Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be overwhelming and confusing to many small business owners. And furthermore intimidating when your online marketing budget is limited compared to that of your largest competitors that are able to have a huge online marketing budget to implement their strategies. But budget isn’t necessarily everything, if you are smart about how to utilise it. And that’s where our team at Firefly comes in to help your business succeed! How to do SEO strategy “epic-ly” on a tight budget. And why is it so important to have a high quality strategy even if you just have a small business.

Why your business needs a high quality SEO strategy

The importance of SEO, which remains the single most effective marketing technique for increasing online traffic. If your business needs to drive traffic on a small marketing budget then you need to ensure that your SEO strategy is high quality and going to deliver on the results your business is trying to achieve. There are proven methods that when done well your business can use to build a powerful online presence without needing to break the bank. Which is vital when competing against your businesses larger competitors, as they will have spent millions of dollars and have decades of content on their side.

SEO strategies for when your business is on a tight budget 

When wanting to create an SEO strategy on budget, you will need to use your time and resources efficiently. By using your creativity and high drive for success on a strategy that will help you achieve the best results, as your business will not be able to rely on a thousand dollar monthly budget. These are our top tips for high quality strategy on a tight budget.

1. Focus on local!

Instead of looking for national widespread attention, it is better to focus your limited budget on businesses local or regional markets. By dominating the domestic market this will lead towards the highest return on investment (ROI) with the quickest growth opportunity compared to spreading your efforts across a larger geographic area. Through local SEO you will be able to build a strong online presence on your tight budget and help to skyrocket your online rankings within your local market. 

1. Take advantage of long tail keywords that answer questions

Your customers want answers to their questions, and they want to find the information very quickly. This is why your business needs to focus on the user experience when building your SEO strategy. And with the increase in voice search it is important to understand what your customers will be asking. Long tail keywords are key phrases that are very specific to the needs of your customers. These types of phrases are longer and more accurate, they are able to effectively provide your customers with the value information that they are seeking. Unlike standard keywords, long tail keywords offer your businesses SEO strategy several benefits, including; Better user experience focus, content production, and publication, lower competition compared to general keyword variations, long tail keywords help to drive higher conversions because they deliver highly quality traffic and leads through online searches and due to their specificity, long-tail keywords are highly focused and relevant to online searches that potential customers are looking for.  

Avoid Cheap SEO Packages

Effective and good SEO should not ever be ‘cheap’ and this is why your business needs to be suspicious of and avoid cheap SEO packages that sound too good to be true. It’s clear that businesses who invest in good quality SEO and are able to secure consistently high rankings will achieve a competitive advantage over their competing businesses. 

The two key drivers of SEO are high quality content and backlinks. These are also the most labour and cost intensive, meaning that they account for a significant percentage of your SEO marketing strategy. Long form content needs to be informative and well-structured, which requires expertises of skill and significant time to craft. Without the necessary expertises to create such content, low quality SEO providers will often use software to scrape existing online content and cut and paste them into “new” posts, often at the expense of structure and accurate grammar. When this kind of content is published across your website and social channels this will reflect badly on your business and could damage your reputation. These low quality SEO providers also often have dodgy link building, which will subsequently de-value your businesses online presence and make you an untrustworthy source. 

Quality, affordable SEO for your business

Reputable SEO providers want to understand the focus and structure your business, paying close attention to how it operates whether that be locally, nationally or trading overseas.

They strive to determine the demand of your business's product and/or services.  While working together to achieve your core objectives that can be measured by their own performance and achieve amazing results on your businesses behalf. At Firefly this type of in depth fact-finding practise is essential to our successful SEO campaigns, as it helps your business to optimise your budget - whether that be tight or millions, and enables us tailor create your strategies accordingly. At Firefly’s we are the only agency in New Zealand to offer an SEO guarantee, where if your business doesn't see results within 90 days we work for free. To find out about all our SEO services, check them out here. 

The great thing about SEO is that the best practices are constantly changing. This means that you can build a robust SEO strategy even if you lack the big marketing budget of your competition. And with an expert team like Firefly on your side, we will be able to invest the time, skill, expertises and creativity to improve how your business ranks online. Remembering to focus your limited time, money, and resources on highly-focused content through long-tail keywords, optimising your business for local SEO, and publishing excellent content!

Use these tips to reach your audience and drive online sales without a huge marketing budget or get in contact with us today and let us do all the hard work for you. Call Firefly for a no obligations quote on 0800 440 714.