Can you rank without spending lots of money?
-
Hello Everyone,
This is a general question, and its one I have been thinking about recently because I am working on promoting couple of websites. I want to know if it is still possible to make websites rank consistently without spending lots of money. I am self employed, and 5 or so years ago, I remember I did all my own link building/content for about 6 or so websites that I owned, and I managed to make most of them rank consistently. I am not in the SEO business, and I have not touched any SEO type of work for about 5 years now. And I always did it for my own websites/business. I know this is a fast moving industry, and my general knowledge may be a bit out of date.
I kind of get the feeling that the days of when small business owners could make a website rank on a shoe string budget and make a bit of money with an online business may have died or is dying. I am a realist and I know that only a very tiny percentage of websites make really good quality/fresh content that everyone wants to reads. I know a common advise is that you should create a site with such amazing content that everyone talks about you and mentions/links to you without you even to need to do any link building. But in my opinion (I could be wrong), but I feel that this probably happens to less than 0.01 percent of websites. And I also know even third rate websites with blogs or content sites charge to post an article with a link. So this makes me think that nowadays you need a good budget and plenty of time to make a website rank. Am I wrong? In today's internet, do you need to spend money to rank?
I genuinely want to know peoples experience and or opinion on this subject.
Thanks.
-
Thank you, your responses have been very helpful. They have confirmed what I have been thinking. Regarding the Mac example I used, I had already been thinking about separating the "Mac" content publishing side, and I had bought a domain and put certain things in place. The truth is I am not looking to grow that business, I have actually downsized it on purpose, although I am reasonably competent and making businesses work, I don't play well with others, and although I have all the skill set to grow the business, I don't have the personalty trait to be dealing with the public. I am also at an age, where I no longer feel I have to, if that makes any sense.
Lastly, you are absolutely write, even though this is a forum response, I have a bad habit of babbling on, and writing stuff long winded. I never ever thought my writing skills were any good. I would have have described it as poor, even though have formal education. I was never that good at it. However, I don't know how to describe it, but it felt like it was the right angle or topic or approached the right way. I suppose what I am trying to say is it felt right, rather then the writing style or grammer etc being good.
Anyway, thanks for your input. Very much appreciated.
-
If you have a service that is based upon people "carrying a device into your office" then you need to be looking at local search to cultivate that business. Your publishing would be a separate activity and it could earn income from ads, affiliate programs, direct sales, and you could attract some consulting services done by skype or other media.
The 0.01 percent number is based upon a single piece of content. However, lets say you have a website that regularly publishes high quality articles that are extremely helpful, entertaining or valuable in some way you can attract a following of subscribers. Here the bundle of what you are offering is in the 0.01 percent, even though individual posts are in the top 10%.
Slowly that website and its subscribers can become valuable and grow to thousands of people. Each time you publish they will flock to your site to see your new content. That is an opportunity for you to show them ads, offer a product, offer a service. Lots of people have built highly successful business this way. For this to work you gotta know your stuff and your stuff must be something that has recurrent appeal to large numbers of people who are excited about the topic that you publish.
Based upon your writing and the thoughts behind it, I think that you have potential - although your paragraphs are way too long
-
Hi, Thanks for a detailed response. I completely agree with you, content is not king, its the Emperor of the Universe at the moment, in my opinion. However, this is the situation or dilemma I am faced with. I am sure others are faced by similar. I am about to work on a creative service niche site that I hope to rank across English speaking countries. However, I want to use a small business niche as an example. Of the small business projects I am involved in, one is a specialist Mac repair. I say its not like a normal repair shop, in the sense that most customers who come to us, have often exhausted all other avenues, like going to Apple direct, and seeing other Apple Authorized stores. We actually encourage and want people to go to other repair shops first, by accident its kind of worked to our advantage in a weird way. The business has great online and handwritten reviews etc, that are excellent that people could be forgiven for thinking its fake. The reason being is that we only take on a few jobs on a week, and its very personal service, so its quite controlled. Intentionally we don't take that many jobs because of various reasons. And we are probably expensive compared to your average "repair business" and people know that. Now, this business has had a new website for a number of years now, but I don't think it has any links, and zero SEO has been done in terms of link building and content.
