£1.5k budget per month

[bu06nne]

Hi all,

How would you spend a £1.5k budget per month for SEO?

My site is currently sitting in 4th for a competitive search phrase.

Cheers

 

[max99x]

on a freelance SEO who knows what he/she's doing, to build natural links mixed with other indicators that the big G loves

 

[bu06nne]

Hi Max,

Any idea where to find a decent freelancer? Or know anyone that has capacity?

Cheers

 

[bu06nne]

Finance

 

[Retired_Member38]

Finance

Dirty finance ? (payday loans etc) or clean finance ? (mortgages etc). Legitimate end user site? Or crappy affiliate lead gen form ?


As without knowing the answer to that nobody can even begin to tell you where you should spend the money. If you've got payday sites then spend the money on spam and hope for the best. Nobody is going to be able to get you clean links there.

If you've got a clean 'real' site then you really want to be looking to generate clean links that aren't likely to get you penalised later.

 

[Stephen]

ppc?

consider Google ppc spend on exact terms with long tail keywords

rather than extra ppc as you are looking at marginal gains if ranked first page on your terms

have found recently getting a x10 cost spend to turnover (so need margin of more than 10% before it is even considered), if you are able to get similar results

 

[bu06nne]

It's non-dirty finance. End-user site.

Stephen - Interesting you think the move from 4 -1 would be negligible in terms of traffic.

We are currently below the fold - I would have thought we a missing out on at least 60% of traffic....?

Cheers

 

[Retired_Member38]

Check this, bear in mind how old it is. http://www.redcardinal.ie/google/12-08-2006/clickthrough-analysis-of-aol-datatgz/

Thats before various Google attempts to show less natural results.

Its a guestimate, but I reckon from 4th to 1st would see your traffic for that phrase increase x10. And depending on the niche the quality of each visitor will go up too. In payday loans for example, if you're 10th place you're getting people who've already been rejected at the sites above you. If you're in 1st place you're getting first bite at them.

 

[Stephen]

SEO v ppc ?

It's non-dirty finance. End-user site.

Stephen - Interesting you think the move from 4 -1 would be negligible in terms of traffic.

We are currently below the fold - I would have thought we a missing out on at least 60% of traffic....?

Cheers

I thought I made a constructive suggestion.

I did not say it was negligible gain, on first page means to me you already have some good SEO on your site.

How much more traffic being right at the of of the page with the ppc, even above position 1 with SEO?

I was suggesting a possible more cost effective way to spend £1500 pm as SEO getting from 4th to top of page with SEO is dangerous as if you trust the wrong people you will find yourself out of the top 100 pages!

 

[bu06nne]

I hadn't really thought about the PPC route or the risks associated with trying to push for 1st.

I need to look into the CPC for some of the longtail phrases.

Monkey - thanks for the link, interesting to see the massive jump you get from 2-to-1!

 

[Retired_Member38]

Monkey - thanks for the link, interesting to see the massive jump you get from 2-to-1!

Its a fair bit higher than that now as well (as often news results etc will be used to split up natural results)

 

[Oceanic]

If you are 4th I think it's not going to be down to link building, more about things like content, site speed, bounce rate etc.

 

[Retired_Member38]

If you are 4th I think it's not going to be down to link building, more about things like content, site speed, bounce rate etc.

That doesn't really make any sense.

Whether you're trying to move from 100th to 10th, 10th to 4th, or 4th to 1st, links have been and will continue to be the main factor.

 

[Oceanic]

That doesn't really make any sense.

Whether you're trying to move from 100th to 10th, 10th to 4th, or 4th to 1st, links have been and will continue to be the main factor.

Having sat in the same room with one of Matt Cutts ex team members, his advice was that if you are 6th or 7th then you probably have enough domain authority and the best thing to do would be to work on the product and content "especially if you want to avoid the Penguin".

Doing it with quality content is not only a safer bet, but a it would also bring more traffic from a bigger bucket of keywords!

 

[Retired_Member38]

Having sat in the same room with one of Matt Cutts ex team members, his advice was that if you are 6th or 7th then you probably have enough domain authority and the best thing to do would be to work on the product and content "especially if you want to avoid the Penguin".

Doing it with quality content is not only a safer bet, but a it would also bring more traffic from a bigger bucket of keywords!

Still makes no sense.

If you're in 6th or 7th then the chances are there are 5 or 6 sites with more domain authority than you.

Adding more content could help you rank for more long tail phrases but it isn't going to help you rank higher for the main phrase you're chasing. And in 2014 you can't just add infinite amounts of content without having the link equity and user metrics to back it up.

