Affordable SEO Services for Small Business | Ryan Stack

First off, what is SEO or Search Engine Optimization? SEO really comes down to improving your site in order to increase it’s visibility on search. SEO is a process and you have to think “long term” rather than thinking of SEO as a sprint.

The whole purpose of me wanting to write this article was due to the fact when I searched for affordable SEO plans, I saw countless agencies and resellers warning people against “affordable SEO programs”. While they may have a point for programs that are very inexpensive or “cheap”, it is actually possible to improve your site rankings on a small budget!

The SEO industry is full of overpriced agencies charging 10’s of 1,000’s of dollars for their services and the reality is that you can reduce those costs if you streamline your approach.

Here is a basic guide as to what you should do to conduct an effective and affordable SEO campaign — while also assuring it fits and is affordable within your budget.

Keyword Research
On-Page Optimization
Weekly Content Creation
Back Link Outreach
Data Tracking Reports

1. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the starting point for any SEO campaign. There’s nothing worse than attempting to rank for phrases that may or may not have search traffic. There are plenty of tools out there that you can use — from paid tools to free tools. Also, a well-run SEO agency will conduct this for you and narrow down the best possible list of phrases to target first.

KEY: Search for phrases, not simply keywords. Ask yourself how might people search for my products and or services?

One free method of doing keyword research is using Google suggestions when typing in search terms. Type your phrase on google and write down what they suggest.

Another keyword tool you might want to try is keyword everywhere. This is a google chrome plugin that you can use to see keyword phrase traffic, competition, and the average cost per click.

As you research, build a targeted list of phrases. Focus on the phrases that have a substantial amount of Volume — lower cost per click (CPC) and middle to low competition or <.50.

Once you have your list, you can begin integrating those phrases throughout your site optimization process.

2. On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is crucial to driving growth on google and other search engines. On-page optimization is a combination of increasing your site health, UX experience, and while incorporating your targeted search term phrases throughout your site. Here is a basic list of the on-page optimization process we follow at our agency:

Title Tags

Title tags are one of the most important elements in ranking your website pages. The title tag can be created on your site editor and is unique to each site page. In google, your pages Title Tag will appear in bold blue. Notice how the keyword phrase is in this title tag example — I searched for “best roofing contractors near me”. Take the time to create title tags for each of your website pages and make them unique to each specific page on your website — do not duplicate page titles on your site.

How many characters should you use when creating your website page title tag? The optimal length is around 55 characters.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are the text that appears below the title tags in search. From the above example, you see the meta description text appear as

“They worked directly with our insurance company and kept me up-to-date at every step….”

Including your keyword-targeted phrases in your meta descriptions can help improve your site's ranking. You’ll notice that when you search on google — the results will show not only relevant page titles, but the words you may have used will be highlighted in the meta description as well. It’s important to include some of the keywords within each page's targeted meta descriptions. They don’t have to be in perfect order — but you should include a few of the keywords within the meta description. Also, note that the above example is simply pulling from a customer review and could be optimized even more to into “roofing contractor” inside the meta description.

How long should my meta description be? We recommend a maximum character length of 155 characters to optimize your meta description. Anything longer may get cut off on the search results page.

Header Tags

Header tags consist of the code on a web page that tells the search engines the level of priority as to what's most important on the page. They are indicated on your site editor as H1, H2, H3 and so on. Essentially any text that you assign H1 to is the most important content on your page. H2, H3, and H4 etc… show areas that are important content on the page but fall under the H1 tag.

Header tags help google understand what a page is about and the major sections of each page.

KEY: Be sure to create an H1 at a minimum for every page of your website. Typically this is the page title.

Alt Image Tags

Alt image tags are a way for you to describe what an image represents that appears on your web page. Most people skip this vital step but it can have a large impact on your website ranking. If, for example, you upload a file that is called 49284920.jpeg — that won’t help your site rank in any way. However, if you renamed your image (man-drinking-coffee) and used that same text and inserted it into the alt text of your site image — that can have an impact.

This not only helps search, but it helps users that may are visually impaired. In addition, alt text can help your images show up under search results for images on google and other search engines.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is simply connecting content inside your website. For example, let's say you have a page devoted to talking about the best espresso maker to use. And perhaps you also wrote an article about your favorite espresso pods that fit the espresso maker you are talking about — you could then add a link inside your page to your blog article. Internal links help connect related content on your site and help your user navigate throughout your site. In addition, it tends to increase site visit time as you are providing additional value.

SSL Certificate and 301 Redirects

Website browsers are now blocking many sites that do not have data encryption. You might have experienced this when visiting a site and the browser gave you a warning.

