Search engine optimisation is an incredibly important strategy for any business. Ranking at the top of Google will help you generate new leads and sales – but it isn’t always easy. Sure, you can dive right in and pay some spam forum or website to publish a link to your website. While you might enjoy the thrill of published content, this will be short lived. Search engines always choose quality over quantity, so steer clear of ‘buy links HERE’ websites.
On the other hand, hiring an affordable SEO agency can have tremendous benefits for your business. So, how do you differentiate an affordable SEO company from ones that will leave a huge dent in your finances? Reputation, Reliability and Results.
It all comes down to the three ‘R’s’ which tell you everything you need to know about an SEO agency. While we always recommend hiring an SEO agency to work on the more technical aspects of your digital marketing that give you page one rankings, here are some affordable SEO tips to get you started:
1) On-page SEO is important
Internal ranking factors often take a backseat in favour of link building, social communications and outreach methods. While these are essential ranking factors (link building is the most valuable), ignoring on-page SEO is a big mistake.
On-page SEO is the process of optimising website content (meta titles and URLs especially) to appear higher up in the SERP’s. If you think it sounds complicated, fear not. We have simplified Google’s best practices:
Keywords: Frequency is the key here. Over optimisation is a big no in the eyes of Google. However, using a keyword in moderation to give some indication as to what your content is about, is really important. For every 400-800 words, make sure your keyword appears at least a couple of times in the body of copy.
Meta Title and Description: What people don’t know, but 100% should, is that your meta information is essential to SEO. While content is still going to influence your rankings, meta titles, descriptions and alt tags hold more weight when it comes to priority. For best results, include the target keyword, make sure it reads well, and keep it under the 70-character limit.
URL: A keyword-friendly URL is a must. Keep these short, include the right symbols for readability, and always feature your target keyword.
2) Create long-form content
If you think about it logically, the more content on-page the better. Google is crawling millions of websites daily to index and rank accordingly. If you want your business to rank, then you need to create informative, search optimised content that answers specific questions.
But don’t sacrifice quality content just to reach a certain word count – your readers will switch off, and so will Google. For 3 types of content that people love to share read our previous post.
3) Linking
Search engines use links to find connections between pages. Linking to relevant, high authorative sites will give your website a boost too. Once you’ve linked to other websites, your job is not over. Interlinking to your blog, services and contact pages will encourage engagement and decrease bounce rate. Google will also start to recognise trends in your link structure and rank your pages accordingly.
4) Make use of a free SEO audit tool
You have built over 50 links, optimised your on-page content and started to publish regular blog articles. So, why is your site not ranking? To answer these questions, and to give you further recommendations, use a free SEO audit tool. This will give you a detailed analysis, including technical SEO, spam content issues, focus keywords, site structure, backlinks etc.
5) Hire an affordable SEO agency
An SEO’er can charge thousands of pounds for a simple blog article. That’s ridiculous. What you need is an affordable alternative that will bring in the biggest return on investment for your business.
We came across Bigfoot Digital by doing a quick Google search for local SEO agencies. They came out on top for SEO Barnsley, SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds and SEO London, so we were really impressed. For more information about their affordable digital marketing services, then give them a call here.