A good Search Engine Optimization service can result costly for many businesses, and there is no guarantee that the specialist or the agency that you are hiring will deliver the promised results. So, it is not surprising that many business owners are looking for ways to save up on their SEO strategy.
The main issue when it comes to saving on Search Engine Optimization is how to do it in a way that ensures some quality. After all, if you just go to a contractor who promises to do the same service for a penny, you may not get the quality work that you expected.
Quite often, what they’ve done is hardly what you needed. However, the subject still remains unresolved and the question unanswered – what are some of the SEO tips that we can use if we don’t have any budget?
Fortunately, there is a way out. Keep in mind that this is not a claim that you can get great results for little money. However, by implementing the tactics that we are going to define below, you will ensure a steady increase of your website visits and sales while cut costs as much as possible.
You just have to change your approach, and stick to a number of rules for good SEO.
Here is a list of proven SEO tips to help you save money on Search Engine Optimization, without losing its quality and effectiveness:
1. Fix all errors on your website
Certain errors on your website can become a serious obstacle in getting the traffic that you are aiming for. If it’s not completely functional, the landing pages aren’t properly optimized, your website isn’t mobile friendly or your loading speed is slow, it will result in a poor user experience for your visitors.
Here are some errors on the site that you should avoid:
Title tags and meta descriptions
One of the biggest errors that companies make is not optimizing title tags and meta descriptions properly, or not optimizing them at all. It’s important to make sure that the target keywords appear in the title tag and meta descriptions of each page, and that each page title is unique.
No-follow tags
Most website owners keep some content hidden from search engines, either to avoid duplicate content concerns or to keep a customer-only page hidden. Using the ineffective “no-follow” tag is a common blunder here. It’s fine to hide pages, but if you don’t do so correctly, it can cause problems for your SEO.
Low-quality external links
The words you use to link to other sites, also known as anchor texts, should be relevant to the material you’re linking to. Search engines consider unnatural links to be spammy, and it might lower your ranks in the long run. When it comes to backlinks, you should always aim for quality over quantity.
Poor internal linking structure
Another common errors that many companies are making is not structuring their internal links properly. In order to rank well on Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page), you should make sure that this structure is logical, and that your content takes to other pieces of content that are relevant to the topic.
Missing alt tags and broken images
Because search engines can’t see the images, they rely on alt tags to tell them what they’re about. If your site has missing alt tags or broken images, robots will give it a lower ranking because they are unable to understand the topic behind an image or a piece of content.
Slow loading website speed
Users will leave your page if it takes too long to load. When they leave the page, your bounce rate goes up. When Google detects a high bounce rate, your rankings are immediately lowered. In fact, Google expects your website to load in less than 3 seconds in order to comply with their Core Web Vitals update.
Short-form content
Another important mistake to look out for on your website is thin content, or content with less than 600 words. Infographics and short-form posts combined produce fewer leads than long-form posts. Make your life easier by writing longer articles and webpages to improve your search engine rankings and expand your business.
Usually, when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, the reason why you aren’t ranking well is because of a combination of factors, not only one specific thing. Many errors together lead to poor user experience, and search engines have a low level of trust in websites that aren’t delivering great user experience.
Poor quality content, unoptimized or over spammed Title/Descriptions, cheap “junk” links, etc. In general, the list of errors in SEO counts dozens of items and can easily exceed a hundred in the case of in-depth analysis.
In order to find and remove these errors, it is important to conduct a special SEO audit that will show a more in-depth overview. By implementing the recommendations of the audit, you can boost your SEO rankings and the traffic to your website.
2. Set KPIs and keep track of them
KPIs, also known as Key Performance Indicators, refer to a set of specific metrics that are used to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular process. Their application allows you to assess the effectiveness of an action that you are implementing, such as SEO.
Some agencies and specialists already use KPIs in their work. This also affects the cost of promotion, since the site owner can relatively quickly understand whether a certain website is beneficial for them or not. With a limited budget, it allows you to properly allocate available resources to achieve the best possible result.
This is also one of the tools that might help you figure out if you’re dealing with reputable contractors. Services such as SEO Reports greatly simplify the task of such control.
Here are some Key Performance Indicators that companies should pay attention to:
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is one of the most significant metrics that companies should be constantly monitoring and analyzing. It will show you whether you are achieving your SEO goal of boosting traffic to your website, and ranking higher on Google.
Pay close attention to metrics such as number of pageviews, sessions and users that are visiting you each month, and whether they are increasing.
Search rankings
Good search rankings are a direct result of a successful Search Engine Optimization strategy. For this reason, it is very important to monitor your pages, blog posts and keywords regularly to see if their overall ranking is improving as you continue to input SEO efforts.
Search visibility
The frequency with which your domain appears in search results for the terms for which it ranks is referred to as search engine visibility. You can see the beneficial dynamics of search visibility even before your site starts generating visitors by tracking search visibility.
