I don't understand what to spend time on after the SEO basics - should I just buy backlinks?

[inkshot]

All the basics are covered:

• Site speed and UX is good
• GMB is optimized
• Site structure and URLs are good
• On-page is done for the main pages
• 2 Blog posts every month

How the heck am I supposed to use 4hrs of SEO per month now?? Just buy backlinks?? I don't understand what to do after the basics are covered

Any help would be REALLY REALLY appreciated

 

[Zoro]

What type of site do you have? E-store? Blogg?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Sounds like a local site due to the mention of Google My Business (GMB).

Continual content promotion doesn't have to be a part of the equation for local sites, though I don't think it hurts. You can focus on content for your GMB profile, which can be helpful with conversions, ranking in the local slots, etc. Photos especially I think are helpful, coming from me as a user. I want to see some photos.

Yes, backlinks are good. You don't have to buy them. At a certain point, if this is a true local business, you need to remember that SEO is one tool in your box for growing your business. You can move on to PPC campaigns and optimizing them. You can begin marketing campaigns of other types like video on Youtube. You can start a Youtube channel as part of a lead funnel. You can focus on offline advertising campaigns, too. My point is to not downsize and restrict your worldview to SEO, when there's a lot more you can be doing.

But that wasn't necessarily the question. I bring it up not only to help increase revenue but to also mention that the best backlinks come from real deal marketing. I'm sure you can create all kinds of interesting, data-driven content with maps and tables and graphs, and start pushing that everywhere you can, to gain better and better backlinks.

 

[inkshot]

What type of site do you have? E-store? Blogg?

Most clients are all small local businesses

Sounds like a local site due to the mention of Google My Business (GMB).

Continual content promotion doesn't have to be a part of the equation for local sites, though I don't think it hurts. You can focus on content for your GMB profile, which can be helpful with conversions, ranking in the local slots, etc. Photos especially I think are helpful, coming from me as a user. I want to see some photos.

Yes, backlinks are good. You don't have to buy them. At a certain point, if this is a true local business, you need to remember that SEO is one tool in your box for growing your business. You can move on to PPC campaigns and optimizing them. You can begin marketing campaigns of other types like video on Youtube. You can start a Youtube channel as part of a lead funnel. You can focus on offline advertising campaigns, too. My point is to not downsize and restrict your worldview to SEO, when there's a lot more you can be doing.

But that wasn't necessarily the question. I bring it up not only to help increase revenue but to also mention that the best backlinks come from real deal marketing. I'm sure you can create all kinds of interesting, data-driven content with maps and tables and graphs, and start pushing that everywhere you can, to gain better and better backlinks.

Firstly, thank you for your response Ryuzaki.

While shifting the client's time to SEO is certainly an option, I'm not sure that the other suggestion are super practical for our situation.

It's frustratingly difficult to get photos from clients, and even more difficult to get GOOD photos.

0% chance they could contribute videos for a Youtube channel. We're not on-site, so we couldn't film the videos either.

"My point is to not downsize and restrict your worldview to SEO, when there's a lot more you can be doing."

Definitely didn't get that impression.

We're a small agency and while I've got good at ranking our clients in top 3 for multiple service keywords... I don't know what "the next step" is. It sounds like "the next step" is to just moved towards PPC, is that right?

Apologies for being so dumb, it's just that all online resources help with ranking for a keyword but it's not clear how I can help clients AFTER I've already done that.

 

[UFO]

Apologies for being so dumb, it's just that all online resources help with ranking for a keyword but it's not clear how I can help clients AFTER I've already done that.

Are there long-tails, related products/services, or surrounding areas you can branch out to target, or has everything already been covered?

Could you implement email marketing for follow-ups and repeat business?

 

[fyl_22]

I'd recommend researching your competitors to see exactly where they are getting their traffic from (SimilarWeb and Ahrefs help). But before you did that, build a competitors list (GoogleSheets) with at least 50 competitors.

You'll then want to target lower DR competitor sites (lower than yours) and then produce future content that they get traffic from and that you can outrank them for. While you're doing this start building foundational links to your homepage and existing top posts. Get traffic. Worry about the rest later.