Don't believe a word Matt Cutts says. He often deliberately puts out misinformation... its not in his or Googles interest for people to be deliberately attempting to link build, unless its 100% clean. Which it almost never is.

 

[Oceanic]

Who said anything about believing what Matt Cutts says?

My suggestion is a suggestion and it works. Of course you could try and build links, but not as safe or necessarily as effective in this day and age.

 

[Stephen]

algorithm

Still makes no sense.

If you're in 6th or 7th then the chances are there are 5 or 6 sites with more domain authority than you.

Adding more content could help you rank for more long tail phrases but it isn't going to help you rank higher for the main phrase you're chasing. And in 2014 you can't just add infinite amounts of content without having the link equity and user metrics to back it up.

Don't believe a word Matt Cutts says. He often deliberately puts out misinformation... its not in his or Googles interest for people to be deliberately attempting to link build, unless its 100% clean. Which it almost never is.

Although I don't have any access to secret information, my understanding of main keyword searching Google algorithm looks at among other things the other keywords that are searched with that keyword that are on the page, as it is more likely you will satisfy the query.

I feel although links are important there are many factors that have to be present to get you up those last few important places (thanks for the previous link on traffic by the way) and each one of them needs tweaking.

 

[Retired_Member42]

If you're able to get to 4th then Google already sees your content as relevant enough for the given keyword. The same goes for site speed. Making your site a couple of milliseconds faster isn't going to move you up. If anything, if you go changing your content around to make it better/higher quality - the risk of losing your position is significantly higher than adding a couple more links to increase your overall domain authority.

People need to think outside the box and stop regurgitating what Google tells you to do and taking Matt Cutts comments as Gospel. Find me a site ranking in the top 10 for ANY keyword without backlinks and I'll retract my comment but the fact is, links are what push you up the results and they're certainly the only metric which are going to move you anywhere past 4th.

 

[PanzerWagon]

The statement "if you are ranking 4th then you already have enough links to rank 1, it is more about content" is just something a lot of former SEO, now content marketing agencies are using to justify investment in big content projects and visualisation stuff.

I think I saw Tim Griceicle use a similar quote in one of his presentations for Branded4. If they are peddling that in SMX London and Brighton SEO prezo's then you know it's probably BS.

If clients don't want to put as much budget into link building as they think it's risky due to past penalties etc then SEO's have to come up with alternative uses for that budget. Otherwise it will get shifted elsewhere into paid advertising or traditional stuff. Less £££ in client fees and more link builders sleeping rough.

 

[Adam H]

If you're able to get to 4th then Google already sees your content as relevant enough for the given keyword. The same goes for site speed. Making your site a couple of milliseconds faster isn't going to move you up. If anything, if you go changing your content around to make it better/higher quality - the risk of losing your position is significantly higher than adding a couple more links to increase your overall domain authority.

People need to think outside the box and stop regurgitating what Google tells you to do and taking Matt Cutts comments as Gospel. Find me a site ranking in the top 10 for ANY keyword without backlinks and I'll retract my comment but the fact is, links are what push you up the results and they're certainly the only metric which are going to move you anywhere past 4th.

The statement "if you are ranking 4th then you already have enough links to rank 1, it is more about content" is just something a lot of former SEO, now content marketing agencies are using to justify investment in big content projects and visualisation stuff.

I think I saw Tim Griceicle use a similar quote in one of his presentations for Branded4. If they are peddling that in SMX London and Brighton SEO prezo's then you know it's probably BS.

If clients don't want to put as much budget into link building as they think it's risky due to past penalties etc then SEO's have to come up with alternative uses for that budget. Otherwise it will get shifted elsewhere into paid advertising or traditional stuff. Less £££ in client fees and more link builders sleeping rough.

^^ absolutely spot on, anyone that thinks they can achieve results in a highly competitive market without backlinks is pulling their plonker far to much.

Yes content marketing and high quality content matters and yes it will fall into some nice positions for long tail if the domain authority is fairly good, it will also land you in some very nice high traffic search terms with little effort if you lucky but come out of that long tail comfort zone and enter a highly competitive road and you'd be eaten alive with out backlinks.

Generally the people that spout on about content as the be all and end all are those that have been wacked by a crap link penalty and have been sent with their tails wagging between their legs ( normally those with clickbank style sites that think doing profile and shitty link wheels for a fiver classes as a high quality link and then cant understand why they've been hit ) or they simply havent been in a competitive niche.