I stop doing SEO due to budget constraints

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  James Slattery: Depends on many factors... but if you`re in a competitive niche - your competitors will continue to strengthen
  
  
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  Zachary Toto: Your competition is going to keep moving as you stop. If you can do some SEO yourself, continue to do what you can until you can resume with your SEO campaign.
  
  
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  Zeeshan Ali: Once you ranked for particular words it won`t derank. Only thing you have to do is technical SEO. Keep an eye on technical error via GSC.The more your site is clean the more you get traffic and ranking in the Google.
  
  
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  Cheryl Daniels: Zeeshan Ali thank you..
  
  
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  David Taylor: Zeeshan Ali how do you know the SEO isn`t putting links on a PBN. They may well withdraw them if op stops paying
  
  
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  Taimoor Ahmed: Keep active and updating is neccesorry
  
  
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  David Matson: You really need to define the terms and sharpen this question to get a real answer as to the impact.1) What is "doing SEO"?2) What is "not doing SEO"?3) What are you doing instead of "doing SEO"?
  
  
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  Cheryl Daniels: David Matson hi.. to clarify further.. Doing seo = on page and off page seo. Stop doing = no further link building but stay on top of on page seo. Instead of = assign more money to adwords until I am better educated on seo to do myself
  
  
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  Megan Stewart: I`m not sure why you`re paying "huge amounts" for SEO? What exactly are whoever you are paying doing for those amount? You can do your own basic SEO if you understand it. You can do free keyword research with UberSuggest (3 searches a day) or inexpensively through Keywords Everywhere. Then it`s just a matter of using the keywords you find appropriately in your content and behind the scenes in your URL, page titles, subheadings, and descriptions. Of course there are other off page things that impact SEO such as your domain authority, page authority, backlinks, page load speed, etc. but a lot of what matters you can do yourself.
  
  
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  Cheryl Daniels: Megan Stewart on page seo good and I will continue finding appropriate additional keywords and align that to appropriate content
  
  
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  Chris Surridge: What exactly is “huge amounts of money for SEO”? How much are you paying and for what?
  
  
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  Mark Seah: if using agencies, some may just remove backlinks created after contract end, or not return the access to google analytics, search console etc. just make sure have admin control in everything.
  
  
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  Rienzi Mosqueda: In a competitive niche, yes there is a good chance it will go down. I hope the next SEO you work with is someone you can be confident with.
  
  
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  Cheryl Daniels: Thanks everyone!!!
  
  
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  Richard Hearne: It would be helpful to get an idea of "huge amounts" please. I expect "huge" to be at least 5-6 figures TBH.
  
  Did your SEO provider set any expectations around how long it would take to see results? They should have done this.
  
  Are you trying to leverage multiple channels? If you`re only focused on SEO then you may find that core updates can wipe out your business without the SEO work being particularly "wrong" or "bad".
  
  
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  Cheryl Daniels: 5 digits
  
  
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  Faryal Siddique: Make sure the content you`re providing is giving value to your users. Good quality content will help you more than backlinks or keyword stuffing
  
  
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  Sadat Rayid Odowa: Faryal Siddique you mean I can out rank sites with high authority and tone of backlinks?
  
  
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  Sadat Rayid Odowa: How old is your website? Are you getting any traffic so far?
  
  
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  Stockbridge Truslow: Make sure when you start back up again that you work with a company that is going to strive for results that are actually worth something. Make sure the goals are actually goals.
  
  Ranking for keywords or Traffic are NOT goals in an SEO campaign. They are things you strive for and measure as a part of analyzing how well you`re getting to your real goals.
  
  The goals you want are things like - ohhhh - CONVERSIONS. Whether you`re selling products or generating qualified leads that you then turn into customers - those are the things your SEO program needs to accomplish. It does you no good to have 5000 visitors per day if only a few of them are actually interested in what you`re offering. It`s better to have 50 people per day with 15 of them interested in what you`ve got than 500 with only 10 interested.
  
  I recommend going for a complete "Digital Marketing" team over an "SEO Team". Sure... you can hire an SEO person and they can do great, but without the rest of it (which can also be hired separately) you`re going to end up "huge amounts for many many months." If you find an agency that gives you the full boat, the team will be used to working together and have the broad skillset required to deliver what you need.
  
  In addition to SEO, you need CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization). You need to be tracking useful information like what types of traffic are converting to sales and/or leads - and how many lead contacts do you need to generate a sale. You want a team that is going to help build and define your brand online - in both brand exposure and brand/reputation management.
  
  Depending upon the niche you`re in and the competition within that niche, sometimes it will behoove you to put a portion of the budget into PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising - be it on Google, various social media outlets, or other places. Those can get you results very quickly - but sometimes the competition is so great that it costs you more to generate a lead than you might hope to make from that lead. A good digital marketing company will weigh the risk to reward ratios, they`ll understand the potential on exactly which things to focus on in order to bring you the fastest ROI (Return on Investment).
  
  Once you have all that your SEO program (now a Digital Marketing Program) shouldn`t actually COST you anything once 4-8 months have gone by. It merely becomes a piece of the increased revenue you`re seeing. In 3-4 months you`ll likely hit the break even point (where your increased revenue is at least equal to your monthly spend). It can take longer in really competitive niches, but a good digital marketing agency will be able to at least give you an idea of the cost/risk and a general timeframe goal for that break even point.
  
  Hopefully that helps with your future foray back into SEO. It`s an important part of marketing, but it`s really only one (albeit fairly big) piece of the overall puzzle.
  
  
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  Cheryl Daniels: Stockbridge Truslow thank you so much.. makes sense and educational too!
  
  
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  Izabela Wiśniewska: Hi Cheryl Daniels, I`ve been working in the industry for 8 years and I run my own agency - happy to have a chat and explain a little how do things work and what can happen!
  
  
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  Tyler Dee: Hi Cheryl Daniels! I don`t have a service to sell you. If you`re in a competitive or national space, you could see your ranks drop in a matter of weeks/months. I`m sure several people here will confirm, clients often return because eliminating SEO altogether typically has negative repercussions down the line that can`t be repaired overnight. I would look at outsourcing or downsizing your program long before eliminating it, especially if inbound leads are a significant portion of your pipeline.
  
  
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  David Morgan: Well, if you have a system like the majority of others in this space, you may not only lose what you started but you might find yourself in the gutter after a Google Update. Then again, you might be there after a Google Update even if you were still working the system.
  
  A strategy like mine in the SEO industry is designed to succeed whether I`m focused on it or not. My setup is also done in such a way, that knocking me out of the rankings is going to be a huge uphill battle.
  
  This is what I learned from others over the years and now the process is simple. Organic has staying power. This is of course locally, and I will try my hand at a more broader market soon.
  
  That said, budget constraints for SEO, I don`t know what that is? Unless you`re outsourcing everything you`re doing, SEO doesn`t have a real cost outside of time.
  
  If you want to know more, hit me up and I`d be happy to share some pointers.
  
  
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  Jaroslaw Pidburskyj: if you stop doing SEO, the SEO should be in place at the very beginning before you submitted for indexing. Whatever is applied stays until you decide to update, the ranking should stay too until you come up with fresh ideas.