SEO without a budget and Cheating Competitors
-
I have law clients in the atlanta ga area. I have worked with one client http://bestdefensega.com for the past 4 months trying to get him to the top. We blog 3 times a week, have manually built citations and legal directory profiles. My client doesn't have a large budget to purchase profiles on some of the larger legal directories like findlaw, lexus nexus etc..
With that said,
Using Open Site Explorer I have discovered that his competition all have multiple business websites pointed back to their main websites.. So each law office has several really generic websites in addition to their main site. Other's appear to be receiving links from some type of link farm and really generic directory sites.
The domains of these guy's are older and more established. Where as, my client has a new practice and a new domain.How do I compete in the local market without a budget for the premium legal directories?
So after 4 months my client appears in the local pack search results for only select keywords. Criminal defense attorney woodstock ga. His competition appears in the results for all variations, where my client only shows for this one term.
How do I get me client in the local pack for all variations of Criminal Defense in my area?
According to Moz, my site has a couple spam score issues and the explanations are not clear enough for me to make some types of changes.
**How do I make these changes to reduce the spam score?My site has more back links than Moz is reporting why?**
All of the other sites that I manage perform well and my clients are realizing their ROI with relative ease. But criminal defense is a different beaat and it is starting to frustrate me. RAR!
Thanks in advance!
-
Hmm, $200 a month is a pretty small budget. In your client's market, it is a really small budget! His competitors are almost certainly spending 5, 7 or 10 x more than than that a month. Look at a respected service like LocalSpark (https://www.whitespark.ca/localspark-local-seo-service) Average budget for them is about $1500 a month, with a proviso that they may need to charge more if warranted.
What can you do for $200 a month? Perhaps offer him a couple of consulting hours once a month to give him ideas for things he should then undertake himself? From personal experience, I wouldn't even begin to offer implementation at that price point, unless it was writing maybe one blog post a month for him, which just isn't going to get him far in that market. So, maybe you can be his ideas man for that budget ... or maybe he'd better go on EGOL's diet and save up some money to be able to take a better approach in future.
-
Thanks for your insight!
The reality of the situation is that while my clients know the value of a healthy seo program and the ROI that it can provide, they don't want to spend more than 200/month on the service. So what they get out of me is blogging,citation building, on page optimization and that about sums it up!
Thanks for the insight!
Cheers
-
This is how it is probably going to work. When you go cheap, you might see a bit of progress at the start. However, if you are shoveling coal into the engine at 1/4 tons per hour but your competition is shoveling coal at 4 tons per hour, you are not going to catch them. Never. Your rankings are going to fall over time even if you get a foothold at the start. You are simply outgunned. In addition, if your attorney just started his website then he arrived at the fight at least ten years late.
If someone who owns a business came to me and said.... I only got $500/month, and they are attacking something quite expensive and difficult, I would let them know that they really don't have the resources to compete. I would recommend getting a part time McJob, selling the Jaguar, getting a home equity loan, and giving up cigarettes, booze, and eat beans every night. Then spend that money on their SEO.
Good SEO can fund itself, but if you don't put up at least enough resources to be competitive don't expect to make genuine progress. I know a few SEOs who do not take jobs where the client does not want to invest what is needed. Why? The client will never achieve satisfaction.
Someone in my family does roofing and if the client there is not willing to pay enough money to do a good job, it is better for him to decline the job than to put on a roof that is going to leak or make no profit on dangerous work.
-
Hi Mike,
Unfortunately - being under-funded in a highly competitive market is not a recipe for success. I understand the difficulty here, from past work with very small businesses. You can do a ton for a small business in a small market, but you may not be able to do much for them in larger markets, and it's really important to set correct expectations about this if such clients are determined to hire you. If your client's competitors have more to invest in their efforts, they do have the upper hand, and it isn't reasonable for any client who can't compete financially with his competitors to expect their SEO to work magic that will somehow make up for this budget problem.
