How to Get the Most from SEO within Tight Budget Constraints

There’s one fact that all marketing experts and business owners must remember: a sales team cannot operate without a SEO strategy. In the era of the Internet, people don’t want to deal with aggressive sales agents who push them to buy something they don’t want to buy. However, they still want to be informed about products and services they are interested in buying. How do they get that information? Through online content, of course!

Through a content marketing campaign, you can serve information and sales pitches to your target audience without looking aggressive at all. Without search engine optimization, however, that content marketing campaign has slim chances of working.

The bad news about SEO is that it can cost a lot. If you’re wondering how much, there’s no exact answer that we can offer. According to the information provided by Search Engine Land, 29 percent of businesses spend $1,000 to $2,500 per month on SEO. 10 percent are spending less than $500, and 15 percent spend between $5,000 and $10,000 on SEO per month.

The actual price of SEO can be high or low. The main question is: can you get good results from SEO when you’re not ready or you’re not capable of investing a lot of money? If you take the right approach, you can. Below are 3 ways to make the most of your SEO investment:

1. Invest the Largest Part of Your Budget in Content Development

Fresh, high-quality content is the key to a successful SEO campaign. That’s a fact that you cannot change!
When your budget is limited, you’ll be trying to save money on all aspects of the campaign. Content development is not where you should make a cut.

Let’s explore a platform where you can hire writers: Upwork. There are all sorts of ads by clients from all around the world, and freelance writers with different skills can apply. When a writer is truly talented, they can easily gain high reputation. Needless to say, they will not apply to ads that offer minimum payment. They will target the job offers that offer at least $20 per hour. Less talented writers, on the other hand, will be happy to work for less.

The problem is that you cannot get good content from less talented writers. The market is very competitive, so you can beat the competition with masterful content. There’s no way around it. It’s better to hire a professional service like Assignment Masters and work with true experts. The good news is that the price is not too high, and you’ll be aware of what you’ll spend before you place the order. Thus, you can plan your budget accordingly and order as many articles as possible without sacrificing the quality level.

2. Dominate Local Search Results

When you’re choosing keywords for your search engine optimization campaign, you’ll notice that some are more difficult to target than others. If you localize your campaign, you’ll get two advantages at once:

• The keywords will be easier to target, and
• You’ll be spending less money on your campaign.

If, for example, you’re running a SEO campaign for a cutlery business in Ohio, you’ll target the local audience by targeting location-specific keywords. In addition to a proper selection of keywords, there are few other things you should pay attention to:

• Include the location in the title tag.
• Optimize the content for the local audience.
• Do your best to get real reviews from locals. You may start by asking the people you know to review your business. Whenever a customer buys something from you, offer a card with links to your social media pages and invite them to share their impressions.

3. Analyze Your Competitors and Fill in the Gaps

Do you know what the biggest problem with a tight budget is? You cannot invest enough to compete with brands in aspects where they are strong. If, for example, a certain brand does really well with the most common keywords your audience uses to search Google, you stand no chance to beat their results if you don’t invest a lot of money.

But you know what you can do? Fill in the gaps!

Analyze your competitors as much as possible. Check out the content they produce and the topics they’ve covered. Ahrefs is a good tool to help. It shows you data that reveals why your competitors rank well so you can figure out how to beat them by targeting their weak points.

You may take things further by checking out the social media pages of your competitors. See what their audience is asking and answer those questions before they do! That’s a nice way to fill in the gaps and get more traffic to your website.

SEO is tricky. It requires constant commitment, research, and creativity. With a limited budget, it’s even trickier. You’ll have to get even more creative, committed, and resourceful. However, the main thing to remember is that it is possible to develop a successful search engine optimization campaign without investing a fortune into it. The tips above offer a nice start.

Mark Thomson
Professional Writer at Assignment Masters

A previous career in social media marketing has given Mark Thomson an important sense of cultural awareness, and he brings this sense to all of his freelance writing. His articles are full of zest and sharp social critique.