Affordable SEO Ideas

One of the biggest challenges a company or person can face is how to divide time and/or Funds to SEO or Search Engine Optimization. One of the biggest challenges can be determining your ROI (return on investment). You have to factor in several details to have an accurate idea of the cost versus value when it comes to Affordable SEO.

Affordable SEO and ROI

What do YOU consider affordable? How much is YOUR time worth? What can YOU afford to spend on marketing? Are you paying for Pay Per Click?

All of these questions should be answered honestly to determine the best course of action for you and your business. If you have no capital to invest, then the answer is rather simple. You have to do SEO on your own. If you do have capital then it may be best to bring in an outside SEO expert to help with your campaign. Depending on your budget, you may be able to outsource some of the work, while keeping other parts in house.

If your time is extremely valuable, like that of a Doctor or Attorney, it makes little sense to spend time doing SEO. You would likely be better off seeing clients and letting someone else handle the heavy lifting.

But what if your business is not to the point that it can afford to hire anyone? Do not worry there are some helpful tips that can assist you in your SEO efforts and as long as you devote the time, you can save money.

Affordable SEO Practices

To truly be able to save money on your SEO campaign, you have to remember to get your on page SEO done correctly. This includes all of your HTML as well as creating content for your website. The content should be frequently updated, unique and reader friendly. You can visit some of our other blog posts to see what we mean when it comes to on page SEO. Be sure to include videos and Images with the proper tags in order for the Search Engines to understand what the page is about.

Once you have your on page SEO complete it is time to start off page SEO. Remember the Search Engines frown upon paid linkbuilding and spammy techniques. They want to see your site get recognized naturally in order to place it where it belongs. This does not mean you cannot go out and actively list your business or website. In fact, some of the methods I will mention are perfectly normal and acceptable to all.

Common Affordable Off Page SEO Practices

Here is a brief list of Off Page SEO that is both easy and affordable. Remember all this really takes is time, so weigh the value of your time versus the value of your time spent elsewhere.

Social Media- Creating a Facebook Page and Twitter Page is a good way to get your site noticed by the search engines. Once you have a following if you provide good content that your followers link to, it will help with your search engine rankings. Most search engines use social metrics now as one of the ways to grade relevance.

Video Marketing- Everyone loves a good video. If you provide a useful video that helps users, they are likely to show others online. These types of links can become very valuable to your website.

Directory Listing- Almost all regions have a local business directory, don’t be afraid to list your business and your site on them. It helps with a link and it also helps users find your business.

Press Releases- Do you have a newsworthy event? How about a grand opening? A press release will provide you with a valuable link as well as possibly drive visitors to your site.

Article Writing- Are you an expert in your chosen field? If so you can contribute informative articles to other websites that show your expertise and again, provide a valuable link to your site.

Blogging- The web is full of blogs, people like to read fresh news and information. If you have the time, creating and maintaining a blog is a good way to attract readers, who will likely visit your site.

Affordable SEO Secret Tip

Here is a tip that is not used often enough. Alerts!!! Most search engines have some sort of alert system. I prefer to use Google Alerts for my websites. You can set up an alert that tells you anytime a topic you are interested in is discussed on the web. When this happens you get an email with a link to the conversation. This is an EXCEPTIONAL time to follow the link and add to the discussion. If you are an expert on the subject the readers will likely respect your opinion and even visit your site. This is highly underused and any serious business person should be using this to maximum advantage.

When it comes to finding ways to conduct an Affordable SEO campaign, all it takes is time and a willingness to succeed. Of course depending on how much time you have or how much your time is worth will dictate where you should spend your time. If you have any questions please visit our Contact page, Guerrilla SEO is a Tampa SEO provider that specializes in Affordable SEO.

 

 

Tampa SEO- The Importance of Content

 

One of the least glamorous yet most critical aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the Creation of Unique Content for your website. Most if not all Search Engines look for frequently updated, yet unique content to index on the web. The fresher and more relevant the content on your site, the better it will be for your SEO effort!

There are a number of reasons why this is vital to the health of your site.

More content gives the search engines more information about your site, If you have an article or two on your site then what your site is about can be very broad. However as you add more content the search engine spiders will have an easier time determining your site topics.

More content acts as more “Link Bait”. Link bait is simply good information, images or videos that inspire someone to link back to your site. As more sites link to yours, the search engines see your site as more relevant and in some cases as an authority site.

Fresh Information, is key. Fresh information tends to get some precedence over older stale information. Imagine searching for your favorite team online, would you want to see information from 5 years ago, or would you prefer to see the most recent information about your team?

