basis. Here are a few interesting stats about SERP positions:

 

 

As you can see, the higher your ranking the more clicks you get, resulting in more targeted traffic and potential customers!! If your keyword gets 5000 searches per month, thats an extra 1625 targeted visitors to your site.

Competition

The main reason why SEO is so important is because there is a lot of competition out there. Google needs a way to determine which sites to rank on their first page.

 

How much does SEO cost?

There is no ball park figure when it comes to the cost of search engine optimization. The two concerning factors are:

1. The strength of your niche and size of your site
2. The SEO company that you choose to hire

To save you a bit of time, I am going to compare the costs of some of the SEO services and packages that I have found. To be honest, I am not a big fan of hiring SEO companies because I have found in the past that there are only a very small percentage that can actually deliver results.

If you are not careful then they can quickly destroy your site with poor search engine optimization. I have had happen to me a number of times, and it’s one of the main reasons why I set up this very blog, to teach people how to do SEO yourself

 

There are many SEO services offering search engine optimization on an on-going basis. Many charge a monthly fee and I have found that the average cost is between $250 – $500 per month.

‘submitedgeseo’ offer 3 monthly link building services ranging from $149 to $499 per month. They also offer advanced packages up to $4999!!

 

 

 

Affordable search engine optimisation services

There are an absolute ton of people offering SEO services, especially on the main SEO forums. If you are looking for a low cost solution then you will probably get the best deal around.

The only problem is, there are that many to choose from, how do you know which one to trust?

Purchasing an SEO service is a bit like investing in somebody, because if they don’t produce the results, your site is going to be sitting somewhere amongst the thousands of other sites trying to rank in your niche. If you are not on page 1, you won’t get any traffic!

There are literally thousands to choose from, and here are just a few that I came across to give you an example.

 

This offers quite a lot at an affordable price:

 

 

Again, a lot on offer here for a reasonably low price:

 

 

The big question is, can they be trusted?

As I said earlier, these type of SEO services can destroy your sites chances of ranking. For such a low price, they are not going to be splashing out on your campaign. They are there to make money, so they will get things done as cheaply as possible, and that might mean using spammy, black hat techniques.

 

Is doing SEO yourself an affordable solution?

You may have thought about doing SEO yourself to avoid the costs of hiring SEO firms to carry out the work. There are a lot of things you can do to boost your SEO that will cost you nothing. I have written a guide on how to rank any site at the top of Google.

There are also some great ways to build back links that many SEO services probably won bother doing.

The only drawback to doing it yourself is time. You need to work out how valuable your time is in contrast to the anticipated results gained from your SEO efforts.

Lets take this scenario:

You decide to do the SEO yourself. You find that it is taking you 5 hours per week of your time.

5 Hours per week is 20 hours per month

If you had hired a professional SEO company that charged $300 per month, would you be worse off or better off?

Well that depends on how well you value your 20 hours!!

If you earn $25 an hour, that’s $500 per month you are losing out on. Therefore it makes sense to hire a firm at $300 so you can continue with your own work. This would leave you $200 better off and you would probably see this as an affordable solution!

 

Search Engine Optimization software

An alternative solution to finding affordable search engine optimization is the use of SEO software. Now although software can be costly to begin with, it usually pays for itself within a short period of time.

I have used a lot of different SEO software solutions in the past. Some I thought were great and I still use today, others I thought were a waste of time and money. You can actually see which SEO software I use here if you want any recommendations.

Like everything else, there are advantages and disadvantages when it comes to using software:

Advantages

• Once set up it can run on auto-pilot, saving you lots of time
• Can be very affordable, usually a one off fee or small monthly fee
• You can usually run multiple campaigns simultaneously, which means it can work on more than 1 site

 

Disadvantages

• There is a learning curve that comes with any kind of software
• Less control over building backlinks. Could hurt your site if done incorrectly
• No software can do it all, therefore you would require different software for different jobs.

 

Selecting to use software is something that you will have to evaluate yourself. I have personally found that having a good mix between doing things yourself, using software and hiring service is the best way to go.

For example, I could not live without LongTailPro and Ahrefs. I use them all of the time and they make life much easier. On the other hand, things like ‘creating content’ and some back linking is something I would pay somebody rather than take up my own time. Combining your resources can mean that Search engine optimization is very affordable.

 

 How would I Run A Successful And Affordable SEO Campaign?

Having tried many different solutions in the past, from hiring firms, to doing it myself and using software, I have come to some conclusions when it comes to running a low cost search engine optimization campaign for a site.

My recommendation is to do a little bit of each.

Here is what I do when I start out on a new site:

I use Longtail Pro to carry out keyword research – This is a vital step and it can be the difference between success and failure. SEO is no longer about finding 1 good keyword and targeting it. There are hundreds, even thousands of long tail keywords that you should optimize your pages for. I always do this myself because I simply don’t trust other people to do it for me.

You also get a better feel for your market and you can easily increase your traffic by targeting easy to get keywords which Long tail pro will provide you with. I’d say the cost of the software is definitely worth it.

 

Do all On-Page SEO myself – doing on-page SEO is something you can easily do yourself for free. There is no need to pay anybody to this. There are some good guides and plugins to help you with on page SEO. I would also like to add. I do write all of my ‘main’ content myself, by this I mean the home page or sales copy stuff. You want to make sure this is of high standard.

 

Initial Link building – Again I would do this myself. You want to start by building a few ‘easy’ links using your Brand name or URL as your anchor. Just a few blog comments, social media links etc. THis is something that is quick and easy and can save you money by doing it yourself.

 

High authority link building – This can be the make or break! It’s difficult to get these types of links yourself, so you may want to look at link building packages like I mentioned previously. Or even better, have your own private blog network done for you. If you have a budget, then this is where the majority of it will go as it can take a lot of time if you do it yourself.

If you are going for a link package then I make sure that:

a) The links are contextual links

b) The links are coming from sites in the same or similar niche

c) The surrounding content is highly relevant and contains some of your keywords.

Make sure they can provide this when doing your link building campaign. If you decide to have your own PBN then you can be certain that these links will be highly relevant.

 

If you understand how SEO works and you keep on top of the latest algorithm changes then you can easily make your campaigns successful without encountering high costs. So to answer the question, ‘Is search engine optimization affordable’ I would say Yes, providing you mix things up between doing it yourself and outsourcing.