There are two traps most companies fall into when it comes to SEO; failure to set a clear strategy and not setting a budget. If you ever make these mistakes, prepare to waste time and a lot of money on a service that won’t offer you the expected returns.
Now that we are almost half-way into 2020, marketers should have already set a robust SEO strategic plan and a clear budget. If you haven’t, it’s not too late to set one.
Given the recent developments in SEO norms, requirements, and strategies, you may find it challenging to calculate a precise dollar amount to finance all SEO activities.
This guide will help you understand how SEO is changing, the challenges you’re likely to face in 2018, and how you can calculate the right amount of money you should spend to achieve your desired SEO goals in 2018.
It’s important to look back at what you accomplished in 2019 and determine your overall performance. Your previous year’s SEO budget can be a template for 2020’s budget. For instance, if you performed well, but you need better results, you can increase 2019’s budget by a percentage proportional to your desired results.
In case you realize that you wasted financial resources on the previous year’s SEO activities, dial down your budget and focus on the important things to be done.
It’s also wise to establish goals your SEO campaigns. For instance, Caffeinated commented “If you intend to boost traffic to your website by a particular percentage, use historical data to determine the amount of money you need to get your desired results. If you intend to outpace a competitor, you may need a more flexible SEO budget”.
Once you figure out the amount of money you need for all your SEO marketing activities, your next task is to distribute this amount to specific areas. Maximizing the results for each area will bring you closer to achieving your SEO goals. Note that content will continue to be the king of SEO throughout 2020.
Here are aspects of content you should plan for effectively:
Quality and uniqueness
While there are thousands of brands sharing content online, creating high-quality, unique content will make you stand out. Therefore, you should invest in the creation of excellent content.
In fact, it’s better to invest a larger amount of money in the creation of a few excellent pieces of content rather than thousands of crappy pieces. Therefore, prepare to pay top-prices for excellent content in case you don’t have the time to create content for your site.
Video content
Video traffic has been experiencing significant growth over the last few years. By 2021, it’s approximated that 82% of all web traffic will be generated by video content. If you intend to reach your audience in a more effective and relevant way, consider committing your content videos to video production and distribution.
Content support and promotion
It’s every marketer’s dream to create content that readers find useful, praise it, and share it extensively and end up earning their brand's attention.
However, that’s not always the case. If you want to share content that your audience will appreciate and offer your site excellent backlinks, it’s wise to plan and finance your content support and promotion activities. You can promote your content through press release distribution, blogger outreach, social media channels, and more.
Mobile focus
By 2015, mobile traffic had outpaced desktop traffic, and the trend doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. That simply you can’t succeed by simply focusing on desktop users exclusively.
Who is your target audience?
Here are some of the points you should take into consideration to decide on the specific targets for your targets for all your campaigns:
The increasing popularity of voice search
Between 2008 and 2016, the voice search preference multiplied by 35-fold. That means your content should be voice search-friendly.
Audience preferences
Readers also need more personalized, and useful content. Therefore, you should set aside time and financial resources to carry out the market to understand what your readers need.
Despite the recent developments in Google’s algorithm and new techniques from SEO experts, link building remains an important aspect of every successful SEO campaign. Therefore, it’s wise to allocate enough cash to take care of all link building expenses. Focus on getting a few authority links to your website monthly.
Overall, you should expect to spend a few thousands of dollars monthly if you are just starting up. Focus on getting a minimum threshold of quality content and staying competitive. Find out how your competitors are performing and find a way of outpacing them in SEO marketing. That means you may need to spend more and wisely. That’s the biggest reason you should set up a clear, realistic SEO budget.
