Need help: hired as a solo in-house SEO guy

i assume the company has been existing for atleast a few years so the domain isn't "new", you could probably make use of some drip-feed service for offpage seo, because the domain is aged it probably wont go straigt to sandbox like new domains who gain explosively insane amounts of backlinks.

I would head to Vegas or Atlantic City and try to turn that $500 into $5000.

$500/month just is not enough. I would probably spend about $3000-4000/month minimum in that niche.

Mike, Thanks for the input. What exactly does that money go to when one spends that much money on SEO? Is it mainly hiring people to create tons of content and more people to distribute it + create tons of back links?

I'm not sure that my boss understands that it's going to require that much capital to make it happen. (as I didn't either). He knows how valuable it will be to get on the first page of google, so I'm sure he would eventually be open to spending that much. I'm just wondering, as the guy who is in charge of the SEM campaign, how do I frame my role within the organization when spending that kind of money on SEO?

Seriously, a $75K per month PPC budget & a $500 per month SEO budget, yet they want to stop paying for leads?

Their paying for leads one way or another & $500 doesn't sound like much of a budget for the niche If they're consistently dumping $75k per month into PPC.

Sounds like they're off budget a few thousand (per month).

Do they really believe the organic SERPs won't have competition, sounds like tough competition at $75k on the PPC. If organic SERPs could be done with $500 don't they think all their PPC competition would have done that years ago?

$500 a month would not be nearly enough, as that niche is a very competitive niche and most likely their competitors are spending way much more than that.

* you would need to hire a writer and the good ones will cost you, do not settle for the cheap ones because in return you will also get crappy articles

* either you yourself would do the link building or you would hire someone to do it for you.

* its good to "guest post" on related niches from time to time but only do it in a very small scale because paying other webmasters to either link to your site by either in an article or in a static link on the side bar or somewhere would be you bread and butter here

* and it would all go down to buying links where in that $500 a month would not suffice

For these questions, I would say 70% yes. If you can come up with a really good plan, I strongly believe that it will be achievable. However, I really can't understand why they are shedding out just 500 when they are paying you 75k.

For the other questions, I guess the plan would greatly depend on the nature of the company and different techniques would definitely apply.

$500/month for SEO? They can not get quality SEO work if they pay low!

I just can't figure it out they have such a budget for PPC but is not willing to invest on SEO...

They won't be spending up to $75,000 Month on PPC once they have good ranking on SERPS. In fact they'll even have a better ROI if the SEO guy they hired is as good as me. LoL! just kidding..

Well, you should seriously talk to your boss why he can spend 75,000 on PPC and gives you only 500$ per month for SEO. Maybe you need to explain that high rankings in high competition industry could bring even more effect than the best 75,000 campaign ever. I seriously see no point in saving money on things that are potentially profitable.
If your boss is not in SEO, maybe it is time to take two or three hours and explain him just the basics so he understands where his money will go to.
But still, speaking of the outsourcing budget, it is really important what was done before. Just rebuilding the website with WordPress gives nothing, if you rebuild the site then you have to pay attention to webmaster guidelines. If your website wasn’t optimized at all, 500$ can be a good start though. Write plenty of articles, buy some donor domains, build them up and get links from them. As supereek said some drip-feed things may help, but it depends.

Higher organic rankings lower the cost of Adwords PPC. That's where I'd get the money from.

It sounds like your boss hired the wrong person.

If you have no idea how much money is required - or what to do with it if you have it - why did you take the job and accept that $500 a month would be an adequate budget.

Sorry to be blunt but it sounds like you are not up to the job you took on.

Seriously - a "normal" press release budget would be at least $1000 just to get good coverage and get in the right journals. $1000 might buy you one month of advertising on a relevant website.

$500 is not going to get you anywhere in a competitive niche. You may be able to carve out a small slice of the niche to focus your efforts on, but you won't be able to get traction in a big way with a tiny budget like that.

Even if you were given a 5k budget, you have a hard time spending it wisely as it doesn't sound like you know what you're getting into. If you don't know what you're looking for, you WILL got conned into thinking this and that link is good.

With budgets this high, you'll definatley need connections in the SEO world to help spend the budget.

What about buying the fiverr all stars eBook and find some decent people that know what there doing. These are the top rated in the field within fiverr.com

$500 is a very LOW amount for "real" SEO.

Unless - you are one of those people who thinks that good SEO is still being done by "some guys off a forum" who offer single, particular services. (blasts, commenting, etc..) even private "high PR networks".... ALONE as a "SEO Strategy" for a company?!???! ENTIRELY LAUGHABLE!!

Your company spends $75,000/month on fricking PPC but $500 on "SEO"...something is entirely off there, sorry.

SEO today: A complete strategy which starts with analyzing your site, your niche and market. Contains social media marketing/management, content creation and marketing up to and including high PR blog posts, press releases, authority links and whatnot. Only the COMBINATION of all those things will get you anywhere, and it will have to be done for months, depending on niche, competition etc.. The problem: Your company (and as it looks also you) have no clue about SEO and what is required, otherwise they would not use such a tiny amount of their budget on SEO.

for the google updates,

I don't mind seriously for linking strategy for NOW

what I did is replacing my content with fresh unique articles for 3-4 months then be active on the forums post/comments/web 2.0.

thanks

If you don't know what you should do for a job, why are you
taking the job?

Are we serious? A company spending tons of cash off of PPC would
not hire a nobody. And you must be a nobody. And why is a nobody
taking jobs in SEO, then asking the WF for help? Are you going to
cut everyone in? The whole post is just inane.

Rebuilding a wordpress site? You have GOT to be joking.

