Affordable SEO services: How not to pour your business revenue down the drain?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services help businesses grow in several ways. But, do affordable SEO services for small businesses exist? The comforting bright side for small businesses and new start-ups is that Yes, affordable SEO services do exist. But what is more important is choosing to partner with a reliable SEO service provider.

Affordable SEO services and Cheap SEO services: The Difference

Before proceeding into how low-cost SEO services for small businesses can bring a high Return on Investment (ROIs), it’s important to understand the difference between affordable SEO services and cheap SEO services.

Affordable SEO services: With so many SEO providers online, distinguishing between the two may sometimes be daunting but certain things and a little homework can help you in selecting the best SEO provider to partner with. Some of the distinguishing features are:

• Measurable: The results obtained by affordable SEO services are measurable in real-time. Certain specific markers of successful SEO campaigns are increased traffic, potentiated leads, conversions and sales.
• Efficient: SEO campaigns consist of both types of work: some are a one-time fix and others need constant inputs. The efficiency of an SEO campaign can be seen in results.
• Precise: SEO campaigns can be made affordable through custom solutions for different business types, their budgets and their goals.
• Sustainable: Partnering with providers of affordable SEO services will give your business sustainable results. It may take time for you to rank high on a search engine but your business should sustain there for decent time if it has appeared as a working of white hat SEO practices and as a result, returned by the search engine organically.

Cheap SEO services: These services are entirely different in specifications mentioned above for affordable SEO services delivering successful SEO campaigns.

Measure: Results-driven can be seen overnight through black hat SEO practices. This is a serious issue since your business will be liable to search engine penalties for the same. You can see your business ranking in top searches through instant paid marketing but as soon as you stop pouring money, results will wean away. Moreover, customers are attracted towards organic results rather than paid searches.

Efficiency: Cheap SEO service providers do not pay heed to what you do not know. One-time technical SEO needs technical changes in your website like URL structure, page load speed, etc. Even while dealing with content marketing, rather than quality, they focus more on keyword stuffing.

Copy-and-Paste: They do not design specific SEO campaigns and strategies according to different business needs. Instead, they use some template-based works and may use plagiarized content for your business.

Several companies are offering SEO services and before you spend any money, it’s good to be a penny-pincher. After all, with a limited budget, you cannot afford to lose any money for cheap SEO services.
Some of these saviors for your business and your investment budget that can help you from getting tricked are:

Automated SEO audit: If you sign for free SEO analysis and receive the mail within a few minutes, be suspicious, it can be automated, not actually worked upon by the technical team. Without them having you asked about your business needs, they cannot help you with genuine SEO.

SEO tools: Try to gather knowledge about the SEO tools they use. Some automated tools for E-mails, Thanksgiving, newsletters, etc can be used but content spinning cannot be permissible. There are several free online tools to check if the content is plagiarized or not.

Testimonials and online reviews: Check for the online reviews and testimonials of the service providers and hear what their clients say about their services. You can also check for their case studies on how and what results they have achieved for clients under specific niches.

Some questions you can ask before signing up with any SEO provider which will give you an insight as to what and how they work and whether they can provide affordable small business SEO services or not are:

Ask for some sample works in your niches and see where they rank on the search engine. Just type for their targeted keyword and you can yourself see the rank.
Ask for how your SEO budget will be bifurcated and what it will go into getting?
Ask them for your site’s current position and what changes they can make and what to expect from these changes and by when.

After all, every penny you spend on SEO will not come back to you but it should come back as a multiple in handsome figures in the form of Return on Investment (ROI). That’s what actually is sought when you want to get your site optimized for search engines.

Affordable SEO services: Setting up a realistic budget:

While a business can invest handsomely in SEO regularly, there are small businesses which need to allocate specific budgets for SEO. They may or may not be able to invest like business giants.

Hence, initially they need to put aside some decent money, currently only for much-needed low-cost SEO services for small business. Later on, they can always invest in more which is a wise decision since investing in reliable and smart SEO services return investment the several times in form of potentiated leads and paying customers.

Here are a few tips to guide you through your journey.

1. Deciding on the budget:

When you invest in SEO, you know that the money you are investing will not come back overnight. Hence, you need to decide on a certain amount that you can invest on monthly basis for at least 6 months. All white hat practices take at least 6 months. So, this is the real-time that you will need to give in for an SEO campaign.

Many young companies sometimes invest too much for SEO in the initial phase and when they do not receive results up to their expectations, their belief in SEO shakes. But this is not how you should kickstart any business.

Whether you are a newly introduced entrepreneur or are looking forward to expanding your business, first decide on a figure that you can invest at least for 6 months and then we’ll move ahead to where you should be spending this amount wisely.

2. Keywords research and competitor analysis:

You can start your SEO campaign with a little homework on keywords and this is what you need to talk in-depth with your affordable SEO services for small business or even for large ones looking for expansion.

Either your service provider will do this for you or even you can start it with some common keywords you expect your customers to be typing on a search engine when they are searching to buy products and/or services that you have to offer.

Google autosuggest is one of the best features that instantly tells you what people are looking for online. Then note down these small and long-tail keywords. Check for the organic results that pop up on the top numbers.

Analyse their websites, the difference between them and your sites. Once you know what you have to beat, your service provider will show how to compete. Technical weak points of your website will be elaborated to you by the technical team.

3. Content creation:

Once you research the keywords, you can take leverage of the SEO provider’s expertise in selecting the right keywords to optimize. For each right word, start getting content created.

Ask your service provider for the kind of content they will provide for your site and charges for the same. Content will include all types of written works like articles, blog posts, press releases, newsletters, Thank you messages, Welcome packages, your product descriptions, advertisements, banners, etc.

It also includes all images, infographics, videos, animations that will go onto your site or on advertising portals. How your customer will identify you will have a large impact on whether they are attracted towards your products or they ignore them.

Your SEO provider will look not only into the content creation, but also its exclusivity, quality, apt placement, their size concerns, their load speeds, their names, etc, all of which are responsible for making your site SEO friendly.

4. Kind of SEO:

The kind of SEO campaign is decided on the type of your business. When starting with small budgets, it is better to target the first paying customers. For instance, if you have a local retail store of any kind of goods, a restaurant or are selling perishable items, you need Local SEO services first.

You may want your customers to find you in local business listings. People often search for local stores like ATMs near me, restaurants near me, general stores near me, salons near me, etc. And out of every 10 people who search, 8 or 9 will visit the store from amongst the top 3-4 results.

So, with a local business, you need to target this audience first rather than advertising over bigger portals where advertisements will only take off money without any walk-in customer.

While on other hand, if you are an online service provider, like a consultant, a graphic designer, a content creator, an animator, video creator, you do not need walk-in customers and you can opt for global SEO where high-paying customers can find you for your works.

For e-commerce kind of work, you might need intensive marketing over popular social media channels. Only genuine affordable SEO providers can do this analysis and guide your business in the right direction sparking up your online visibility.

Make the right decision for your business by choosing the right SEO professionals. Feel free to contact SEO Pros for low cost SEO services for small businesses.