All sites should now have an SSL certificate and have all versions of your domain pointing towards the https version. If you don’t properly set this up, then it may negatively affect your SEO based on how someone may be visiting your site — either through entering just www.yoursitename.com or going to your site without typing www. etc…. If your site goes to various forms of secure and not secured version — it’s harming your SEO.

KEY: Quick tip. Set up a 301 redirect. Normally you can do this through your hosting provider our in your website domain management section of your site builder.

Sitemap Files and Robots.txt

These two files help google decide what pages of your site should be indexed and what files should not be indexed. It’s also important that this is set up properly to ensure google can read all pages. Most website builders have this automatically set up but some may have to be done manually. You can see your robots.txt file simply by typing in yoursitename.com/robots.txt. Another tool you can use to submit to and check to see if all pages are readable is google search console.

Main Site Navigation and Readable URLs

Building the correct hierarchy of a site and readable site URLs is important. Many times this overlooked but it’s another key factor in optimizing your site and user experience. Each page should have a page name or topic inside the page URL. It should also be properly built so that sub-pages are correctly displayed.

For example, let's say you have a services page and then a drop-down to roof repair. Good site navigation would appear as:
sitename.com/services/roof-repair rather than just sitename.com/roofing or some other version. Notice the page topic and name is inside the URL with a dash (-)separating words.

NOTE: Keep page URLs down to 2,3 or 4 words. If you are writing blogs, try and condense the URL length so it’s readable. Our recommendation is to try and keep your URL to 4 words or less if possible.

Although this is not the full list of SEO optimization for on-site work, this is a good starting list to go by and will help you dramatically increase your site traffic and rankings.

3. Weekly Content Creation

Content without a doubt is king — or queen :). There’s only so much on-page optimization you can do and A / B testing to help your site rank. CREATING CONTENT IS VITAL TO LONG TERM SEO.

Matter of fact, a good way to tell if the company you hired is doing good SEO work is to see them creating new consistent content via page creation or blog article writing. If you have a company that’s doing your SEO and they either say they’re just doing on-page work or they only create 1 piece of content per month— i would consider hiring a new agency. Most SEO agencies understand that you need weekly quality content to be able to achieve higher rankings for your search targets.

You want to create new content around your targeted keyword phrases (mentioned in step 1) so that you can consistently add content to your site that can help rank for your targetted keywords. In addition, consistent content creation on a weekly basis shows google your site is relevant and is constantly growing AND, perhaps just as important, it creates useful value to others. If you create new articles and share those across your GMB pages, social media pages and email lists — people that value your content with share and create links back to your articles.

4. Back Link Outreach

Backlinks tend to be the gray area of SEO. You probably have companies that have said they can guarantee backlinks each week or month or you might get spam links from companies saying you can spend money with them in exchange for them giving you backlinks. AVOID BUYING BACKLINKS. Buying links is a huge red flag for google. Buying backlinks may short term give you a boost in website authority and help you rank higher — but long term can create violations and toxic links that you’ll have to fix in the future and could harm your search rankings.

A backlink is simply a website linking back to your website. The best practice is to create high-quality content and expose that content. Think of any websites you’ve ever shared or referenced. Whether it was of an open house, or a recipe you liked, or a how-to video. You shared it or saved that link for reference in the future because it provided value. That is how you acquire natural organic backlinks-the way google intended website authority to be ranked.

In addition to creating great content, you can also find websites in your industry and do custom outreach to see if you can create content or share articles you have with them in exchange for a link. This is a genuine way of building even more backlinks.

5. Data Tracking Reports

This is more of a suggestion than an “optimization step”. If you hire an SEO agency, you want transparency and that should include having a real-time dashboard related to your keyword phrases and their google rankings. You should know at all times where you are so that you can decide what is working and what may need to be adjusted. If you are doing SEO yourself — having a tracking tool will be incredibly valuable. Without a tracking tool, you are working in the dark.

There are many tracking tools out there — we have a tool that is affordable to track 100’s of keywords per month for a low monthly fee. Feel free to contact us if you want to set up a custom keyword tracking tool.

The bottom line is SEO comes down to some simple fundamental steps and creating ongoing content. It is a long term process and should be done the correct way to avoid making errors that could cost you months or years of ranking progress. Modern SEO Agencies have reimagined this space and can achieve more at lower costs. Affordable and Effective SEO plans are a reality today and can create impactful long term SEO impact for your business.

If you’re looking for an automated, transparent and affordable SEO plan that starts at $299 per month, check out https://www.thestackgrp.com/services/seo

Bonus — free website audit. This is a good starting point if you are unsure of some of the basics your site should have. The best part, it’s free and you get the audit right away. This audit is not a page by page detailed report, rather a good overview of the main elements of your sites performance and SEO.

Stay Inspired

Ryan Stack
Co-Founder at The Stack Group