Most of use are looking for things like affordable search engine optimisation, partly because SEO so often seems to be a case of how much the search engine optimisation company thinks you can afford to pay. But also because you need to get a return on your SEO investment.
So, how can you go about getting affordable search engine optimisation?
It’s worth doing your homework before you even approach an SEO company. You’ll have an idea of how competitive your industry is, whether that’s on a local basis or national. Much will depend on how far people will travel for the services you offer. Regular purchases tend to be a lot more local than irregular ones – it’s unlikely you’ll travel 100 miles just to get your hair cut, for instance.
Generally, local search engine optimisation is a lot easier than national or international SEO, so it follows that you should be charged less for a local SEO campaign than one that targets the whole country.
Of course, like everything to do with search engine optimisation, there are exceptions to that rule.
Any industry that has services that can be delivered to you by a firm elsewhere in the country is open for competition on at least a national scale. House insurance is a good example of this – the recent mushroom-like growth of price comparison sites means that local insurance brokers are having to compete with companies that have national buying power.
So you may be forced into an area of more competition, which will affect the price of any affordable search engine optimisation you decide to go for.
Another thing to remember when you’re looking for affordable search engine optimisation is that SEO isn’t a one off payment.
It works best when you spend money on a regular basis, whether that’s a low budget or a higher one.
Trying to do your search engine optimisation in fits and starts doesn’t work as well as being more consistent. It’s the modern day equivalent of the tortoise and the hare: racing ahead and then taking a break may give you a short term advantage but is a lot less likely to benefit you in the long term.
Doing your SEO in short bursts is likely flag your site in Google as a short term news event. Prior to the volcanic gas problem in Iceland recently, next to no-one was searching for that term. Then the activity happened both in the air and online, so Google’s algorithm is trained to take account of that pattern and boost any news accordingly. Once the searches drop back to normal levels, the sites that were pushed just because of the volcano news drop back in the search results, leaving the usual suspects – Wikipedia, etc – at or near the top.
If you do your SEO work sporadically, you run a very real risk of that happening to your site.
Which means that your search for affordable search engine optimisation needs to take account of your likely budget both now and in the forseeable future. It’s far better to spend a consistent amount on your SEO month in, month out, than to do a burst of SEO work for a month and then leave everything to gather digital dust for a year. All that does is reward your competitors and leaves you having to spend more next time round just to catch up.