But, there are some grace notes here, because SEO isn't 100% about money. It's also about creativity. Here are some suggestions:
-
Presumably, your client is paying you for X amount of hours of work a month. If, in that time, you have a staff member who can come up with something outside-the-box (perhaps a video or social campaign) that can generate a new, fresh burst of interest, this could make some phones ring and could perhaps move the client up a bit ranking-wise due to an increase in human activity on the site, links, social mentions, etc.
-
If the client is finding it impossible to budget to complete for head terms, consider going after long tail terms instead. In the legal industry, all terms are likely to be very tough to compete for in most cities, but the longer tail ones may be slightly less competitive.
-
Consider hyperlocal optimization. If your client's city has distinct neighborhoods or districts, create new content to focus on his services in these hyperlocal areas. They will, perforce, be less full of competitors than the entire city will be. For further reading, see: https://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid
-
You ask how the client can appear for all his desired terms in the local packs of results. There are several hundred factors involved. Audit your client using these 2 resources:
https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit
Then, audit their competitors to the best of your ability to see if there are any weak points. If you can make these weak points your client's strong ones, this could help, if the budget is there for you to do the work involved.
-
Finally, you mention some spam score and back link issues. I'm no expert here, but if you could explain, in detail, what issues are being reported, I'll make sure you receive a clear explanation of this, either from me, or from a team mate. Hopefully the community will provide feedback, too
-
If competitors are genuinely spamming Google, it might be worthwhile to report them: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-report-spam-to-us-15187.html There may be more recent posts about this elsewhere, but I remember the above video.
Hope this helps!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Local SEO Tasks When Closing One Branch of Multilocation Business
I would appreciate the opinions of my fellow SEOs on this one. I haven’t seen any other threads on this exact subject and others that touch on it are somewhat older so I am hoping this also proves to be a good resource for others going forward. I have an existing client that I did local SEO for about a year ago. They are a propane service provider and they had multiple locations. So we did local SEO for the company primarily by updating NAPs and creating more individual content for each of the branches such as specific landing page for each branch on their website and individual listings in citations for each branch. Now they have sold one of the branches to a competitor and they need to remove all listings for it. I am trying to develop a comprehensive list of actions to take and I would appreciate any feedback on the best way to go about accomplishing this task. Here is what I have so far: Remove all mention of sold branch on client website, including specific landing page Delete any branch-specific social media accounts Some specific areas I have questions about are: What do I do with Google My Business listings for the sold branch? Do I try to delete/unregister/close them? Or should I just leave them be with an updated link to our website homepage? Should I even bother contacting the main NAP listing sites to remove the old listing or just leave it to fall off on its own? Thank you again for all your help!
Local Listings | | Ayres-SEO0 -
SEO issues with Physician and Practice not ranking for their own names
I've inherited an SEO client who's got all kinds of ranking problems. Currently his name Dr. Laddis shows up for his old practice, Saratoga Cardiology Associates (http://saratogacardiology.com/) instead of his current one Cardiology Specialty Services (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ) He's also showing up with a G+ for the old practice that's listed as closed. The 2nd listing is for his bio on the hospital page.(<cite class="_Rm">https://saratogahospital.org/doctor/theodoros-laddis-md-facc/ )</cite> Then come the usual Dr directories. His YouTube channel shows up. But his actual website isn't until the middle of the 2nd page. I'm also having similar issues getting the practice to show up in search (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ). As I was coming on board, they also had a name change from Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services to Cardiology Specialty Services. Their G+ local business page has the custom URL for Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services but the name on the page is Cardiology Specialty Services. Their website is actually part of the hospital multisite with a URL redirect. While the site shows up for "cardiologist Saratoga" their G+ page doesn't show up.(https://plus.google.com/+Saratogacardiologyspecialtyservices/about ). I've also done on-page SEO and am still in the process of submitting to directories. Any thoughts on what the hangup is or what I can do to clear up this mess would be appreciated.
