10 Affordable SEO Tips to Improve Your Ranking

2. Combine Paid Advertising with SEO

The truth hurts. Prepare for the pain: 90% of people who use Google never scroll past the first page of results.

Combine SEO with paid advertising for the best, most affordable results.

Paid advertising covers the people that your SEO efforts overlook. It works for customers who know what they want. They respond to ads focused on their needs. They buy.

Study your analytics. It should tell you where to place ads for people who want your services and/or products. Even SEO costs. Well, it does if it’s good.

Pay for advertising and combine it with effective SEO for the best results. It earns you more than it costs. It gets good rankings. That qualifies as affordable in marketing.

3. Make the Most of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing used to be like the used car salesman of the internet. It mostly appeared on a lot of spam-infused sites promoting shady deals and products. Things change.

Look at Instagram. People make tons of money marketing products they love. Some market products that companies ask them to market.

Now is the time to find people who love your product or service, and don’t mind publicizing it for you.

A great place to find these people is on your company’s social media sites. Do a little research and see who

• writes stellar reviews
• who comments consistently
• who has a strong following. 

Combined with SEO tools like keywords, affiliate marketers can put you in touch with people ready to pay for what you offer.

All of this improves your rankings.

4. Modify Your Website

Get rid of bad links and out of date HTML. Ensure that all technical aspects of the site work. When all of that works, the robots who scan websites to rank them give your site a higher ranking.

If you lack an in-house team, hire professionals to design the site for you. This saves money on correcting mistakes like bad HTML. It also improves the look.

All of these tactics keep your website fresh and readable. That keeps eyes on the page. Eyes that belong to people who are more likely to become paying customers.

It also lessens the likelihood of having to shell out more money for a re-design. That’s affordable SEO.

5. Conduct Free Keyword Searches

Before paying for keywords, take advantage of a free search. Several options exist that help you do this. They tell you what you want to pay for at a later date.

This saves money on paying for unnecessary searches and words.Prior to doing the search, make an outline of words because free searches limit usage.

Use a site like GoogleAdWords.com or AnswerthePublic.com.

Avoid sites that insist you use a location with your keyword. That limits you.

Follow these steps: 

• Use one keyword
• Use it in all of the research sites you use.
• Use it in the same order each time.
• Place the data for each search into one report for analysis.

Expert tip for your search: Try it without using a lot of filters. This generates more words.

Then, add in a location. And keep in mind that people are using voice-activated searches now because of smartphones.

Therefore, keywords need to reflect natural language searches. Good keywords equate to higher rankings.

6. Keep your Blog Updated

Hopefully, your website features a blog. If not, it’s time to create one. Blogging remains very much in style.

It’s annoying to check out a company only to see that they haven’t updated their blog in a few years. Even worse, it gives a bad impression. It looks like the company has nothing going on.

People leave the website sooner when there’s nothing to read. If you’re not going to keep the site updated, there’s no point in paying for one in the first place.

Make sure that search engines know about your blog. Include viable links. Make rankings matter.

7. Write Longer Content 

Gone are the days of short and sweet blog posts. Fluff doesn’t work, either. People read company blogs to learn

• a process or product
• insider info via reviews or conferences 
• something fun or interesting related to their industry.

Other tips for writing longer content include:

• using fewer adjectives and adverbs
• using more verbs
• using shorter sentences.

To find content, scan the newspapers and blogs you admire. Find out what the followers on your social media page want to know by reading comments and tweets. All of that is free.

Good content keeps eyes on the page and converts clients. Social media provides free advertising. It’s a win-win.

In the long run, this type of content shows up in a lot of first-page searches, especially if you link your sources.

8. Adjust for International SEO Needs

Multiple language content translations can cost a lot of money. Plan for it. If you don’t, then you will end up spending more than you need.

To save money, write the content in English that’s easy to translate. Avoid telling jokes or making pop cultural references that lack easy-to-understand visuals.

Remember, not every word or concept or funny bit translates. Also, paying for complete rewrites in each language costs more than paying for translations.

Keep the English version easy to translate. This influences how robots scan your international content for rankings. 

9. Pitch Your Brand

In the US and UK, 1.7 billion press releases bombard journalists yearly. Of course, they don’t read all of them. But you want them to read yours. Free press is coveted.

However, it can be received. It comes via strong relationship building. Therefore, don’t send out untargeted press releases. 

Identify the magazines, newspapers, and podcasts you want to feature your company. Start with smaller sources to build media clips.

Reporters want to see you offer some newsworthiness. Contact reporters before editors. Reporters want stories.

Tempt them with something no one else knows.  Confirm that the reporters you target cover your kind of story.  Follow their work. Share it.

Make comments on it before you pitch your idea. Free PR is a wonderful thing. It directs people toward your website and blog and social media pages.

It increases your appearance in search engines. And all of that happens without spending a dime. Now, let’s look at number ten.

Number 10: The Most Important Tip of All

Affordable SEO is not easy to do well. If you don’t have a team of in-house professionals, you might need outside help.

If you do have a team of in-house professionals, you might still need outside help.

You may wonder why we’ve spent all this time talking about saving money yet the last tip advises you to take on a large expense by hiring an SEO professional. 

Sometimes, an outsider needs to make fresh suggestions. That means you pay more in the initial stages.

But in the long run, this process saves money. If it works, then it makes money. An increase in profits is what business is about.

When you meet with an affordable SEO professional, you can

• ask for references
• read their blogs
• meet with them for a consultation

without spending a dime.

If you need more suggestions as well as a solid SEO plan that gets results, contact me. My name is David Carralon. Fill out my contact form. We can arrange to meet.

Your high ranking is my high ranking.