Formatting your Content

The proper use of “H” or heading tags, helps the Search Engines determine the most important topics on your page. You should have your keywords in the tags, if they make sense. Remember, even though you want your page to be liked by a search engine, the real reason to prepare content should always be for the user. The more users enjoy your content, the more likely they will be to return to your site for information.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is simply linking some of your on page content to OTHER parts of your own website. As an example here I will Link

TAMPA SEO

back to the main page of this site. What this essentially does is it tells the search engine that the keyword on this page is relevant to another page on your website. In addition, it gives the search engine spiders more crawling opportunities on your website.

Tampa SEO- Final Thoughts

If you put this information together, you should be able to create good content for your site, yet still make it readable to the search engines. Also keep in mind that as you introduce new content that the spiders will begin to crawl your webpages regularly. The more info you provide, the higher authority your site will have. The more authority you gain, the more people will find your site, the more people that find your site the more that can and will translate to sales.

Remember, even though sometimes the creation of new On Page Content can seem mundane, it plays a very important role is your SEO efforts. More importantly, it gives your readers a reason to return to your site!

Feel free to contact Guerrilla-Seo, A Tampa SEO Company, with any questions about our SEO services and packages!

Tampa SEO- Understanding the Search Engines

 

To Understand the future of SEO we have to take a look back into the past and what the internet was like before search engines. With the advent of the internet came the 1st webpages.

The way people found webpages was simple, your friend would tell you, hey check out this site and you would type in the web address (URL) and there you were. There were no search engines so being able to search for a website was impossible. Later came directories, someone decided that “hey, I will track the websites I know about and list them here in my directory.” That was a good idea, but again if you did not know the directory URL then you had no way to find the information, additionally the information was often incomplete. This idea did lead to the very 1st search engines, in 1995 Yahoo launched and became the most widely used Search Engine (SE) of it’s time!!

The initial search engines were nothing like they are today. They basically indexed based on keyword but there was no measure of popularity. In other words the relevance of the site to your search was seriously in question. The algorithm was extremely basic and the results were often hit and miss. This still was a big improvement from having nothing but it was not the best answer. This is the time that SEO came into being but again, the method was very weak and was based primarily on the keywords and the frequency of use on a website which of course can easily be manipulated. Site popularity was a factor in SE results but a small one, to understand how a site becomes popular let create a little example.

We will say a new website came to be and we will call it Ralph’s website.
This is an example of how Ralph’s website would climb in popularity and become a relevant search.

• Ralph creates a website with good, interesting content. He formats his page correctly for search engines and human visitors.
• Ralph then tells his friends about his site and shows him the interesting information and his friends like it.
• These friends like the site so much that they tell others about the site! By now Ralph has listed his site in a directory or two.
• A few of the people that visited Ralph’s site have websites of their own and because they liked the information they put a link on their own site advertising Ralph’s site. Ralph was also proactive and found other webmasters who would agree to put a link on their site about Ralph’s new site.
• Next thing you know people who would see Ralph’s listing in the directory or on any of these other sites start visiting Ralph’s site too!
• Soon, some of these others would like Ralph’s site too and also place a link back to Ralph.
• Next thing you know, Ralph’s site has received so much attention that there are many other websites listing Ralph’s site and nearly everyone knows about his interesting information.

The reason for all of the link placements was not to try to get placed in a search engine but to generate REAL visitors!

By having a link in a directory or in Yahoo it was considered very important to your site. Not because of “popularity” but to drive visitors to your site. A link from Yahoo or other Search Engine was important but not too important for SEO purposes, the reason was because the Search Engines still used keywords as the main factor for finding a relevant site. Many webmasters would use a technique called “keyword stuffing” to try to get better results from a search, unfortunately that was the only method of SEO available because the keywords on the page were the main force behind rankings.

As the internet grew and more and more sites were popping up, the old method of ranking became obsolete. Webmaster would just flood their own site with keywords and then the would have a site ranking. Also simply counting the number of backlinks was ineffective because all the webmaster would have to do is go out and find links to trade as well as list their site in multiple directories. A better answer had to be available!

A Stanford student named Larry Page set out to create an algorithm that would track what the natural growth pattern of a site would look like as it was gaining popularity. The algorithm would not just count keywords and number of links but it would measure how the links interconnect and grow based on organic growth WITHOUT the help of a search engine. The algorithm, known as the Page Rank Algorithm, was based on finding the footprint that occurred when a site was rising in popularity on it’s own. That mindset was based upon the fact that if the site was growing on it’s own then it was a site that people wanted to visit and provided relevant information.

