Cost Effective SEO Tips That Make An Impact

Cost effective SEO might sound like an unfamiliar concept to you. That’s because lots of businesses are sceptical about SEO as they think it’s too expensive.

This is particularly the case for small businesses who might have less budget to dedicate to SEO services.

Furthermore many people assume SEO is expensive and there’s a lot of ambiguity about how it actually works. This can lead marketers and business owners to question its value even more, especially if they’re not sure how it directly improves the business.

Despite the cost associated with professional SEO services, there are lots of cost effective SEO strategies that you can use to drive organic traffic.

That said, for the best results we’d always recommend working with a professional agency who can manage this process on your behalf. Having a strong online presence is key and this can take time and experience.

However, for any businesses looking to manage their SEO alone, we’ve compiled a list of cost effective SEO tips for you to get started with.

First let’s look at some SEO costs.

Understanding the Cost of SEO

When partnering with a professional SEO agency, there are several costs to consider. Understanding these can help you set a realistic budget and avoid unexpected surprises down the line.

The cost of the service

You’re paying for the agency’s expertise which might include technical SEO audits, on-page optimisations, backlink building, content planning, and reporting. Pricing models vary and some agencies charge a monthly retainer, while others offer project-based or hourly rates.

Tools and software

Many SEO agencies use specialist tools to analyse your website, track rankings, and find keyword opportunities. These tools come with their own costs, which might be factored into the service fee or charged separately. Platforms such as SEMrush and Ahrefs are highly useful but both of them come with a cost.

The cost of time

SEO is a long-term strategy that gives your business a consistent foundation. This is especially important if content marketing is part of your plan as high-quality blog content, for example, takes time to research, write, and promote. Whether your agency is creating this content or you’re producing it in-house, you’ll need to factor in the hours it takes to do it well.

Cost Effective SEO Tips

If you’re choosing to ‘go it alone’ with your SEO, there are numerous cost effective SEO tips that can give your website a real kickstart.

As we’ve already mentioned we would (in an ideal world) advise using an agency as this strategy can be time intensive. That said, let’s take a look at how you can get started with some SEO strategies.

Conduct keyword research

Keywords are the things that your audience are searching for in relation to your products or services. For example if you run an outdoor clothing business, customers might search for ‘the best outdoor jackets’ or ‘waterproof coats’.

By understanding what they’re searching for, you can include these keywords in your content.

For example:

Using the search term ‘the best outdoor jackets’ you could create a blog around ‘Our Pick of The Best Outdoor Jackets For Hiking’.

By creating a high quality in depth blog around this topic, Google will be more likely to serve your content in the search results, increasing the chance of click-throughs to your site and conversions as a result.

There are various keyword research tools but if you’re looking for cost effective SEO, then try one of the following:

• Use Google’s autocomplete feature – Start typing a phrase relevant to your business into Google’s search bar and see what suggestions pop up. These are common searches made by real users.
• Check the “People also ask” and “Related searches” sections on Google – These are great for understanding user intent and generating blog ideas.
• Use free tools like Ubersuggest or AnswerThePublic – These platforms help you find commonly asked questions and keyword variations without needing a paid subscription.

Write blogs

We’ve talked about keyword research above, but what do you do with these keywords?

Write high quality, in-depth blogs!

Blogging remains one of the best ways of boosting your SEO by driving organic traffic to your website. By understanding what your audience are looking for (keyword research) and creating long-form, well researched content around these topics, you can build trust and encourage them to invest in your offering.

Unlike a paid strategy such as Google Ads, this is a longer-term strategy that builds trust over time as you’re demonstrating your expertise in that area.

Long-form blogs are most effective as this gives you the space to write more detailed content, exploring a topic from end-to-end. As it’s longer than a short-form article, you can include more internal links (discussed below), infographics, and informative content that really shows the reader they can trust you.

Publish blogs on a regular basis (around one per week if possible) as Google loves up to date, fresh content that continues to serve your audience.

Link internal pages

Google will try to understand your website so that it can serve the most valuable content to users when they type something into the search bar.

This is called ‘crawling’ your website and involves lots of little bots navigating your site then storing the pages in its search index. The easier you make it for these bots to understand and crawl your website the better, as this increases the likelihood of them serving your content in the search results.

A great way of doing this is by building an internal linking structure. Simply put, this means linking to and from relevant pages on your site so that Google can understand how content relates to one another, helping it build a better picture of your website.

When it comes to blogs, this means finding opportunities to link to your services pages and contact pages, creating a natural path from one area of your site to another.

Create custom imagery and infographics

Writing blogs is a great cost effective SEO strategy but your blogs also need to be visually engaging.

When writing long-form (2000 words plus) you want to keep users interested in your content by making it easier to digest.

This is where custom imagery and infographics come into play as you can explain different concepts in a visual way. This helps break up the written content and stops readers from feeling overwhelmed.

However, as well as making your blog post more visually engaging, infographics are a key ranking factor in your SEO strategy. That’s because Google favours websites that provide more value to an audience and understand their needs.

By creating a mix of written content and helpful visuals, you signal to Google that you’re offering valuable, comprehensive content which can improve your chances of ranking higher in search results.

