4 White Hat SEO Tips | Limited Budget
It’s unnecessary to discuss how SEO has transformed over the last few years; it’s seemingly documented on a weekly basis.
Once upon a time, companies used to buy thousands of links to throw onto a page and ultimately reaped all of the organic traffic that Google offered. Now, such an approach is likely to result in a ban, whilst being completely ineffective at the same time.
It means that companies are now turning towards more creative solutions. Some will build microsites, a more advanced way of getting others to link to them, while others will invest significant sums to improve their website infrastructure and page speed, which is another ranking factor.
If you are looking to spend a little less but still want to see improvements, there is still hope. Today’s post will look at some of the ways you can fuel your SEO success by not spending a dime.
Method #1 – Tapping into Local SEO
This first method is only applicable to those with local businesses, but it can work spectacularly.
In short, local search is a big deal. This applies to the map pack, which is the box containing three local businesses (along with their phone number and any reviews if applicable) above the standard organic results. The beauty of appearing in this space is that you will be placed higher than “standard organic” results, which appear beneath this box. Ultimately, more people will be clicking through to your business.
One of the big ranking factors here is local citations. In short, these are listings across other websites referring to your business name, address, and phone number. These don’t have to be links but are often picked up free across local sites. Obviously, there needs to be some quality control here, but if you can invest the time in placing your site across these local citations, you will notice an improvement in your organic positions.
Method #2 – Less is more
For years, we were taught to create umpteen pages to cover all of the keywords in the world. Now, this isn’t necessarily true.
Instead, less is more. The fewer pages you create, within reason, of course, the less of a chance Google will be confused. In other words, presenting information in a user-friendly way is much more important than creating as many pages as possible in a bid to rank. This all came about thanks to the game-changing Hummingbird update that Google released.
Method #3 – Target the correct terms with your tags
You might operate in a huge industry, but there’s every chance that this is grossly competitive on a national level. This means that your keywords have to be more granular, and more local.
For example, you might operate in the jewelry industry in London, but targeting your main page for “jewelry” isn’t going to be successful. The traffic volumes might be higher, but the competition is too high. Instead, use your title tags and HTML headers to target “jewelry London” and earn that more specialized traffic.
Method #4 – Invest in content marketing
When we use the term “invest”, this of course only needs to be from a time perspective. Even if you are a local business, you can be an effective content marketer. Find out the topics that people are looking for, which might not be directly commercial. For example, writing a blog article on “How to Use a Blue Widget” might not get you immediate sales, but if the search volume is there, you will be able to catch more traffic and perhaps later down the line, convert these to sales.
We hope you enjoyed this promoted piece as much as we did!