Now if we assume I want to create that repair business into a good content site, that is well thought of, and maybe even a thought leader in the long term. I know if I put my mind and time into it I could probably create descent articles and content. Obviously I will never be as good as a professional who solely do content as its not my area of specialisation. As an example, I could create various articles about discussions in that industry, how to do articles, and even videos. You know, and I know, every man and his dog is doing this. And you also have big established Mac/Apple sites that already do similar stuff like iFixit, MacWorld and MacFormat and iMore and hundreds of others. Now, I may be able to create good enough content and videos that put the content in the top say 10% or 15% of that industry. However, even that is probably not good enough in my opinion, for someone to link to you, or say on Twitter/FB to their friend, check this site or article out about the problem you've been having etc I know from my personal experience, I rarely say on social media or forums to check this or that out, unless I am having a conversation about a subject at that time, or its a real standout site or subject. In my opinion, most businesses that do "well" probably fall into that top 10% or 15% of content, where the content is not all that, its not amazing, but its good enough and useful enough to rank by Google. Maybe not at the top, but high enough to make it bring enough traffic for it to make financial sense to the owners. I think unless you are very very talented and think of a great subject matter, and you then focus on one single subject single mindedly, then maybe you can be that 0.01 percent. However, for the majority of mortals like us, its probably like shooting at stars, at least for now.
Anyway, that's what I think. And I need to find a way of making it into that 0.01 percent somehow (not with Mac example above). Thanks.
-
I know a common advise is that you should create a site with such amazing content that everyone talks about you and mentions/links to you without you even to need to do any link building. But in my opinion (I could be wrong), but I feel that this probably happens to less than 0.01 percent of websites.
I agree with every word. You "get it". There are only ten positions on the first page of Google and if you are not able to earn one of them for many keywords in your niche, your business is probably going to fail.
If you must rely on a linkbuilder then you will be spending big money to catch up with the people who have been working hard for the past ten years. If you have crap content today, meaning if you have one of those 99.99 percent of sites that can't make it on their content, then you will be paying a linkbuilder for five years and the amount of work that the linkbuilder will have to do will accelerate over time - because your competitor is adding awesome good content every day.
Some people don't "get" this. They think that they can toss up crap content and a linkbuilder will make it rank. Those days are gone. Today you must please the visitor and produce a website that will attract them because something is there. If you rely on a linkbuilder to deliver visitors to crap content the visitors will arrive, look around and say WTF? and leave. With that Google will realize that your site is crap and demote you.
The days of fooling google with linkbuilding are gone. The people who try that are eaten by Penguins. The days of fooling google with crap content are gone. People who try that are eaten by Pandas. You are now in The Age of Real Websites.
Can this be done without money? Maybe, if you can produce the content that is needed. As you know, only 0.01 percent can make that happen. If you are one of those and have the money, spend it on a technical SEO to be sure that your website is functioning properly and working efficiently to deliver pages fast, mobile-friendly, not producing duplicates, etc.
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
-
Ranking impact: Traffic in website pages vs sub directory vs sub domain
Hi all, I need clarification on this. Not every time website main pages rank, some times even pages from sub directories or sub domains like blogs or guides; especially for branded keywords. I just wonder what happens when so much traffic is generating in sub directories and sub domains just because of limited landing pages in main website. Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Sub-domain with spammy content and links: Any impact on main website rankings?
Hi all, One of our sub-domains is forums. Our users will be discussing about our product and many related things. But some of the users in forum are adding a lot of spammy content everyday. I just wonder whether this scenario is ruining our ranking efforts of main website? A sub domain with spammy content really kills the ranking of main website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Can 'Jump link'/'Anchor tag' urls rank in Google for keywords?
E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
Does the more number of ranking pages improve the website ranking?
Hi all, Let's say there is a website with 100 pages ad 95 pages are not ranking for any keywords; but the other 5 pages including homepage are ranking for some keywords. In this scenario, the 95% non-ranking pages does impact the other 5% pages rankings? Or every page holds their credibility in ranking irrespective of other pages in website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Sudden drop in rankings and indexed pages!
Over the past few days I have noticed some apparent major changes. Before I explain, let me say this: Checking my analytics and WMT: There is an increase in traffic (even via google organic) There is no drop in impressions or clicks There is no drop in indexed pages in GWT Having said that; When I check my indexed pages using site:www.mywebsite.com, I see only 30 results as opposed to the 120K that I was seeing before (it was steadily climbing). The indexed pages have increase 3 fold in the past year, because of the increase in pages, updates, and products on the site. I see a sudden drop in rankings for major keywords that had been steadily rising. For example, I had some major keywords that were on page 7-8, not they are on page 20+ or not at all. Also, the page that used to show in the rankings has changed. I have only done white-hat guest blogging in the past year for link building, on a small scale (maybe 20-30 links in a year). They only other change recently, is that we are: Posting products on Houzz and Pinterest daily adding our site to all local directories (white pages, Yelp, citysearch, etc.) My site got hit by Penguin more than a year ago, but we have done everything right since, and our traffic via organic results has more than doubled since the Penguin release. What the hell is going on? Should I be concerned?
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseseo0 -
What would you recommend i do to improve my rankings?
I am looking for some advice as to what I need to do to improve my rankings? website: www.funktiongolf.co.uk Thanks Ben
Algorithm Updates | | funktiongolf0