How would you spend $1000/month?

[ChaseH]

Goal: Increase organic traffic, Increase Inbound Links (earn them), Increase lead conversions

If you could hypothetically spend $1000/month for 12 months and start from scratch, today. What would you do and why?

[ChrisAshton]

Assuming pricing in your country (US?) is about the same as here in Aus, I'd probably do the following if I didn't have SEO knowledge myself.

• Use a few months worth of that budget upfront to get a quality company to do a thorough audit and devise a plan for me to work through
• Work through this plan as quickly as I humanly could without cutting corners
• Return to the original company periodically (quarterly?) for advice along the way so I know I'm always on track and not wasting my effort sprinting in the wrong direction
• Buy a few helpful tools to make analysis easier and monitor results. I'd say at least Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 items) and some kind of ranking tool - we use AWR Cloud.
• Engage a contractor of some form (Fiverr?) to start producing as much quality content as the remaining budget allows

Of course, if services are much like tangible products where Australia is 50-100% more expensive (the joys) then I'd probably just take the time to find and engage a quality agency and keep a close eye on their work to make sure you're getting value. Here in Aus the value you'll get from $1,000 /month is questionable unless you're in a vertical with minimal competition.

Before the hate starts - _some _agencies and certainly freelancers can do a fantastic job for you on that budget, it's simply that the smaller your budget, the higher the likelihood of landing a dud provider. Again, $1k /month in the US may be the standard minimum for quality agencies so this wouldn't apply.

[Marcus_Miller]

I think that's a great answer from Chris - invest in some analysis. Figure out what you need rather than go with X, Y or Z. Base the spend on your requirements and defining those requirements if needs be. Hope that helps!