Do you have a budget specifically allocated for SEO?

As you spend money on marketing, advertising, and other general business expenses, it's natural to wonder if search engine optimization is really worth your hard-earned dollars. In fact, you may be one of the 46 percent of small businesses in the United States that has a nonexistent SEO budget.

If that's you, spoiler alert: SEO is indeed worth your investment. Furthermore, you are most likely hurting your business if you choose to cut corners with SEO or ignore it altogether.

That said, in addition to budgeting for SEO, you have to know how to spend the money wisely.

Budget for White Hat SEO

Quality SEO isn't cheap. Back in the pioneering days of search engine optimization, you could hire a self-proclaimed SEO specialist for dirt cheap, have them implement a basic SEO strategy largely built on keyword stuffing, and your site would rank on search engine result pages (SERP). You could get away with spending less than 100 dollars on SEO each month.

Now, however, since search engines became a lot smarter, a cheap set-it-and-forget-it strategy won't serve your site well. Sure, lower-end SEO still exists today. You can outsource the work to a foreign SEO provider and invest in some questionable link-building services. However, most cheap SEO services overseas offer outdated keyword-stuffing strategies that can get your site blacklisted as spam. Also, the danger of working with low-quality link-building services is that your site can be linked to a private blog network (PBN) which is a group of blogs that exists exclusively for link-building purposes. Modern search engines don't look kindly on PBN's.

You want to be sure you work with professionals who employ white hat SEO strategies, meaning that they optimize your site without breaking the rules. For high-quality SEO services, you should allocate at least 500 dollars a month. More likely than not, however, your SEO costs will fluctuate based on the type of work and analysis your site needs at any given time, so make room in your budget to invest several thousands per month.

SEO Creates Brand Value

SEO isn't just a few well-placed, keyword-rich headers in your blog posts or a few technical tweaks to improve your page speed. SEO boosts your brand value because it ties into your site's content as well as your social media. The more quality content you post, and the more it is optimized, the more brand awareness you get.

The key is to grow your brand organically but intentionally through SEO. if you invest in a knowledgeable team of SEO experts, you eliminate the guesswork from how to balance organic growth and strategic search engine optimization. Your SEO expert can ensure quality backlinks, well-crafted meta descriptions and image tags, and the right keyword density in accordance with Google's current algorithm. They can also ensure that your content and your digital presence is timely and on-topic. This helps to build influence and authority not only on the web but also within your industry

SEO Has An Excellent ROI 

Are you still having trouble justifying SEO as a necessary expense for your business?

Even if your budget is very tight, allocating a small percentage of it to SEO can do wonders for your profits. The ROI of SEO has been reliably high for more than a decade now. Currently, if you own an eCommerce site, you can expect your return on investment to be about 2.75 dollars for every dollar spent on SEO.

Even if you invest in small upgrades such as improving your click-through rate or updating meta tags, you'll enjoy a great ROI. That said, if you can only afford a peace-meal SEO strategy, invest in making your site mobile-friendly and more responsive. You cannot afford to skimp on a mobile-friendly interface. Simply put, 70 percent of phone searches lead to a sale, and 61 percent of visitors to your site will never visit again if the site isn't optimized for use with phones and tablets.

SEO Makes for a Superior Website

Speaking of mobile site interfaces, what's good for SEO is excellent for your site. Search engine optimization has as much to do with the way your site looks and functions as it does with its content. If you have an outdated interface and your loadtime is slow, you risk losing business from even the most loyal customers.

If you're just beginning to dip into SEO, start with a full site SEO audit. An audit will pinpoint all the ways in which your site can be more efficient, more visible, and more responsive. From there, you can create a clear strategy that benefits your site's functionality and increases its search rankings.

SEO Maintenance Helps Recover from Google's Updates

Optimization is meant to benefit your SERP on all search engines, but let's face it: SEO sings to the tune of Google. In 2022, Google is responsible for an astounding 91 percent of search traffic on the worldwide web. This means that Bing (3.3 percent), Yahoo (1.4 percent), and more obscure search engines are responsible for only a sliver of searches.

Since Google is king, if your SEO falls flat, your site disappears into the depths of the web when Google's algorithm gets a major update. Google regularly makes small tweaks to its search protocols, so its best to stay current with SEO maintenance.

Still, your site may perform well even if its SEO maintenance is minimal but your strategy is strong. However, if your site is cheaply optimized or not at all, it will be wiped out from Google's results with every major algorithm update. If this happens, your web traffic dips without warning, and you'll have to bring the site up to Google's new standards to rank again. Recovering from that kind of damage is far more expensive than making sure that your site is always optimized and in good standing with Google.

Put Yourself On the Map

Now that you have a handful of compelling reasons to justify a SEO strategy for your business, what can you afford to spend?

Your site deserves to be seen, and your business can always use the ROI. If you're ready to invest in SEO, contact Hosting CT to learn about our SEO packages today.

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