Majority clients who approach search engine optimization and marketing agencies are not working with unlimited budgets, or the exorbitant figures offered by Fortune 500 companies. Most likely, you’ll be dealing with clients who only have a few thousands to spend on internet marketing each month. If you’re dealing with small businesses, you can expect even less.
Are you affordable in 2015?
According to a survey of marketing agencies that was carried out last year, the average client has only $500-1500 to dedicate to search engine marketing every month. But all of those clients expect to see great work for their investment, and why shouldn’t they? Working on a small budget can be very difficult when it comes to SEO in London, more so where you have a client with grand expectations.
Reports from the survey revealed that small businesses offer approximately 36% of the amount set aside for marketing to SEO. This represents more than double what other online marketing strategies receive – PPC, SMM and email marketing receive 12% collectively. UK Local Directory Listing also helps people to list their business for free.
How to carry out SEO using $500 monthly
On average, the amounts offered by small businesses for SEO locks out many of the best and most effective techniques. With the advancement of SEO, you cannot afford to settle for cheap listings on directories – there’s Panda and Penguin to be worried about. SEO is now a big undertaking, more or less synonymous with content marketing.
Even with the greater requirements for SEO, the survey has shown that there won’t be much more dedication towards SEO in 2015. This begs the question: what can you do for only $500 a month?
- Optimized websites
The fact that small businesses set aside 36% of marketing funds specifically for building websites last year is indicative that small businesses have begun to take a serious interest in internet marketing. The first step is having a good website because every effort of SEO leading to a bad website won’t bear much fruit. 51% of the businesses spent $1500-4000 while a further 12% could go as far as $10,000.
Therefore, such amounts can be dedicated towards Bespoke web development. Even where there is a greater limit, gradual improvements can be made on the existing sites.
- Going local
It doesn’t take a lot of time, finances and effort to handle local SEO efforts. Research has shown that up to 14.7% of localized SEO can be accomplished by calling for a client’s Google My Business profile and carrying out manual improvements on it. Up to 15.5% can be handled using external local signals e.g. citation volumes, online yellow pages and NAP consistency.
Where to go on a small budget
According to research, the greatest chunk of SEO efficacy for a site is improved by link signals – linking domain quality and quantity and inbound anchor text. This, however, may be beyond the reach of a small budget.
The best place to start would be to open a blog and regularly post content. This can greatly enhance local indexing. Blogs also offer a large playing field for on-page SEO techniques. By focusing on promoting content, the links will begin trickling in and you can slowly develop your page and domain credibility.