This is how Google was born, Larry Page and Sergey Brin designed a search engine that was able to provide better and more relevant results for the people searching the internet for subject matter.
The new search engine algorithm transformed how webmasters had to work on their sites. No longer could they just stuff the keyword in the HTML of the site or place the words all over the webpage and get results. Nor could they just trade links to get irrlevant backlinks to their webpage, Google had become very good at sorting and finding the most popular sites with the best information.

Modern SEO is based around mimicking the natural growth pattern of a website gaining popularity.

In order to do that you need back-links, not just mass quantities of links but relevant valuable links that will help your site. The Search Engines algorithms change all the time but one thing remains the same. The goal is to find the site most relevant to your search and it does this by examining your on page factors as well as your off page popularity.

Bear in mind that no two sites have the exact same link pattern and also remember that the algorithms are secret. However if you think it through a naturally occurring site rising in popularity will have links from personal type sites, possibly articles, bookmarks, directories etc.. In addition many of the sites pointing to these site will ALSO have links pointing to them! The most important thing to remember is that even today the Search Engines are looking for the same thing they were looking for in the past, a site that is gaining popularity just like Ralph’s website did back in the day!

While doing your SEO and backlinking NEVER forget that all you are trying to do is simulate the growth pattern of a site rising in popularity naturally!

With a good SEO provider and a sound strategy you can artificially create the type of “buzz” needed to skip months and sometime YEARS of natural growth. Please remember however if your site is not worthy of such ranking that you can and will lose it. The idea is to actually HAVE a site worthy of a top ranking and then “jump start” the process so the masses know about you. If your site is not relevant to the topic or search term then it will likely not hold it’s position for long.

By taking excellent care of your website and being relevant to the keywords important to you then you can effectively begin an SEO campaign that will benefit you and your company.

Organic Search Listings Provide a Higher ROI Yet Paid Search Listings Dominate the Internet Marketing Budgets

 

“Men Lie, Women Lie, Numbers don’t Lie.” ~Jay Z, AMA Acceptance Speech

 

You don’t need to be an accountant or a Jay Z fan to understand the truth in that statement. When it comes to internet marketing dollars roughly 85% of all dollars are spent on paid listings and only 11% are allocated to Search Engine Optimization. In 2010 Google generated roughly $30 BILLION in revenue, 97% of that coming from internet advertisers. Why not? Paid advertising allows a company to show as a relevant result to a targeted customer instantly!

When it comes to marketing dollars companies are always seeking a ROI, sometimes a good ROI blinds company representatives to other equally or more effective methods of advertising online.

 

Enter SEO- Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is not a science, it’s an art. As such there are quite a few skeptics regarding what an SEO firm can do for them. But we will discuss that at a later date, right now I want to show you some data regarding user behavior and discuss potential ROI.

COMSCORE.com has shown us that only 21% of users click on paid advertising yet paid advertising generates 85% of the revenue.

In addition, according to an eyetools.com study of user eye movement while searching the web, it found that the vast majority of users view results from top down and left to right. The image below is the “Google Heatmap” that shows you where the majority of eyes go during a search.

 

Also the data is broken down into easily understood numbers:

 

Organic Ranking Visibility

(shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location)

Rank 1 – 100%
Rank 2 – 100%
Rank 3 – 100%
Rank 4 – 85%
Rank 5 – 60%
Rank 6 – 50%
Rank 7 – 50%
Rank 8 – 30%
Rank 9 – 30%
Rank 10 – 20%

Side sponsored ad visibility

(shown in percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location)

1 – 50%
2 – 40%
3 – 30%
4 – 20%
5 – 10%
6 – 10%
7 – 10%
8 – 10%

 

The numbers above show that even the 7th result in a Google search has as much visibility as the 1st result in a side sponsored ad.

Want some more numbers? Lets conduct a little mathematical experiment to see what the potential value of SEO can be vs. PPC.

For this experiment we are going to be very conservative with certain assumptions regarding an organic result but at the same time we are going to be very generous with our assumptions regarding a PPC result.

We have already discovered that PPC results are clicked on 21% of the time and organic results are clicked 75% of the time. Lets also make these assumptions:

• The Cost Per Click to Your company is $5
• The Search Volume of your keyword target is 5000 searches per month
• Your PPC ad is so convincing that of all the ads on the page YOURS manages to get a 45% share of the PPC volume
• Lets also assume that an organic listing on page 1 gets a paltry 10% share of the organic volume
• Lets assume that the lifetime value of a converted click is $500
• Lets assume that the conversion rate for both is 3%
• Lets assume you are paying $1000 per month for SEO

Based on these numbers we have the following data for the PPC results- follow along!

Search volume of 5000 PPC gets 21% of that so that is 1050 people that will click on ONE of the ads on the page.

