If you had $300-500/month to Spend on New Site - what would you do?

Is it something you can spend $1,000 on and get it automated somehow? That would be cheaper than spending money on writers forever to maintain the site.

The first thing I try to do with new sites is automate them so they're hands free and usually my only expense is hosting/servers.

Of course a PR company is going to recommend their service instead of going with a SEO company.

I would hire a writer for sure if you don't wanna write your content by yourself. After this I would invest in some proper SEO knowledge that you know what you do and hire also an outsourcer who can do the seo for you. The next thing you could need are some licences for seo programs.

But there is also option B hire a writer and spend the rest in paid traffic.

Writers & SEO. also look into making more sites and repeat the process

Content writers for sure. Then syndicate that content. Hire some specialists in that field to syndicate articles and PDFs to relevant authority sites.
Video creation, video marketing and submission. Massive traffic source, growing exponentially.
All can be done well within your budget.

I would focus on list building, flip that 500$ into 1K, multiply and then invest in the site.

Domain and hosting of course, then I would go with paid tribes and blogging to establish authority, drive traffic and boost your online revenue. Going the blogging route establishes your authority which makes you impress more easily. All the best!

Content, content, content, content, add more content, do your keyword research, forget about link building. Content is what brings authority!!!!!!!

Wouldn't you rather create content which brings backlinks in naturally??????

The more posts/pages you have, the more spikes/portals/gateways/doors you have coming into your website!!

= traffic!!!

If I were you, I would spend the maximum funds for content creation. And might do some social sharing stuffs with the rest of the money.

I'd save up that money untill I had $2,000 then I would buy a life time license of SENUKE X. (Automated SEO software). Then buy a few WSO's on how to run it without shooting yourself in the foot.

I would do some ppc, i bought a wso for penny clicks well worth it and outsource content creation. squidoo and ezine rank high find good creator on fiverr. It will come up on first page in most cases if keyword doesnt already rank one. Then do some social media syndication.

Definitely spend most on good content - but make it valuable and VIRAL.
But I would also look into building a community through Twitter and Facebook.
Auto post from the blog to these and let them share and grow your website.

The occasionally press release is OK, but I would also look into Facebook ads, paid retweets and possibly paid posts / guest posts with bloggers in your niche but certainly network with other bloggers / influencers.

SEO can be mainly about getting your on page SEO right and possibly syndicating content. Cheap unnatural backlinks will get your site burned once the semantic web comes to fruition - then most fake backlinks will be very transparent.

I take it for granted you are also building a mailing list for long term profitability?

Good luck

Hugh

Content writers and social syndication. SEO just waste of time.

For sure I would stay away from "SEO companies" or "SEO providers".

Your idea to use press releases instead is excellent.

That strategy will bring you direct traffic and SEO benefits and is approved by Google.

As far as getting a monthly package: That depends on what is in the package
but most likely you would get more bang for your buck if get press releases written and then get them submitted separately.

You could for example get 25 press releases for $10 each plus $50 for Sbwire submission ($49/ month for one submission max per day per month).

That way you can also tailor the content and the press releases so that the press releases lead into the articles on your site and match perfectly and create a funnel that leads to your final desired action(sale, registration etc.).

I'll throw my $.02 into content. Remember, however, that it needs to be high quality content. This doesn't simply mean well written, but also engaging and something that gets people to share/like/tweet it.

Good luck!

i perefer to build a website and sell it but the first senario look good too :
1) Hire content writers ($250/month)
2) Hire SEO company from the Warrior Forum ($200/month)

If I had that funds $300 ready to invest for a new money site project, I would spend:
1. Outsource the content: $5 for 800 words article, so Invest $100 for 20 articles, thats enough to cover the niche
2. $100 for backlinking: a new site should go with mass link immediately, just find a service to build about 50 satelite web 2.0 blog and build thousands of BL to them
3. $100 for viral buzz: make PR video, facebook marketing, real blog comment,...

I do not know your plans for making money, some people make less than a penny a visitor, and some people make > 10 cents a visitor.

Exceptionally high quality content is invaluable, there is nothing of higher value on the internet, sharing it socially could cause a buzz and leads to massive amounts of traffic, and of course more conversions. I have one post I made that led to a few hundred thousand people a month for nearly a year. Many of them converted, and many back linked. That post took me about 12 hours to write, but obviously it was worth the time.

Great quantities of average quality original content are also valuable, but not so much. Quantity has a quality of its own. Careful buying content, often it is just spun garbage that is borderline worthless.

I only spend about $300 a month on my website, and it goes into various advertising. I make the content myself and it is a decent paying full time job. People will say do not spend money on advertising, but for my $300 I get about $500 back, plus awesome e-mail lists, and referrals. This will obviously depend once again though on the quality of content and of course finding a way to achieve the necessary ROI.

Nobody can answer this question for you, if your website is short on content, you had best get some. If the content is shallow, you had best deepen it. If you outsource you SEO be very very careful who you choose, the wrong decision could be disastrous. I tend to think only about 5% of the "SEO Experts" you run into know much of anything. I would suggest learning the SEO yourself first so you can properly evaluate the people you hire.

To close this all off. I believe you should attack marketing from all angles, do not chose one or the other, they all work, so do them all. However be very careful who you decide to give your money to.

Backlinks are still important. Google's head web spam fighter, Matt Cutts, just said Google had tried running their algorithm without links () and the results were poor. So, links as a ranking signal are not going away any time soon.

But many of the old link building tactics do not work anymore. More people attempt to attract links naturally these days, with content marketing or other marketing tactics. Or use the remaining loopholes and semi-legitimate link building techniques.

On-page SEO will always be important in my opinion. Perhaps the focus will shift towards structured data or something, but improving on-site crawlability and URL structure, as well as dealing with internal duplicate content is going to be important for now.

Anyway, if I were in the OP's shoes, I'd hire an SEO consultant and invest heavily in content marketing, but maybe not press releases. Forget about press releases for SEO. That simply doesn't work in 2014. What is more, links in press releases can harm web rankings. When writing press releases, make sure that you don't have links with exact match anchors.

Write press releases to get attention of the press/media in your niche. If this goal is not about your online biz, just don't write press releases.

The era of investing heavily in SEO is long gone! content is king! that's the basis, and it's not changing any time soon.

Hire a bunch of good developers to build some killer applications and then resell

500
It's what I give cute strippers to go to vip.

U cant do much with 500

But Im an expensive dude

Set up a blog and put some personality and knowledge behind it. It's a longterm strategy, but it works...assuming you have personality and knowledge.