With my recent blog entries I’ve been talking about budget SEO and how to build a decent low-budget (US$500) SEO scheme. In this part I’m going to briefly address content and keyword targeting issues.
In traditional SEO the selected approach is (maybe too often) "find best possible keywords to support customer business and target for them with copywriting and linkage"; this usually requires in depth research and large scale on-page changes. Because of time and budget limitations of low-budget SEO scheme, an alternative approach is needed.
IMO the answer lies in focusing on existing content and enhancing its strengths. For this I have come up with a 3 phase plan:
- Study the content; find what the content is about and enhance that focus.
- Study the log files; analyzing existing keyword data can be highly efficient.
- Use Wordtracker’s comprehensive search feature to back up decisions.
The most effective results are available when targeting occurs on very specific niche terms. Though the expected traffic amounts on keyword levels sound smallish for SEO, there is a catch called cumulative traffic. One single niche term delivers few occasional visitors a day, multiply the number of targeted niche terms on site and you get multiplied traffic… As an added bonus, there seems to be yet another catch. Users coming trough more specific search terms are more likely to buy than those arriving for generic terms. So you may have lower traffic, but a good conversion. And as we all know it's all about conversion.
As always, If you have comments or questions drop a line.
Hi BostonScott,
Hopefully someone will point out particular assumptions of mine that are way out of whack, because the ROI on this seems pretty darn good… at least in this example.
Anythings possible. It could perform way worser, or it could go way better...
With a price tag of US$500, the risks are very low and IMO the client has very little to loose.
In worst case, the customer will get a website that is technicly enhanced to follow up W3C standards (like XHTML,CSS,WAI,P3P etc). This alone is IMO worth way more than US$500 (this affects to many marketing issues)
In best cases, the output is (in addition of above) enhanced traffic from search engines. Does it match customer expectations, how long it takes to return the investment etc. questions are outside the scope (or price) of this level of service. This solution is only about making site more search engine friendly, adding the visibility and enhancing the existing focus - nothing else. And IMO it levels with the price tag.
The first five hundred dollars spent on SEO probably has the highest return of the entire investment.
EGOL, what a deceptively insightful comment... I agree with where you're going with it. If your budget is such that you're looking to spend $500 on "SEO," you'll probably have to spend time learning about it to really get results. For the client, I guess this low-risk example is a good way to start.
The idea of risk didn't even cross my mind originally, but you're right 2k... you can't talk about ROI without factoring in risk (or in this case, minimal risk)
Ultimately it seems that everything gets commoditized in some way or another. There is definitely a place for good, inexpensive entry-level SEO services. I don’t know that “matching customer expectations” should be excluded from the low price offerings though. In my mind, the appropriate way to provide a service like this would be to set customer expectations clearly so they are not surprised when rankings don’t jump. Sell it as a “quick start” learning experience, not simply as “SEO.”
Thanks for clearing that up. Now the graphic "SEOMoz featuring 2k mediat.com's rants and raves" makes much more sense:)
Scott - Just wanted to point out that this post comes from 2K, not me! Great commments though - certainly worthy of discussion.
I have only just started telling people i do "SEO" the fact is I have been doing website marketing and improvment for years - I think everybody is realising its not traffic that counts its Quality traffic, the term SEO seems to be starting to embrace and include these things.
to promote a website has many angles, and in my opinion "SEO" also includes setting up mailinglists, getting your site bookmarked, getting return visitors etc.
I recently looked at a ecommerce site suffering from a high "basket abandonment" by simply tweaking the checkout flow to make it easier and implementing a system where users who abandoned the purchase get emailed and encouraged to take up the basket again has increased sales by 20% ... is this SEO? probably not but its cetainly just as important.
Small exact search terms almost always bring sales when landed on the exact product page. Unfortunatly most sites have VERY similar product pages and the search engines drop them because of this, and for me this is the most important area when targetting small search terms.
good series 2K :)
Hey Rand,
Interesting concept. I've been thinking about it from the customer's perspective in terms of ROI. Indulge me in this little exercise.
Let's say for $500 you "enhance" the optimization for 25 pages on the site, and on each page you target 2 niche phrases that get 500 searches per month on average.
Further, to pick a number out of thin air, let’s say you get top 10 placements on 30% of the keywords you target.
So, you now have top 10 placements on 15 keywords that get 500 searches per month each (including Google and Yahoo). That’s 7,500 impressions.
I’m not sure what to assume for CTR, but let’s assume an average of 10% (which I don’t think is terribly unreasonable considering the targeted nature of the phrases – if anything, it could be higher).
That’s 750 clicks per month. Via pay per click, those clicks could have cost $112.50 at 15 cents each, if you could even get that many clicks.
Based on these assumptions, the $500 SEO package would pay for itself in 4.4 months (at least in theory).
Hopefully someone will point out particular assumptions of mine that are way out of whack, because the ROI on this seems pretty darn good… at least in this example.
My concerns:
1) Can you really do a quality SEO job to generate these kinds of results for a $500 charge, and can you scale that as a company? I can see it now… pencil pushers performing SEO and bastardizing the client’s site to fit keywords in (because they don’t understand that “good” SEO preserves conversion rates and brand).
2) Scaling the SEO campaign… but if you’re looking for a $500 SEO solution, scale is probably not a primary concern.
Just thought I’d throw this up here for the sake of brainstorming.
BTW... just noted that this series is #1 in Google for "budget SEO". A relatively good sample of niche term to target for.