Marketing on a Budget – What Do I get for $100?

Lucy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:05:14 +0000

Seeing ads in the sponsored results that say “1000s of unique visitors to your site only $99!”, or “Be #1 in Google for only $299, call today”? If you’ve seen this, you’re probably also noticing that when you get any indication of SEO services pricing over in the natural results, it is hundreds of times what the dodgy PPC ads tell you. Today we are looking at what the SEO industry’s top professionals would do to promote their websites if they only had $100, $250, or $500. Funnily enough, it doesn’t include buying traffic…

Aaron Wall of SEObook would do things like…

Setting up an alternative source of income while he put himself through a self-paced study course, spending around $20 to $200 on books
Buy a cheap domain
Get cheap hosting
Start a Wordpress blog that included no ads whatsoever, and he was truly passionate about and involved in
Get a cheap logo
Use free keyword research and analytics tools

Once the site started making money, Aaron says he would reinvest in the growth of the site first.

Andy Hagans, author of Tropical SEO would do things like…

Buying good quality content
Buying good quality links

He has said he would spend his entire budget on this, no matter whether he had $100, $250 or $500. The ‘good links’ he indicated were joeant.com or botw.org for lower budgets, and the Yahoo Directory for slightly higher budgets. All leftover money would go to hiring writers for linkbait.

By the way, thanks go to SEOish for the SEO expert opinions in this post!

The Dark Side of Linkbait

Lucy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:55:32 +0000

Much as the pundits want you to believe it, linkbait is not all sunshine and roses! There is also a heap of manure at the bottom of that flower bush, helping those roses grow. Linkbait is a great SEO technique – it works in perfectly with what Google wants, and will always want. But it does have a dark side…

Caught by linkbait

Linkbait for its own sake is worthless

Your linkbait content must support your overall internet marketing strategy, or it is almost worthless. The point of creating linkbait content is to get relevant links, pushing your site higher in Google’s estimation, and therefore presenting you earlier in the results when someone searches for your keywords. However:

If your linkbait content is not relevant to your core business, you will get few ‘qualified leads’ clicking through
If you encourage sites that aren’t relevant to yours to link to you, the worth of the links in Google’s algorithm is lowered.

So, you can’t just publish a controversial rant about Barack Obama as a linkbait strategy, if your company sells medical diagnostic equipment. You must think within the box!

Fake Linkbait could get you de-listed in Google

The best example is a story published at money.co.uk, titled ‘13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers’. This FAKE story got plenty of links … but it wasn’t made obvious on the page that it was fake. Matt cutts of Google indicated that the company would view that as dishonestly trying to create links (no matter what the writer’s intention), and could be added to the list of things that will get you banned from Google.

Linkbait’s ROI is unpredictable

This is the case with all activities in internet marketing – you must test and refine your techniques over time to be confident of getting a good return on investment. So just be cautious of investing a lot of money in linkbait content, without an *excellent* understanding of what makes the market tick.

webmarketingexperts.com.au - SEO Truth » linkbait

Marketing on a Budget – What Do I get for $100?

The Dark Side of Linkbait