This score can be a major factor in all of your SEO efforts. If you want to track the early results of website optimization, a search engine visibility score is incredibly valuable.
Links
For content marketers and SEO specialists, links should always be considered a significant SEO metric. Backlinks are currently one of the most essential ranking variables. It indicates that link development should be at the center of your SEO strategy.
But don’t use low-quality links as this can hurt your website rankings.
Bounce rate
This is yet another important parameter that search engines use as a ranking element. A typical bounce rate should be between 40 and 60%, depending on your industry. If the percentage is excessively high, the page is unlikely to be related to the search query.
Average session duration
Another important element to track when looking at your KPIs is your average session duration. You’ll be able to examine the quality of your site and determine whether any changes to its structure are required.
3. Decide on your priorities
If you have a low budget for Search Engine Optimization, it can be difficult to decide whether you want to spend it on generating more content, optimizing your pages, or focusing on off-page SEO to get more high-quality backlinks for your website.
It’s like trying to lay the foundation for three buildings at once and not finishing any of them.
Fixing technical errors, refining and creating new landing pages, is more important than actively building external links. And if there is not enough money for everything, it is better to focus on your on-page SEO rather than off-page SEO because of its effectiveness.
This means that after they are finished, you can calmly deal with increasing the links. And there are many such examples.
The situation is similar with traffic channels. If your audience is on three social networks, you can test ads on each of them, and then focus 80% of your efforts on only one that provides the best result. The rest can be done by investing in the already earned funds.
4. Remove unnecessary content
When it comes to generating content for Search Engine Optimization, one of the biggest mistakes that companies make is focusing on quantity rather than quality. In this sense, what may happen is that businesses create a lot of pages without enough content just because they want to have more pages for SEO.
In SEO, there are also many ways to spend time and budget on work that does not particularly affect the result. Moreover, this can eat off a good half of the available resources. So it’s worth figuring out – what you need to spend money on, and what you can don’t need.
However, for this, it is better to consult with a specialist, to avoid any possible problems.
5. Take on some of the work
If you have some budget for Search Engine Optimization set aside, it doesn’t mean that you have to outsource every aspect of SEO. One way to save money on SEO is to hire a specialist or an agency for a part of the services, but take on some of the work yourself, especially the aspects where you feel more confident in.
It all comes down to the management of your resources. Think about the best SEO strategy for your business, what work can some of your employees take on, and outsource the aspects in which you feel you don’t have that much experience in.
6. Focus on audience retention
In many cases, keeping your audience and your customers is a lot cheaper than generating new traffic. For this reason, it’s very important to focus on audience retention to ensure good results long-term.
In the long run, this will reduce the cost of attracting new website visitors, especially when it comes to niches with high repeat sales potential (mostly B2C). This includes, for example, things like building up your social media followers and increasing your email newsletter base.
These practices have proven their effectiveness over and over again.
And it’s not even about the traffic. For practically all businesses, what’s more important than traffic is sales. Profit is what drives all businesses because without it, they wouldn’t be able to survive.
Getting good profits from your existing audience allows you to spend less money on aggressively attracting new visitors. You can promote the site slowly but surely.
7. Focus on on-page SEO
As we mentioned previously, working on your on-page SEO is usually much more important than investing time and budget on generating backlinks. If you write high-quality content, links will come naturally and that’s what Google values for search rankings. Internal optimization is much more important.
Ignoring internal factors is one of the biggest mistakes that companies make. Make sure to actively publish quality content, create new landing pages and optimize your existing ones based on data from analytics. This is a simple and straightforward recipe for success.
8. Diversify and analyze
At the beginning of this article says that the promotion of the site should focus on those areas that provide the greatest payback. That’s absolutely true, but if the opportunity arises, it will never be too much to diversify your efforts.
For example, you can experiment with new channels to attract traffic that you consider promising, and the competition there is relatively low. There may be many reasons why competitors are not interested in them – small growth potential, the complexity of work, etc.
This does not mean that the website itself is bad, even on the contrary – you can get even a small but additional source of traffic, reducing dependence on the main one. And if there are a lot of them, the effect will be significant.
The main condition under which this can positively affect the cost of promotion and benefit you is constant analytics. Calculate ROI, cost per click, cost per lead, and other metrics. And after some time, compare the data from different periods.
Remember that everything takes time
Remember that getting good results with your Search Engine Optimization strategy takes time, especially if your project is new and unknown to search engines. So, it will take time for search engines to find it, index it, and evaluate its situation to see where it should be ranking.
So, it is important to be patient and not get stressed out if you don’t see results right away, because the chances are that they won’t be immediate. Keep your patience, continue investing your time effectively, and you will inevitably see the results that you are looking for your organization.
Bio
Helen Wilson is a professional content writer at WriteAnyPapers.com. Her main spheres of specialization are Marketing and SEO. She also studies topics about psychology and health.
