When it comes to marketing, one of the most common mistakes that businesses make is to throw money at their marketing department without giving much thought to how it is spent. But your budget should be just one consideration when you’re formulating a marketing strategy.

The key to success in SEO isn’t money; it’s the approach that you take. Here’s how you can maximize your ROI and stretch any budget as far as possible.

What Makes Good Writing?

You shouldn’t need a massive budget in order to achieve the best SEO results. However, if you aren’t able to define what makes good SEO then you’re going to have a hard time evaluating any proposals that come your way. The mistake that most people make when it comes to their SEO writing is that they fail to tread the fine line between writing that is high-quality in creative terms and writing that is written with optimization in mind.

The two can easily co-exist within the same work, but you need to strike the right balance between them. Some SEO experts forget that, while the copy or article that surrounds an SEO link is important, it still needs to be delicately calibrated to maximize its SEO impact.

The way that you approach your content on a structural level is becoming more important with each passing algorithm update. The arms race to seize control of the top spot for the most important keywords by hurling exponential amounts of money at keyword-focused SEO content has been bought to an abrupt halt by the latest incarnations of Google’s algorithms.

We will discuss the algorithm update in more detail below. What’s important to know going in, however, is that well-written and carefully crafted content isn’t just more effective SEO content, it is more cost-effective SEO content.

Target Your User’s Needs

Google’s algorithms have gotten a lot smarter when it comes to working out what users want. When you search for anything in Google – whether it’s a keyword, a string of keywords, or a properly formed question – Google now goes beyond what you are searching for and begins asking why you are searching for it.

When a user searches for something online, they are expressing a need. If Google is able to ascertain what you want, it can then return results that satisfy your needs. This is a more powerful way for Google to rank results and the latest updates to Google’s algorithms have shown that the search titan is placing an increasing emphasis on so-called ‘semantic searching’.

Instead of throwing all your money at aggressively targeting keywords, you can achieve more powerful and more cost-efficient results by instead creating content that fulfills your users’ most common needs.

It Pays To Plan Ahead

Spontaneity has its place in SEO. The best SEO marketers are able to think on their feet and adjust their plans dynamically in response to changing circumstances. However, it is also important that you are able to formulate long-term plans and execute them. Operating in this way will save you money in the long run.

With a solid plan of action, you can easily focus on how to achieve each step in the most cost-effective way possible. Over time, you should be aiming to develop a general strategy that makes a cost-effective approach to SEO the standard for your business.

What Determines The Quality Of Your SEO?

The key takeaway from all of this is that money is only a very minor factor in determining the quality of your SEO. Of course, you will need to have a reasonable budget to work with. However, you can achieve a lot with relatively little if you approach your SEO in the right way.

• Link building: Every link to your content from another website is like a vote of confidence – at least, that’s how Google sees it. Links from high-quality sources will count for more, so by targeting the right sources for link building, you can maximize your ROI. It doesn’t matter whether anyone clicks on those links or not, their mere existence will raise your SEO.
• The content’s source: Sources with a high domain authority score will provide you with the greatest benefits. Links from these sources will give you the biggest boost to your SEO. However, websites with a high domain authority who you are competing against will have an advantage in the battle for pole position on SERPs.
• The time you invest in it: SEO campaigns need time to play out. While you can make short-term SEO gains, if you aren’t able to sustain them in the long-term then any benefits will be very short-lived.
• The resources, money, and people who make it happen: Money shouldn’t be the make or break factor for your SEO strategy, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to invest in it properly. Whether it’s people, money, or resources, you need to give your SEO campaigns everything they need to achieve their objectives.

The Role Of Money

Of course, money certainly does have a role to play in determining the success of your SEO strategy. If you aren’t properly funding your marketing department then there is only so much that they will be able to achieve. The benefits of having more resources to draw from are also undeniable, so as long as you are spending money in a sensible and considered way, upping your budget can be an effective way of improving your SEO performance.

But it is important to recognize that money is just one component. Every SEO expert would love it if all they had to do was write high-quality content and the rest would take care of itself, but they need to consider the bigger picture. Writing high-quality content will help, but it needs to be composed with SEO in mind to some degree.

When it comes to your SEO, you can achieve great things with a relatively modest investment. Hitting the top of your SERPs shouldn’t require you to empty your bank account, although you will need to give yourself a realistic budget. If you approach your SEO in the right way, you can maximize your returns regardless of your budget.