Part 2 of 3
More Bang for Your SEO Buck
It’s 2000 and it’s a jungle out there folks. So put on your safari attire and strap on the elephant rifle cause it’s about to get real….
Real competitive that is. Your competition is relentless, consumers are more scrupulous, and the costs of marketing your business are going thru the roof.
So where does search engine optimization fall into this battle scene? Is there even a place for optimizing your blog in 2022? To that, we answer a wholehearted YES. Certainly, we’re a bit biased when it comes to SEO, but the numbers don’t lie:
- 80%+ of consumers still run to Google as the first step in researching a new purchase
- Online reputation and reviews drive trust factors and conversions
- Ads are delivering diminishing returns as consumers are becoming “ad-blind” and are unwilling to be “sold” to
- 70-80%+ of web users AVOID paid ads altogether clicking ONLY on organic listings
- Over 55% of purchase transactions can be traced back to sites found thru search engines
So with those numbers in mind, optimizing your site should be priority # 1 in 2022…and if it is not, or hasn’t been up until this point, you’re already falling behind in the pack.
With PPC costs rising out of control and display ads losing their effectiveness, SEO can yield a very respectable ROI, and dollar for dollar, is still a really solid long-term play.
While every dollar invested in paid ads gets you a 1:1 ratio of “impressions” or views, every dollar spent in optimizing your site can yield exponentially more clicks, views, and engagements over time (sometimes for years to come).
Additionally, because the main focus of SEO is the generation of high-quality content, your links and brand name are often shared organically (and sometimes virally) by others as people find your content useful or relevant to them and their social or work circles.
In fact, one press release submitted for SEO (i.e. backlinks) can go viral across news syndication to the tune of 100s of thousands of sites, reaching an audience of millions overnight. This is especially true if your syndication gets picked up by Google News.
Thus, in the above example, your $125 press release may have yielded an ROI reaching into the 1000s% range.
Can SEO be Effectively Executed on any Budget?
Whereas with paid media and ads your dollar only goes so far. If you have a fixed budget of $500/mo that $500 comes and goes with the clicks and impressions never to be seen again.
With search engine optimization, you can allot as little as ZERO dollars (or rather some sweat equity) or as much as your budget will allow.
No matter which scenario your organization falls into you can find creative ways to execute an ENTIRE SEO optimization strategy on a shoestring budget and still yield solid results.
The following are a few “low to no cost” suggestions:
- Offer to conduct and publish interviews of sellers of synergistic products and services on your blog. For example, if you run a fitness blog, you could reach out to personal trainers or supplement sellers and offer to do a written or audio interview to be published on your or other sites.
- Reach out to bloggers and offer to do a guest post swap whereby they write an article for your blog and you write one to be posted on theirs
- Utilize a number of “free” press release syndication services online…sure you won’t get into Forbes or the Washington Post, but you’ll get good distribution regardless, and hey, its free.
- Reach out to social influencers or admins/moderators of social pages in your niche and ask if you can provide their readers with some free content, a coupon, etc. in exchange for a backlink
- Reach out to others in your niche but not directly competitive to you who have email lists and ask if they would be willing to send an email to their audience on your behalf (i.e. offer something of value).
- Optimize your on-page SEO. This is free if you know how to do it yourself, or you can hire an SEO agency to help you with the process. Building backlinks without first optimizing your site is like putting a turbo-charger on a Toyota Prius, it might sound cool but it is not going anywhere fast.
- Hire an SEO firm to help you develop and execute a proper link-building strategy. Just make sure you vet them well as there are unfortunately a lot of scam artists in the industry…and even in 2022, this hasn’t changed.
The above are only a handful of ways in which you can quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively launch an optimization campaign that is certain to get your site the visibility it deserves in no time flat.
SEO Isn’t the Icing on the Cake…It’s a Critical Ingredient for your site
Yeah, yeah, by now you get that SEO is an important asset in your marketing channel, but really it is much more than that.
Search engine optimization is, in large part, the way in which you help Google and other search engines to appropriately classify, organize, display and understand your blog and site.
Optimization techniques can be used to showcase your business on search engines and help put them in the best possible light (i.e. meta tags/descriptions = sales headlines for your business).
One of the biggest mistakes we see OFTEN is that a business will develop an amazing website will all the bells and whistles, but fail to consider optimization along the way.
What they end up with is a shiny (albeit great-looking) website that is at a severe disadvantage when it comes to actually gain visibility in the search engines. Optimization in 2022 needs to be woven into the fabric of your site and should be a key…no critical…consideration from stage one of site development all the way thru to deployment.
If you’re sitting there thinking “well I guess I’m screwed”, hang tight. A good SEO firm can help remediate SOME of the issues with your site in retrospect (and some they can’t). But, it will take significantly more effort, time…and of course money.
But my CMS is SEO Friendly Already
This is a common misconception in 2022. For example, WordPress used to get ALL the Google love due to their integrated blog system which enabled even the most technically inept to post fresh content to feed Google with ease.
However, just like the song says, “…the times they are a-changing.” Many CMS’s in 2022 do more harm than good, and WordPress is one of the WORST culprits.
Bloated code, slow plugins, and security issues plague WordPress and other CMS platforms, leading to slower load times (a major SEO signal in 2022), poor user experiences equating to fewer page views, higher bounce rates, and more. All of which are negative ranking signals in Google’s massive algorithm. Salterra has mastered the speed and security of WordPress websites and it is still the most affordable web design option out there.
Till Next Time….
Guide to Why you Need SEO Part 1
Guide to Why you Need SEO Part 3
About Salterra Digital Services
Salterra was started in 2011 by Terry and Elisabeth Samuels; nothing fancy and nothing pretentious. Quality work at a fair price. Starting with a web design focus, they both quickly learned that while having an amazing website to highlight your business is a great start, marketing is intrinsically foundational for our clients. When several clients were not seeing results through the search efforts of other companies, Terry took it to the next level. While digging into SEO and marketing, he found something he was very passionate about. His inner geek pushed him to focus solely on the data and analytics side of the business while Elisabeth built on her creative and visual strength and expanded the design side. In the industry, it is not always common to have both designers and digital marketing so closely connected, but to them it made perfect sense. Salterra’s World Headquarters is in Tempe Arizona
Terry and Elisabeth are the Hosts of Roundtable SEO Mastermind Series and SEO Spring Training Conference.
