Your digital marketing success depends on several practices and techniques that drive visibility and profits.
Prominent among these strategies is search engine optimization, or SEO.
The good news about SEO is that it is a key factor in driving organic traffic to websites.
In fact, research shows that organic traffic accounts for more than fifty percent of all traffic on the web.
But there is another good news.
A survey involving 1200 businesses revealed that they spend an average of around $500 on their SEO strategies.
However, your business should never go cheap, especially on content and backlinks.
The same survey revealed that small businesses generally spend between $100 and $25,000 per month (more on the spending effects later).
For now, though, the other good news is that SEO can be affordable. And you sure can get visibility through affordable SEO services that would be worth every single buck you spend.
With several SEO companies making huge promises, it can get confusing to understand what SEO campaigns are worth trying (and paying for).
Below, you’ll discover affordable SEO services you can use to drive visibility and the tools you’d need to achieve them.
Let’s get into it!
Why Businesses Need Search Engine Optimization Services in the First Place
When you type in a few words within the search bar on search engines, like Google, Yahoo, or Bing, and hit the Search button, results appear for your query.
And you’ll see that there are thousands of results – but only about ten of those results can fit into the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Hubspot estimates there are about 5.6 billion Google searches per day.
And…
Three out of four queries get their answers on the first page.
It goes without saying that the higher you rank on the first SERP, the higher your chances are of having your article clicked on.
So the real issue here?
That’s a LOT of lost traffic and visibility for the remaining thousands of results.
Imagine spending money every month on content strategy, keyword research, and writers, then putting all that effort to publish the content only for it never to get seen.
Ahrefs did a study on this, and the data showed that 90.63% of all pages never get any organic traffic from Google.
The most significant factor is that pages don’t have backlinks (you can read all about building links the right way or outsourcing it here).
Again, these numbers point to the need to optimize your website for search engines.
Search engine optimization is a range of activities and strategies for improving online traffic and visibility. These strategies help you generate traffic and potential customers.
A wide range of activities direct visitors to a website, but search engines appear to be one of the most prominent. Search engine optimization also has visible advantages that make it better than other methods.
For instance, paid advertising not only eats into your profits, but its effects also stop when you stop spending. Newsletters and certain campaigns are also famous for immediate but unsustainable results.
Should You Opt for the Cheapest SEO Service You Can Find?
Although sometimes mistaken to mean the same thing, there is a marked difference between affordable and cheap SEO services.
Since SEO is not a completely transparent process, cheap SEO services take advantage of unsuspecting online business owners.
While affordable SEO services give good to great value for money, cheap SEO services will offer you features like impossible promises, poor-performing strategies, and manipulated results. All these combine to give a negative return on investments.
As they say, you do get what you pay for.
An affordable SEO service may offer specific or multiple critical services but can be trusted to deliver on promises. They are low-cost SEO services that provide result-driven custom services, practical strategies, and genuine results.
While they usually charge higher fees than cheap SEO services, they use white hat techniques that don’t go against Google guidelines and provide ROI in the long term.
Affordable SEO Services and Tools for Businesses
If you cannot spare a substantial marketing budget for your SEO campaign, these are the affordable SEO services you can leverage for visibility along with tools you can use if you were looking to do it yourself.
A lot of them are pretty straightforward, especially when you use the premium and affordable SEO packages listed with them.
But here’s the overview:
SEO Services | What is it? | Recommended Tools |
---|---|---|
1. On-Page SEO | On-page SEO stands for all forms of optimization that are applied to specific pages, including the source code and content marketing. | – Screaming Frog – Ahrefs – SurferSEO – Yoast |
2. Off-Page SEO | Off-page SEO services are optimizations that take place outside the website such as driving traffic and link building. | – Ahrefs |
3. Content Marketing | An aspect of on-page SEO that deals with the content on a website. Web pages that rank higher on search engines contain high-quality content that satisfies user intent. | – Ahrefs – Moz – Google Keyword Planner – Notion |
4. Technical SEO | Technical SEO is concerned with optimizations that keep the pages working. They also help improve how search engines crawl your website. | – Screaming Frog – WordPress (Yoast) – GTMetrix – PageSpeed Insights |
5. Link Building | Having a high quality links pointing back to your site is one of Google’s top 3 ranking factors. So you’ll need to be able to build links to your site. | – Ahrefs |
6. Local SEO | Search engines display search results based on the user’s location, and businesses can use these local SEO marketing strategies to gain rankings. | – Raven Tools – Google MyBusiness |
7. Ecommerce SEO | Ecommerce SEO uses specific SEO strategies to drive visibility and direct users to relevant product pages. | – Raven |
8. Video SEO | Video content continues to gain more popularity among online users. You should not neglect to optimize them, and below are strategies you can use. | – Google Trends – Youtube Autocomplete – Rank Tracker |
9. Rank Tracking | Rank tracking lets you know the different marketing strategies that work and ones that need improving. | – Google Search Console – Google Analytics – Ahrefs |
1. On-Page SEO
On-page SEO stands for all forms of optimization that are applied to specific pages, including the source code and content marketing. It is an affordable SEO service you can cover with the strategies below.