Reality? A company spends $1 million a year on PPC. Hires this
guy. This guy comes to the WF.

Is that reality? Get a grip. If the entire company is run on PPC,
you don't need SEO anyway.

Paul

Got to agree with most of what has been said by Yukon, Mike, Andy, and Gorg.

Late last year I created a site based on an idea that was on my drawing board for more than 7 years. I'll just say this about the site: it promotes niche products that 'work hats' need for their sites as frequently as possible. The end result is that it is a big hit after less than eight hours of promotion.

SEO? Nope.. did nothing. Some sites simply do not need SEO because of the product and what that product will do for the site visitors.

Paying visitors? Yep.. 41 people paid a membership fee in less than 8 hours of promo and I only need to deliver one product a week.

Product fulfillment problems? Nope.. Takes an average of 2 hours to create a new product and I have more than a years inventory in stock.

SEO was not even a factor, but a few days ago I did get around to installing a SEO application, GA, etc.

The site is indexed and has one backlink that I had nothing to do with at all. That backlink is driving affiliates and bloggers to the site like crazy. Installed StatCounter to see what the numbers are: over 3,000 hits in the first two weeks of Jan. Its about 50/50 for uniques and revisits. It just keeps growing. I'm going to have to hire someone.

Wish I could divulge it, but I tried, before I promoted it, and it was deleted. Honestly, WF Wise I guess it could be construed as a way to attract affiliates, I don't need to be told twice. Just wish it was like back in the old days when you could talk about new ideas to make money, show real proof, without being accused of self-promotion etc.

Jeffery 100% :-)

@grp06

Seriously a $75k spend on PPC???

That is down the can cash all day long!

You NEED to get some niche, aged, topical, domain names built up with FULL social awareness, then it is on target traffic and prospect lead generation to your BOSS from them all day...

IF you want to bust the $75k in half, PM us, if you want to carry on not making a better ROI, spend the $500 a month wisely

grp06,

In your case, if the numbers you quote are true, I would leverage other companies' money. Consider that your employer may already know it and is testing you. In its simplest form, you have start with a single product and work towards line of products wherein other companies contribute products that compliment your companies products. Give them incentives and they will promote your companies products at their own expense. Make sure they link to your company.

That is one way to build on existing momentum without a big budget.

Jeffery 100% :-)

Hi George,

Thanks for taking the time to share some personal info about your situation.

I know it's not easy sometimes when you come to the forum looking for advice and just get mostly criticism, but I'm sure you'll take it in the spirit it's meant.

From my perspective it's hard to answer such threads as yours because while I could give you some advice I'm also very mindful that others will read your thread and the right advice for one person is not the right advice for another, so by making the point that if you're going to take someones money for SEO services - you'd better know what you're doing BEFORE you take their money, it's advice that applies to all.

I'm sure you can get some results for your boss. SEM is not actually that difficult, but in competitive niches it either takes time or money - sometimes both.

I've been able to get great results for clients (to the point where they are completely baffled at how it's possible) but I take a very laser-targeted approach and do a lot of research before beginning any SEO efforts.

The fact that your company is using PPC is a huge advantage for you because it means they will already know what search terms convert to customers. Actually, I take that back - they may not know. It depends how good the person doing the PPC is. Needless to say - your best starting point is that PPC data.

Do some competitive research, learn the niche, find out who all the movers-and-shakers are (the people who have the loudest voices in the blogosphere and social networks.

Get a list of websites which get the traffic you're after and build a list of potential places to advertise.

Find out which terms the PPC spend is converting into buyers and then pick a sweet spot - a small group of related terms which convert to buyers but are not the most competitive and then make them (no more than about 5 terms) your 3 month target and put yourself a plan together of all the ways you can rank for those terms. Don't be afraid to get creative.

People often trash using services like Fiverr.com for SEO - but you can get some cool little videos done there, you can get a press release distributed, you can get some graphics done, etc. etc.

Play around with your shortlisted keywords - type them in to Google and see what comes up, depending on the terms you may find that for one term Google likes images, for another they rank videos, for another they like press releases or articles on news blogs.

Set yourself up Google Alerts for each of the terms and see how other people are getting traffic for those terms.

Think about how you might get some viral traction using social networks, images, pinterest, facebook, youtube etc...

If you make a video - get a fiverr gig to put it on all the video sharing sites - your $500 can go a LONG way.

I don't want to get too into it, but hopefully that will give you a frame of reference to consider how to approach getting started for your boss.

Good luck with your efforts.

Regards,
Andy

oooh, 500 dollar per month cannot hire any in-house SEO in US.

You may try to find someone in the Indian to help you do it, or choose the SEO service in fiverr, but you must very very careful for the new site SEO.

Some of the fiverr guy using the software to publish your website backlinks, like SENuke, Scrapbox, and so on. That's will hurt your website.

Check this warrior thread before doing the new site SEO.

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...uilding-q.html

It is partially realistic. It really depends how much work you are willing to do, and how much (and how well) you outsource. It also depends on how strong the competition is.

It is definitely realistic to start picking up organic traffic from long-tail keywords though, even if you don't make top 10 SERPS for major keywords.

Honestly, yes.

So the boss wants to see if it's possible to reduce his costs from $75,000 to $500 a month and get the same, or even better results?

Whoever he's paying to manage the $75,000 a month campaign isn't worried about your boss' budget - and as far as I'm concerned, even if you did an insanely good job for him your boss wouldn't be happy with the results.

In his eyes there is no value to SEO or else he'd be giving you a budget AT LEAST 10% of what he's spending monthly on PPC. And with $7,500 a month budget I'm sure you'd be able to get him some good results, plus he'd see real value in it. If you don't pay, you don't pay attention.