Search engine optimization is increasingly important for webmasters in order to keep their web pages at favorable positions with Google and other search engines. The downside, however, is that as SEO becomes more important and more people realize the power it holds, it quickly becomes a race to spend more resources on improving positions- this can quickly become very expensive. It is important to always keep an eye on ROI (return on investment) when it comes to SEO spend. For most people, the end goal will be making money, getting supporters, etc. and not necessarily ranking highly in Google and so it is important to always keep this end goal in mind.
Cost-effectiveness is clearly important and affordable SEO services can help you remain competitive without overspending. Thankfully, the market for SEO services is growing in proportion to the demand for SEO and so that serves as a cost-containment measure if you are willing to shop around- which you should be. It is important to keep quality in mind too, however; there are many cheap providers who are not worth spending any money on. A combination of doing your research and experimentation should be the key to building out your SEO strategy and finding the right players to help execute your tactics.
The other very important thing to ranking well is to have high-quality content. The old phrase ‘content is king’ has never been truer as Google and other search engines continue to get better at being able to detect what is truly good content (which is ultimately what searchers want) as opposed to something written just to trick search engines into ranking the page highly (think questionable tactics like keyword stuffing which is no longer effective as search engines have become better at detecting and even penalizing that kind of frowned-upon activity). There are a few tips that you should follow when you are creating content.
One of these is that length does matter. You should have a sizable number of your pages at 500 words or longer as too many pages with very short content suggest lack of depth and quality. A study from 2012 actually found that the average word count of higher ranking pages is significantly higher than those down the page. In-depth and informative content is the key to ranking well these days. Length alone is nothing- the content has to actually be good. Quality is the crown if content is king.
Another thing that you should focus on is your on-page SEO. The craze with SEO services has been so great that people have forgotten the thing that is easiest to control- your own website including content management. Aspects of on-page SEO that you should focus on include title, description, user-friendly URLs, and internal linking structure. It is important to be a description in your title and description as well as other meta tags as Google still cares tremendously about this information and along with many other variables uses it to determine the relevancy and quality of your individual web pages. User-friendly URLs are important for two reasons- one being again that search engines care about it (a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts), the other being that is easier for the users and so improves the user experience which is increasingly important. Internal linking structure is important because it reflects an organized and cohesive website. You should be linking to relevant pages within your website as it helps pass the link juice and has a synergistic effect on rankings.
Between a strong content management strategy and finding affordable SEO services, you will be sure to beat your competition in a cost-effective manner with the greatest ROI.