How to spend $100 SEO Budget?

[turtlenet]

Suppose I have a $100 budget for SEO. What do you think would be the most effective way to spend it (doing little if any of the work myself):

1. Paid directory submission (where?)
2. Outsource some original articles and submit them to free article sites
3. Outsource some original articles and post them only on my site
4. Paid blog entries linking to my site
5. Other ideas?

[Adam Dicker]

Outsource some original articles and submit them to free article sites

Submit through ezinearticles.com, this is never a waste of money.

-=DCG=-

[tetrapak]

4. All the rest is pretty much useless - that is, if you have a real website in a competitive niche. Only buy posts on RELEVANT sites, don't buy on "general" blogs, especially not if the frontpage is Pr3-4-5, but the second page is Pr0 and the owner just blasts posts each day (so you are on second page within hours / max days).
3. It's not really SEO, but you should have content of course, without content you have nothing.

[MichaelJ137]

1 & 3. Content is king!!!!!!!!! and link building will do you justice in the long run.

Just my opinion.....

[Tia Wood]

Suppose I have a $100 budget for SEO. What do you think would be the most effective way to spend it (doing little if any of the work myself):

Sorry but you are asking a question that is impossible to answer. If it were as easy as shelling out $100 and doing little work then SEO wouldn't be worth focusing on, now would it?

My advice: buy yourself a few good SEO books (you will have to research to narrow down the best) and start studying. That is the best SEO investment you will make for $100.

Otherwise, be prepared to spend a lot more than that to get a professional to do it (the correct way) for you.

[RustyK]

If you're talking about the site in your signature then it needs internal SEO work done quickly. I already see the title not being used effectively which means the rest might be just waiting for some attention but for $100 it can get your site engine started the right way and probably pushing 90 in a 65mph zone. I mean for a brand new site the least thing you need is to rush things. Take your time and let the spiders spin their web a bit.

[tetrapak]

My advice: buy yourself a few good SEO books (you will have to research to narrow down the best) and start studying. That is the best SEO investment you will make for $100.

Or save that money and learn it from the Internet instead. Those books might already be outdated, and you may get the same advices from them like buy directory submissions and article submissions which are stone age techniques and you go nowhere with them - except getting indexed, but that you can do by placing a link on any random forum or site that gets crawled daily.

[Adam Dicker]

This is one of the coolest seo articles I have found.

Enjoy!

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-...ographic-11928

The graph is fantastic.

-=DCG=-

[james2002]

Nice article.

Thanks for sharing

[turtlenet]

Sorry but you are asking a question that is impossible to answer. If it were as easy as shelling out $100 and doing little work then SEO wouldn't be worth focusing on, now would it?

NameHoney, I think I have a realistic view of what I can achieve with $100 and a few hours of effort... I just want to know how to best spend the time and money I have available. It's better than nothing, right?

If you're talking about the site in your signature then it needs internal SEO work done quickly. I already see the title not being used effectively...

Thanks, I just fixed a bug that wasn't setting the <title> field correctly (is that what you meant, or is there more wrong with it?).

This is one of the coolest seo articles I have found.

That looks like a really useful article... if I ever lose my day job maybe I'll try to follow it!

Thanks everybody!

[katherine]

$100 won't take you far for SEO purposes.
With $100 you can buy adwords advertising - it's short term exposure but can translate to leads/sales...

[turtlenet]

$100 won't take you far for SEO purposes.
With $100 you can buy adwords advertising - it's short term exposure but can translate to leads/sales...

I tried adwords with a free credit last year... spent between $0.50 - $1.00 per click and earned on average $0.05-0.10 per visitor, then I got the Google "slap" and my ads stopped showing before I could finish my free credit. This convinced me that a) I don't really know how to use SEM effectively and b) the site I was promoting (which was basically an affiliate squeeze page with good conversions but low EPC) was not well suited to Adwords.

What do you think would be a reasonable SEO budget, if for example I wanted my flightsfromatlanta.com site to show on Google page 1 for "flights from Atlanta" and a few related keywords?

[RustyK]

Thanks, I just fixed a bug that wasn't setting the <title> field correctly (is that what you meant, or is there more wrong with it?).

