White hat on a small business budget.

[Superflys]

How can a small internet marketing firm build links and do SEO for small business clients? Seems to me the white hat link building would be next to impossible to do while making money at the same time. Say a small business client has $300 per month to spend on internet marketing... how can you possibly do white hat work for that kind of money?

If you can... then how?

[McTaggart]

Perhaps a focus on online PR, with the clients doing some of the legwork to drive ideas and initiatives? (PR Power by Amanda Barry-Hirst is a great book for small businesses).

[Travis-W]

That's what I meant when I started mentioning wages toward the end of my post.
Is the OP talking about $300/month in addition to someone's salary or AS someone's salary?

How much do companies spend on SEO that is not part of someone's salary?
Does this include outsourcing graphic design for content creation?  Buying links?  Analytics software?

If you have one SEO All-star on your staff who can do their own graphic design, web development, write content, and reach out for links - are there any costs other than their salary?

[EGOL]

I have always considered SEO to be "free".

There are quite a few companies who spend over $50,000/month on SEO.

And, if you consider content creation to be part of SEO then an awful lot of companies are spending that much per month on SEO.

All that I put into it is my time, both writing content and working on our websites.

You can place a value on your time.  If you are just starting out just assign yourself a wage.  If you have an established biz then divide your average annual profits by the number of hours that you work.

If you do either of those you will probably conclude that $300/month is not very much at all.

[Travis-W]

This raises some interesting questions.

I have always considered SEO to be "free" (aside from my subscription to Moz)
All that I put into it is my time, both writing content and working on our websites.

When you say $300 is that including the wage of whoever you want to do your SEO?
or do you mean $300 in addition to their (or your own) wage?

[Felip3]

Hi,

Depending on your client niche  you can host an event.  Events are an easy way to build a lot of links:

"Why are they easy? So long as you have an interesting event that is put on by a legitimate organization, you’re very likely to get accepted by most event listing sites. Many of the event sites require a simple form consisting of an event title, description, when and where the event takes place, and of course, a URL for more information. And as long as your event is valuable to the people that will attend, the outreach portion can be much easier than other link outreach methods."

Check the full article here: http://moz.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-link-building-with-local-events

[EGOL]

how can you possibly do white hat work for that kind of money?

As SEroB says, if they are in a not-to-difficult local niche that might be enough to be effective.

If they are competing in a sleepy little product niche with mostly naive competitors then spending that $300 on one piece of really great content per month (hitting different keywords with each) might be enough to get some traffic flow that will pay back long term.  It is possible that the competition is weak enough that a few pedestrian content pages will pull in traffic (but not links).

If the company has a person who can write this content then you might get a couple great pieces per month and use the $300 to promote them.

However, if they face any real competition at all then it might be best to tell them...  "What would happen if you sent 10 soldiers out when 10,000 are needed?   Right... you got your ass kicked and wasted 10 soldiers."

I think that it is going to take $xxxx/month (or whatever).  If you are up for the fight I think I can help you but I don't want to lead you into a fight that you can't win.

[SErOb]

I suppose this depends on the type of business.

As you know, $300 wont get much.  If local SEO is relevant to the business, I'd go that route.

Otherwise, you're dealing with a company who is not sold on the value of SEO.  And do you really want to deal w/ that?