In short, yes, SEO remains the most profitable digital marketing stream in the world, especially if you have a decent budget to use on it. As digital marketing specialists slinky.digital will tell you, it doesn’t return immediate results like other digital marketing streams usually do, which means that you need to think of your SEO spending as a long-term investment above all else.
With this in mind, I decided to take a closer look at the things that are worth spending money on when it comes to SEO and the things that you should be careful of.
What Should I Spend My SEO Budget On?
Ultimately, the answer to this question will largely be dictated by the size of your budget, the type of website that you have, and your own SEO experience. Some of the most effective ways to spend your SEO budget include:
On an experienced SEO professional – In reality, I’d almost always recommend spending your SEO budget on a professional with experience and training. They will be able to identify gaps in your SEO strategy, work on solutions to these gaps, and help you maximise your long term return on investment.
On guest posting – If you’re a good writer, then I’d recommend thinking about spending a bit of money on guest posting. In general, guest posts include a link back to your website, helping build your backlink profile. If you pay to place guest posts on high-quality websites, you will find that these backlinks help improve your SEO rank a lot.
On website optimisation – A lot of people forget about this part of SEO. If you’re not already working to optimise your website’s code and back-end infrastructure, then you should at least think about it. Ultimately, the better your website is written and the faster it loads, the better the user experience will be, and in turn the better your SEO rank will be.
What Should I Avoid Spending My SEO Budget On?
Although there are plenty of good things to spend your SEO marketing budget on – things that could continue to drive visitors to your site for years to come – there are also a few things that you should avoid at all costs, including:
Paying for cheap, poorly written content – The truth of the matter is that low quality content will never improve your SEO score. When it comes to your written content, you need to remember that quality is always preferable to quantity – especially if you’re in a very competitive niche.
Paying for unnatural links – In the past, paying for links was commonplace. However, Google’s algorithms now penalise websites that buy unnatural links. Never waste your money on so-called “black-hat” techniques like this.
Final Word
It’s definitely worth spending money on SEO, especially if you’re careful and smart about what you spend it on. I would always recommend paying an SEO professional to build a strategy and direct your efforts, but there are also a few things that you can do yourself – including guest posting and website optimization.