Add these keywords to the start of your title >>> Cheap Flights To Atlanta and use it a 1-3 times in your content in bold

Put your money away. I'll help you for free. Pm is on its way.

---------- Post added at 03:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:30 PM ----------

This is one of the coolest seo articles I have found.

Enjoy!

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-...ographic-11928

The graph is fantastic.

-=DCG=-

Great article. Thanks Adam.

Also one thing I didn't see is using QR codes. This is a very powerful tool if used correctly. All your information in a small coded icon that can be scanned by any mobile phone with QR apps.

[Gerry]

Buy someone's 100 buck adword offer for a couple of bucks.

Now you have just extended your SEO budget by purchasing $100.00 adword coupon and still have $98 left over.

[Tom K.]

Here is how $100 will go the longest in SEO:

1. Do keyword research. If you target bad keywords then you may rank well for them but won't get any conversions. One good tool is Google Adwords external keyword tool.

2. Make sure that your site's pages are SEO'd for those keywords you selected in step 1. This the most basic step. This includes meta tags, alt tags, on page content, etc. You can find info on how to do this online.

--- After the above 2 steps you should still have plenty of that $100 left for the following off-site SEO ---

3. For most cost-effective long term effect, use venues that will propagate and encourage links to your site. This includes press releases (which cost about $20-50, some are free but make sure they allow at least a couple of links in your pr) and article marketing via Ezine Articles, Articles Base, and many others (most are free). Make sure that all links have proper anchor text (again you can Google this.) You should figure out how to write your own stuff well (if you can post on forums then you can write or at least learn how to do it well enough.)

4. You should still have a few bucks left to outsource some articles. Use this to complement your own content and/or article marketing.

5. Make sure you add content on regular basis as often as time and money allows. You don't need to add a lot at a time. Maybe an article and few images. But don't allow too long to pass by without adding content.

Hope this is helpful.

Regards.

[tekz999]

PM me your URL and keywords, and I will do a free SEO preliminary research for you, and aim to achieve top 10 positions for $100.

[Aleksandar]

Wanted to reply when you first opened this thread, but ironically, was too busy reading SEO discussions all around the web. Here, see this screenshot, tons of tabs opened, plus I've closed twice as much today. All SEO material. You gotta stay updated right?

I basically wanted to say what namehoney did. Use that money and buy a few SEO books over at amazon perhaps. You'll get your feet wet that's for sure.

Also, bookmark and start reading:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/
http://searchengineland.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://www.seobythesea.com/
http://forums.seochat.com/
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/

One more quick random tip:

http://www.seo-consultant-services.c...-problems.html (a nice article on 301s)

Do not forget to "canonicalize" your URLs. It's a one minute fix.

I'm not saying you should become the next "guru" or whatever, just make sure you know what you are doing, even when outsourcing.

Or save that money and learn it from the Internet instead. Those books might already be outdated, and you may get the same advices from them like buy directory submissions and article submissions which are stone age techniques and you go nowhere with them - except getting indexed, but that you can do by placing a link on any random forum or site that gets crawled daily.

A typical Budapest SEO guru...

[tetrapak]

What is that supposed to mean?

[Aleksandar]

What is that supposed to mean?

Do you guys up there, like, get everything for free?

I know Budapest is great, but not that great...

Joking aside, a quality book (unless really outdated) will take you a long way. I mean, reading SEO news, blogs and forums is very important, but a good book is a good book.

Another way to look at it is, unless the book is quite outdated, the people who have written it are usually experts () with a proven background (), and they have invested a lot of time and resources to compile such a comprehensive "guide". At least I assume.

Most of the guys writing "free of charge" online won't go that far, or simply can't go that far. I'm not saying you can't find lot's of info already published online (the article that Adam shared is outstanding), but it might be smart to start out with a quality book and go from there. You can search for bits and pieces, or you can save some time and learn from the expert directly. They may not share everything they know, but they sure will something to make that book worthwhile.

[tetrapak]

Honestly, what's really proven is here, straight from them Gods: http://www.google.com/webmasters/doc...rter-guide.pdf
Print it, read it like the Bible. Spend the $99 (printing is money ey!) on good food to get you brain going