Keyword Optimization
You need to ensure that the chosen keywords and related keywords are used optimally if you’re writing keyword-driven content. This is so Google can recognize what your article is about.
Typically you’d be looking at what type of related keywords you would use, as well as the frequency and placement of it.
For example, anyone writing an article on SEO content isn’t just talking about SEO content. They also talk about link building, search engines, keyword research, and other surrounding semantics.
URL Optimization
URLs must be optimized to reflect the page content by containing the primary keyword. Other helpful tips include making them short for ease but with full words so whoever sees them already understands what is on the web page.
For example, if you were targeting the keyword “Link Building” your URL slug would be domain.com/link-building.
Title Tags
This is the page title, and it should capture the page content. It also helps to include the primary keyword and keep the characters around 60, including spaces.
Meta Description
The meta description is the description shown on google for an article.
While meta descriptions don’t necessarily contribute to SEO rankings, they can help you generate more clicks on SERPs and are important for Click-Through Rates (CTR).
Keep them between 150 and 160 characters, concise and straight to the point.
Image and Alt Tags
Images and alt tags are also beneficial to your optimization and strategy. They can improve CTRs and keep visitors on your site. Use only JPEG or PNG formats, use a good size, and name them with keywords.
🔨Tools Recommended:
Screaming Frog and Varvy SEO Tools are excellent for analysis of on-page features. You can also use SurferSEO and Yoast for on-page semantics.
2. Off-Page SEO
You can take this as the opposite of on-page SEO. Hence, off-page SEO services are optimizations that take place outside the website.
It is an SEO strategy that directs visitors to your site and includes link-building strategies like guest posting, blog commenting, outreach, and social media marketing.
🔨Tools Recommended:
Screaming Frog and Varvy SEO Tools are excellent for analysis of on-page features. You can also use SurferSEO and Yoast for on-page semantics.
3. Content Marketing
This is an aspect of on-page SEO that deals with the content on a website. Web pages that rank higher on search engines contain high-quality content that satisfies user intent.
Keyword Research
Analyzing and researching viable keywords to target for your content should be the number one priority when starting your content marketing.
Each article should target one keyword, and you need to balance keyword difficulty, search volume, and SERP competitiveness.
The higher your DR and the more high-quality links you can build to your articles, the higher the chance of your article ranking (more on that later).
Editorial Calendar
Consistency is key.
You don’t want to publish ten articles in 1 day, then not post anything for months.
Planning and scheduling an editorial calendar is an effective SEO strategy for generating ideas, creating the right content, engaging your audience, and keeping your web pages organized for content marketing.
I use a tool like Notion to help me keep organized.
🔨Tools Recommended:
Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and Moz Pro are perfect for keyword research. Free options include Google Search, Google Keyword Planner, and Notion.
4. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is concerned with optimizations that keep the pages working. They also help improve how search engines crawl your website. These affordable SEO services should be in place early and can last a very long time if done correctly.
Site Structure
Site structuring is straightforward except for eCommerce websites. The website structure must be decided from the onset. It will save you money and help your visitors get around easily – increasing how long they spend on your site.
Speed and Mobile Accessibility
Today, users are spoilt for choice, and they are quick to leave slow websites and click on the following article.
Your site needs to have a good user experience, and from a technical standpoint, this involves speed, accessibility, and device responsiveness (i.e., is it mobile-friendly?)
You can use Google’s PageSpeedInsights to check your site performance and Google Search Console to audit device responsiveness.
Image Compression and Caching
These are easy and affordable SEO services you should put in place because they will help your site load faster, making it a better experience for visitors.
404 Pages
When visitors get lost on your website, they see a 404 page, which should help them get back on track. Else, you may lose traffic.
Excellent 404 pages could suggest relevant pages or redirect them to your homepage where they can search for what they want.
Here is one of my favorite ones from Lego:
🔨Tools Recommended:
Technical SEO tools for affordable services include Screaming Frog, WordPress(Yoast), GTMetrix, and PageSpeed Insights for many marketing services.
Ahrefs also has low-cost SEO plans.
5. Link Building
An excellent link-building strategy is crucial in determining how your page ranks on Google. Internal and external links draw attention to relevant site content and position you as trustworthy, especially when you link to authentic sources.
Analyze Competitors’ Links
Analyzing competitors’ links helps you understand their working strategies and how you can rank higher.
Here’s how you can do this in Ahrefs:
Head to their site explorer and put in your competitor’s website:
Then look at referring domains. You can filter out the links they get by things like DR, whether it’s a Do-Follow or No-Follow link etc.
You can also look at what links they get to specific articles/pages you want to rank for by simply putting in the article URL in the Site Explorer instead.
Link Reclamation
If applied correctly, link reclamation can help build white-hat links and fix broken links.
Guest Post
Guest posting produces content for other websites with links that direct readers to your website. The links can come in the form of in-article links or profile information at the end of the article.