We have determined that even though there is likely 10 or 11 paid results YOUR amazing ad gains a 45% share of all the PPC results. 1050×45% leaves you with 472.5 clicks on YOUR ad. Lets round up to 473.

We also have settled on a 3% conversion rate, so 473 clicks times 3% is 14.19 conversions, again lets round up to 15.

So now you have 15 sales and each sale has a lifetime value of $500, so you made a tidy $7500 from that ad.

The ad itself cost you $5 per click and you had 473 clicks, so you spent $2365 to make that $7500 or a profit of  $5135!!

Amazing right? I agree, that is a very nice return on investment, lets look at an organic result.

Remember that the organic result gets 75% of all clicks, so a search volume of 5000 per month gets 3750 clicks.

We also agreed that the organic listing has nowhere near the amazing click through rate of your incredible paid listing, we settled on 10%, so your site gets 375 of those clicks.

Now using the same conversion rate of 3% we made 11 sales and the value of each sale is $500 so that is a total value of $5500. We ended up spending $1000 for the SEO work so we made $4500.

PPC wins right? $5135 vs $4500! In the words of Lee Corso “Not so fast my friend!”

Using any online ROI calculator you get these figures: PPC ROI= 217.1%, Organic ROI=450%

Remember for our calculations we assumed you got a 45% share of all the PPC results and only a 10% share of the Organic results. Truth be told you will very likely have a lower share of the PPC results and a larger share of the Organic results depending on your placement in the rankings.

So which option is best?

The answer is BOTH!

If you have the means you should combine a PPC campaign with an SEO campaign and get the benefit of both. Remember a paid listing is nearly instant but when you stop paying your disappearence from the results is also instant.

On the other hand an SEO campaign may take some time to develop however depending on the length of your campaign the benefits of your ranking may last weeks or months after you stop paying for SEO.

The smartest business people realize the value of an organic page 1 result, if you are interested in claiming your spot on page 1 contact Guerrilla SEO a Tampa SEO provider!

Remember- “Men Lie, Women Lie, Numbers don’t Lie.”

Tampa SEO- The Basics

 

Sometimes you could throw everything including the kitchen sink at your site and it nonetheless manages to remain stuck in place or even moves in reverse. This is since you are employing the wrong tactics in order to move up the charts. Look at these solid S.E.O. strategies when you are tired of putting in maximum effort for minimum outcomes.

To maximize the impact of your picture ALT descriptions, include precise keywords like image or picture. Countless men and women using image searches use one of these two keywords. Taking advantage of that will give your picture a higher ranking & bring you even more image search traffic. Try to differ what keywords you use to pull in traffic from a variety of sources.

You’ll need to make your site pop up in the google search results. Construct a genuinely solid site and use search engine optimization to get it identified. If other neighborhood firms within your region don’t have this, you’ll stand out like a shining star from the crowd.

Your Web address must contain your keyword phrase. It is essential to your keyword in your domain name, however you could not continually do that. The subsequent best factor is getting it in your URL. Search engines will read the URLS & give value to the text that is there.

When you are trying to expand traffic from search engines, it pays to research which keywords are generating the most interest at the moment. Most of the significant search engine sites sustain a continuously updated database of what well-liked keywords users are on the look out  for. Ascertain which are most appropriate for your site, and work in the trending keywords to produce increasing traffic.

Search engine crawlers recognize hidden keywords as unethical techniques to enhance site ratings. So caution is necessary, with Search engine optimization optimization, decide on ways that will really strengthen your ratings rather than lowering them. For instance this post is about SEO and I offer Tampa SEO services, you must be careful not to try to hide keywords with unethical methods or “stuff” your keywords in the Meta or body of your pages.

Server headers are a huge deal when it comes to search engine optimization. Should you are in the market for studying more about them or seeing where they fall merely search “check server header” to find a free online tool that will assist you with this. You need to ensure your URLS report a 200 ok status or a 301 moved permanently if they are supposed to be redirects. You consistently want to ensure that your links are setup properly throughout your site and used frequently on all your pages. This really is the easiest & fastest technique to check on this.

Be sure to have a “link to” option accessible to your visitors. Through these logos and link text that carry keywords or key phrases, visitors may need to link to your site. You ought to take into consideration offering this through email to your advertising list as well. It is an easy method to get your site known, and more pertinent with search engines.

It is in fact tougher to find good Tampa SEO facts than it’s to put it in practice once you do locate it. Keep in mind to normally use short and easy tips like these to resolve the troubles with your site to boost your overall search engine results. If you can follow these strategies, you can begin to climb up in the ranks.

Guerrilla SEO is a specialist in Tampa SEO. For more information visit our Contact Us Page.