Local Listings | | IT-dmd0 -
Searches without adding my city
Hi all, I have a small IT business and run it out of my home. My main keywords are: "Computer Repair Services". I have been optimising my site for awhile now. I am in Douglasville GA. If I search: "Computer Repair Services Douglasville" I am on pages 1-3 at any given time. I also show in maps on page 1 at times. If I only search "Computer Repair Services" I am nowhere to be found. I see other companies in my town listed but not me. I am missing out on opportunities from everyone outside my small town who does not include the city in the search. Also from all nearby towns. I know I do not have many backlinks and I need more Domain authority. I have run Open Site Explore on a competitor and his site has less authority and links than mine. He is always listed on page 1 without the city in the search. Can someone explain how I can be found without using my city in the search. Thanks
Local Listings | | twoacejr0 -
Foreign languages and SEO: product description
Hi everyone, I have hit a brick wall with regards with the SEO of one of our sites. This is concerning a Belgium based webshop which sells toys. The server is based in the Belgium and the domainname ends also .be . They try to put as much possible dutch/belgium text on the website but the amount of this is very low compared to the english text on the website. The problem starts when they import product description from the main manufacturer which is in english. this means when the customer visits the website, it's dutch, but the product description is in english I have pointed out this but they pointed out the fact they import with 1 click 500 products, but it takes them ages to translate this to dutch. Now is my theory, the way they are doing this, will hurt their ranking a lot in the google.be search engine compared to their competitors to the point that less than 10% of their site is in dutch/belgium and the rest in english. I am thinking of the possibility of suggesting to let them use google translate to automatically translate the products before putting them on the website. It won't be a great translation, but it will stop hurting their ranking and will even contribute to increase their ranking. I thought they do this, and put a small link to the english version of the manufacturer. I would love to hear others thoughts on how to do this with as efficient and fast as possible.
Local Listings | | sami800 -
Looking for SEO Specialist Contractor!
Polyvore is looking for an SEO Specialist (Contract role)! Click here to apply: https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz As an SEO expert, you will help acquire users to Polyvore through organic search. You will also be key to helping engineering team understand SEO best practices. Our ideal service provider is someone who has a deep understanding of SEO in the e-commerce space. Key Responsibilities Audit all Polyvore pages and help the engineering team understand their relative importance to SEO Provide SEO best practices for e-commerce space and help build out automated tools to ensure these best practices Help investigate issues related to SEO including but not limited to changes in organic search traffic Review upcoming designs from SEO perspective & suggest improvements before the changes are implemented What does success look like? Overall increase in organic search traffic to Polyvore A set of automated SEO tools that help catch SEO issues proactively A monitoring plan to catch SEO issues early (i.e. which tools to use, what to track, how to predict potential issues) Click here to apply: https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz
Local Listings | | seomoz_polyvore.com0 -
Does embedding Google map help local SEO?
Hi I am curious if adding a embedded Google map to a footer helps for Local seo? Thank you
Local Listings | | Berner1 -
How is a competitor franchise ranking all for all 3 Local results with unclaimed G+ pages in a search for the national corporation?
My company is an individual franchise of a national corporation - every franchise is operates as [National Corporate Brand Name] + a chosen descriptor such as "Premiere" or the names of the owners such as "Smith Jones". A logged-out Google search for just the national brand name returns the corporate website first, followed by the website of a competing local franchise and 3 Local listings for their offices. These listings are all unclaimed and unverified on Google+ and have no reviews or posts. The corporate Twitter is next, followed by my franchise's website. The corporate Facebook is the last result on the page. How can this competing franchise rank for all 3 Local listings with unclaimed pages? My company operates several more offices than the competitor in the same area and I regularly post to their G+ pages which I verified several months ago. Is it because the competitor's website just holds significantly more weight in Google than our own? A search for the brand name + the town where our offices are in does usually return our Local listing pages, but that limits our reach to those specific towns. Anyone have any insight on this?
Local Listings | | WGW0 -
SEO ROI for brick-and-mortar small business?
So I've just been contracted to do some on-page and local SEO for a number of websites, and aside from analytics, I don't know how to prove the ROI. Any thoughts on that? For example, how do I prove a restaurant is getting more customers because I optimized their website and established and enhanced local listings (or if that's even the case)? How would I measure that success, especially if there are other variables (maybe they're also kicking off some off-line marketing in tandem ... )
Local Listings | | sbs2190