Outreach
Outreach is another effective and affordable SEO service that could help build links. This is the process of reaching out to people or sites you would like links from.
Often, people won’t just link to you for free. This is why offering something of value like writing great content for them is a good way to go about that.
Here is a template I use for Guest Posts.
To:
Subject Line: The missing piece to your website
Hi [NAME],
I really hope my email finds you well and safe.
My name is [YOUR NAME], it’s nice to e-meet you! I’m a [YOUR JOB/POSITION] at [BRAND/COMPANY NAME]. I specialise in writing topics, such as [INSERT TOPICS OF YOUR CHOICE].
You can see examples of my work on our blog here – [INSERT WEBSITE LINK]. And here you can see some examples of my collaborative work:
[INSERT LINKS TO PAST COLLABORATIONS]
I came across your website [WEBSITE NAME] and can appreciate the attention to detail in every article published. Especially the article on [ARTICLE NAME] where [1-2 POINTS YOU ENJOYED/LEARNED/FOUND HELPFUL FROM THE ARTICLE]!
I would love to contribute a high-quality piece that would be of interest to your readers. Here are some example topics I would love to offer:
[INSERT TOPICS HERE]
Please let me know if any of these work for you. I’m also open to suggestions if you need help with writing for any topics.
__________
Let me know what you think!
Kind Regards,
[YOUR NAME]
But there is a lot more that goes into an effective SEO campaign involving email outreach, including identifying who you should target, getting the right decision-maker, finding their contacts, and following up.
🔨Tools Recommended:
You may use an SEO agency but can get the same services with SEMRush, Google Analytics, and Ahrefs or with outreach tools like Respona.
Even small business SEO services from Check My Links and Open Link Profiler can do the basics.
6. Local SEO
Search engines display search results based on the user’s location, and websites can use these local SEO marketing strategies to gain ranking.
Social Media Posting
When done correctly, social media is a great local SEO practice for directing visitors to your site. Social media helps to create a community of loyal and potential customers, and there’s no limit to the benefits big and small businesses can derive from this.
Customer Contacts
Including contact information on your website helps customers locate you during a local search. It also increases the likelihood of wanting to do business with you, especially if you’re in a location of interest to them.
🔨Tools Recommended:
Local businesses can use Raven Tools for local SEO services, especially for monitoring social media. For example, Google MyBusiness is a free tool that helps small businesses appear on search pages when someone enters a query related to their location.
7. Ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO uses specific SEO strategies to drive visibility and direct users to relevant product pages.
Site Structure
Since the pages on eCommerce websites are usually numerous, the site structure must be carefully planned out. Nevertheless, it will enhance visitors’ experience and help you sell even more.
A good rule of thumb is to structure pages so that users can get what they want in three clicks from the homepage.
Title Optimization
Optimized titles go a long way in helping you generate more sales and visitors in finding the items they want quickly.
Structured Data
In addition to more important factors like content, title, and speed – structured data can also help you rank on SERPs.
Copywriting
Ecommerce websites can maximize their product pages through copywriting. Through copywriting, your small business pages serve similar purposes as a landing page, and you can sell more to visitors.
🔨Tools Recommended:
Spyfu has an SEO marketing suite with low-cost SEO services. Raven is another decent option, and you can also use AI writing tools like Jasper AI for copywriting (I’ll let Jasper introduce himself next!)
8. Video SEO
Video content continues to gain more popularity among online users. You should not neglect to optimize them, and below are strategies you can use.
Keyword Research
Similar to written content, keyword research will help you determine what videos people are searching for, and you can prepare your ideas to offer them solutions.
Linking
Linking is a way of directing your visitors to your other content, especially when you have related videos. YouTube will reward you for this, and you can get your content to more users.
Thumbnail Images
The thumbnail will improve your click-through rates if structured correctly. It is good to use relevant content and bright colors that appeal to visitors.
🔨Tools Recommended:
You can use tools like Google Trends and Youtube Autocomplete to see seeing what people are interested in and trending topics.
Other tools include Rank Tracker and Keyword Planner are also great.
9. Rank Tracking
Your SEO strategy should include frequent SEO campaign tracking. Whether you’re working with SEO agencies or not, you can monitor SEO success by tracking your ranks.
This lets you know the different marketing strategies that work and ones that need improving.
🔨Tools Recommended:
A local search through the Google Search console can give a quick insight into Google rankings, but you can do a little more with Google Analytics.
Premium tools like SEMRush and Moz Pro will also help your small business website.
SEO can be affordable and accessible
SEO strategies are a must-have for any online business serious about making its digital marketing efforts count. The benefits over other forms of traffic generation are widely known.
Any SEO service that fails to convert is expensive – which is why you need to carefully understand the different types of affordable SEO services and identify the ones you need to implement.
Of course, I’ve just gone through the list and recommended premium and free tools for helping you achieve your goals.
Now, you have more affordable means of generating traffic and getting your content seen – your business has no reason to remain invisible!
Good Luck!
Jessica