Best SEO Bang For Buck from $1000

[samh]

I'm a developer with little SEO / Marketing skills.

I've recently redesigned my site ( www.habitmix.com ), I think the site is great but it doesn't get a lot of organic search traffic (about 30 visits a day).

I have $1000 available to spend in next couple of weeks and am wondering what the best way to use the money would be.

I realize SEO is a long term process not a one time job, and I realize $1000 isn't a big budget.

So far I am considering :

• Finding someone on ODesk to create blog content, say a post a day for a month

• Finding an SEO company to analyse the site and create a link building strategy for me to execute.

Surely there are a lot of other ways I could spend my $1000 that would help grow organic traffic.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Cheers

Sam

[RyanKent]

Sam,

I strongly recommend you follow EGOL's advice in this case. The other suggestions are OK, but they run a distant second to EGOL's suggestion.

Your site needs SEO attention before you add additional content or link building. Everyone has their own experiences and proceeds differently. I am a firm believer in taking care of your site SEO first, then adding content and link building. If you were to follow the other suggestions and add content / link build now, you are adding to a poor foundation as your site requires SEO attention.

Your site is duplicated. You have a www version and a non-www version.

http://habitmix.com/ and http://www.habitmix.com/ both are working URLs for your site. This is a major SEO issue as you have links built for both versions of your site. Fortunately, it is very easy to fix.

There are other issues as well but this highlights my point which is you either need to be prepared to invest a lot of time learning SEO and applying it to your site, or acquire the professional services of an SEO then act upon the advice you are given. If you choose otherwise, I predict your $1000 will disappear and you wont be happy with the results.

You have a great concept. Back it up with some solid SEO.

[EGOL]

I'm a developer with little SEO / Marketing skills.

Invest in yourself.  Spend that $1000 having a great SEO do a study and recommend on your site.  They study it, make a list of tasks that can be done to improve your site, then spend an hour on the phone with you to improve your SEO.

This improves your site immediately and gives you skills that you can use over time.

[samh]

Thanks for your useful reply.

Can you tell me what you mean by "maximize that content via a digital marketing campaign."

If I wrote some articles and hired someone to maximize the content via a digital marketing campagin, what would they actually be doing ?

Cheers

Sam

[samh]

Hi James,

Thanks for the tips, I am interested in what you mean when you wrote the following :

• Use some of the funds and buy a link building service on related sites, I would outsource that to some where like odesk but do your research wisely.

What sort of link building would I be paying for ? Would I be paying someone to email blogs and request a link for example ? I'm not sure what the link building service would be doing.

Cheers

Sam

[JamesNorquay]

Hi Mate,

Here are some ideas how you can spend the money:

• Use PR content and syndicate articles about your product via different PR websites, would involve content writers writing PR content about your product.

• Use some of the funds and buy a link building service on related sites, I would outsource that to some where like odesk but do your research wisely.

• Generally just look for some people to buy social media based link building from, and really push it in related sections.

• Hire some one to write some guest post content for you and also hire them to find related sites to post guest posts on.

I mean their are millions of ideas out their just check out SEER for a great post about local link building ideas:

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/35-local-link-opportunities-you-missed/2010/12/06/

[crvw]

Hey Sam, I'm not sure there is a "Right" answer to your question.  How much time do you have to personally invest in addition to your $1000?  What are you good at doing, and what do you enjoy doing?

If you have some subject mater expertise and writting skills, then you'll want to create your own content, and hire someone to help you maximize that content via a digital marketing campaign.  Read some of the great advice at a site like copyblogger.com to get you started.

On the otherhand, if you aren't a strong writter, or don't have much subject mater expertise, but you find all the SEO discussions here fascinating, then start reading http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo and hire someone to create great content for you.

If you don't have time or inclination to do either, then I'd still focus your budget on creating more valuable content that will attract visitors and search engines rather than maximizing the SEO value of your current content.

By creating new content, I don't mean hiring some anonymous SEO copyrigher to ghost write their own copy for your site.  If you're a subject mater expert, hire a copy writer to interview you and write a series of articles based on your interview.  Ideally focus on creating some "Pillar" articles (substantial pieces that have practical advice or useful tips for your audience, that will encourage sharing/linking).  Alternatively, hire a graphic artist to create infographics relevant to your audience.  Sites like http://99designs.com/ can be a great way to get amazing creative for reasonable prices.

If your not a subject mater expert, then use your budget to hire a subject mater expert.

Great content can help you earn an audience in-spite of SEO flaws, but in the long run the best SEO in the world won't help you keep an audience without great content.

Another way you could consider turning your money into great content is to invest it in a social tool for your site.  I.E.  Pay someone to add a forum to your site or blog.  If you can offer great tools to get your users to create great content for you, that can provide you with great content on an on-going basis vs. buying $1,000 worth of great content and then running out of resources.

The bottom line is find a way have that budget subsidize what you or your users are willing to do themselves, to create a sustainable ongoing way to build your traffic.

I hope that helps!