Top tip: Make sure you add alt text to any custom image or infographic as this is key for screen readers and accessibility. Google needs to be able to scan any imagery by understanding what it is which is why adding alt text is key.

Keen an eye on your competitors

Another cost effective SEO tip is to key an eye on your competitors. By looking at what they’re doing and understanding what works for them, you can use this as inspiration in your own efforts.

It’s important not to simply ‘copy and paste’ their strategy as you want to be authentic. Plus you will be penalised by Google if you duplicate their content as Google prioritises fresh, original content that genuinely helps users.

Therefore keep an eye on your competitors and use this information to spark conversations about what you can do to replicate the same success. For example, have they started writing blogs about a particular challenge your audience is facing? How can you use this in your own efforts to appeal to your target audience?

Or

Perhaps you’ve noticed they’ve created landing pages around certain topics or keywords? Analyse this by looking at titles, page headings, or even the type of content they produce.

This can give you clues on how to adapt or build upon similar topics in your own content.

Think about your URL structure

Your URL structure is key as this signals to Google what the content of the page is about. When creating your URLS, there’s a few things to consider to make sure they are crawled and understood by Google so that your content is served in the search results.

These factors apply to URLs across your website whether its service pages or blog content as the bots need to understand what is on each page. With this information they can serve your website page to a relevant search query.

• Include target keyword – Make sure your target keyword is included in the URL as this helps Google understand the purpose of the page and helps boost its rankings.
• Don’t include a date in blog content – When it comes to blog URLs, don’t date them if you can avoid it as content is supposed to be evergreen. This allows you to update the body content when you need to without worrying about losing link equity.
• Keep URLs concise – Avoid long, messy URLs that are difficult to read. Instead stick to a simple, clean structure that clearly reflects the topic of the page. This not only helps Google understand your content more easily but also improves user experience.
• Use hyphens to separate words – Google recommends using hyphens (not underscores) between words in a URL. This makes it easier for users and search engines to read and interpret the meaning of the content.
• Avoid unnecessary symbols -Avoid using random numbers, symbols, or tracking parameters unless absolutely necessary. These can confuse search engines and dilute the keyword relevance of the URL.

By paying attention to your URL structure and ensuring it’s clear, keyword-focused, and easy to read, you’re making it easier for Google to crawl and rank your content without spending a penny.

Update and refresh your content

We started this post talking about blogs and how they remain one of the most effective watts of driving online traffic and boosting your rankings.

However, blogs shouldn’t just be left to gather dust on your website as they can become outdated. Trends change, consumer behaviour changes, and the ranking criteria Google uses changes, so you need to stay ahead.

This involves going back into older blogs and giving them some TLC so that they continue adding value to your readers. For example, you might have talked about print marketing heavily in a blog a couple of years ago but now the world has become more digitally-driven.

With this in mind, you could swap out the content to focus more on digital platforms (i.e. TikTok, Instagram etc) to align better with what your audience are doing today.

Furthermore, refreshing your blog content allows you to check the relevance of different links as if you’re linking externally to other sites they might have become slightly outdated too. By doing a quick audit you can update these links, sending your readers to more reputable sites and showing google you’re still providing fresh content.

Again, this process can be time consuming which is why we advise partnering with a professional agency who does this day in, day out. It also means all of the above factors are managed rather than you having to pick and choose which ones you have time to implement. This leads us nicely onto our next section.

DIY vs Professional SEO

If you’re stuck between cost effective SEO tips which you can manage yourself, or partnering with a professional agency to manage this for you, consider the factors below.

Whilst budget is obviously important in any business, SEO in particular is a time and resource intensive strategy; especially if you want to get it right.

Whilst there’s nothing stopping anyone from writing their own blogs, they need to be well researched, well written, and optimised for both search engines and the user experience. This requires skill and time – both of which can be relied upon in an agency.

Let’s take a look in more detail.

• Time commitment – When managing SEO yourself, you’ll need to find time to research, write, and optimise your content and website regularly. With an agency, they handle this on your behalf.
• Skills – SEO is always evolving so you’ll need to stay up to date with new trends and developments. When partnering with an agency, you get access to experienced SEO experts.
• Quality – This factor totally depends on your writing capabilities. However when you partner with an agency, you know you’re working with professional SEO content writers.
• Speed – When managing this process yourself, it can take time to see results as there’ll be a lot of trial and error. Agencies on the other hand, have proven experience with different clients.
• Budget – The upfront cost is lower when managing your own SEO, but it can cost you more in the long run as you have to invest a lot of your own time.

Cost Effective SEO Tip When You’re On A Budget

There are lots of cost effective SEO tips that you can implement yourself if you’re on a budget.

However as we’ve discussed in this blog, SEO requires time, effort, and skill to really make an impact as it’s an ongoing investment in growing your online presence.

Whilst you can implement any of the strategies mentioned above, the most important part of SEO is nurturing your content to keep it fresh and relevant.

If you have the budget, we’d always recommend partnering with a professional agency. These teams work with SEO clients on a daily basis, so they can take the pressure off you and ensure your SEO performs. To find out how the team at Discovery could help you, get in touch for a friendly chat.