As SEO professionals, we've been here before. Down times. Decline! Budget cuts. Challenges that affect our plans and what we need to get the job done.
In some ways, we can lean on the past to gain wisdom as well as find ways to be leaner and smarter in our strategies.
SEO is not immune to budget cuts in uncertain times (yes, I'm tired of that phrase too).
Whether it's a recession, pandemic, or other local or global situation, downturns can impact marketing budgets and what we're able to do for our organizations, brands, or clients.
Regardless of the recession or other factors impacting SEO budgets, there are seven things to do when facing a smaller SEO budget that I want to share.
I sincerely hope you don't have to face this scenario, but if you do, use my tips to make the most of what you have.
1. Demand Analysis
The most important thing to understand if the factors that impact budgets are business and market related is what the impact is on demand.
If you're on the brand side or you're at an agency or consulting firm that focuses on one industry, you probably have some insights.
However, if SEO budgets are being reduced or cut and you're having to do less with more, you need to do some analysis to find out if demand overall has decreased for your product, service or market.
Are fewer people searching? Are fewer people going through the funnel or customer journey? Is there a new drop-off point that didn't exist before?
2. Revisiting the goals
Similar to the demand analysis, you need to revisit the broader goals. Even if the market is the same, if you're getting a smaller budget or fewer resources to work with, you need to rethink your own expectations - and those of your stakeholders.
Can you do as much as you used to, with fewer resources? Can you work with fewer internal and external resources and still do SEO successfully?
If you have to cut content, reduce technical support, or even SEO research and strategy, even if market demand hasn't decreased, you can assume the outputs and results won't be the same.
Revisit your goals, communicate them, and make them as objective and tied to budget and resources as possible. If you're being asked to do more with less, that's normal, but know that when you start to act!
3. Narrow your digital footprint
I hate this tip, but it's an important one. I'm usually a fan of more is better - if it's high quality. Whether it's content, features, functionality or aspects of the customer journey and funnel.
However, in tough times or with limited resources, you need to limit your digital footprint.
Whether this is due to streamlining resources or your own focus and budget, you need to scale down. If market demand is down, target areas where people are still looking and have needs.
This may mean shortening your list of topics and keywords to address the part of the funnel where you want to be strong, or the most profitable product or service offering.
With a narrower focus and fewer resources, you can also reduce your website resource needs.
Whether it's a really detailed development of a specific section, subsection, subdomain, or microsite, you'll likely have to make some decisions and strategic and tactical choices that you wouldn't make in abundance.
You may not be able to optimize the entire site, so narrow down as much as necessary and focus your attention there.
4. Focus resources
SEO is impossible to do as one person wearing all the hats unless you're in a unicorn situation. It requires resources like IT, web developers, UX, content writers, strategists, legal/compliance and/or management approvals.
And I might be missing something from the above list!
Back when I started doing SEO in the mid-00s, I managed about 80% on my own. Now, for good reasons, a lot more collaboration is needed.
However, when budgets get tight, you have to be very focused on where the rest of the money should go.
In some cases, that may be dictated to you. However, if you still have sufficient control, you will need to prioritise where to put the budget and allocate resources.
This means you may want to prioritise content over technical updates.
Or technical over UX. Or CRO over link building.
Be smart, use your updated strategy and goals, and deploy your resources in a way that doesn't stretch you too thin.
5. Short-term focus
What can be achieved in the short term? Market conditions, goals and the ultimate extent of budget constraints will help you determine this.
Do you only have a few dollars? Invest them in the items with the greatest opportunity and priority.
I know it sounds obvious, but SEO is big and complicated. We tend to go down rabbit trails.
There are a lot of things that distract us. Stay disciplined, know what you need to do and accomplish in the short term, and do your best to forget about the long-term elements.
If you're trying to keep the lights on, achieve a return on investment in the short term and get through this season to see budgets increase again, bet on the things that have the best chance of short term success.
This could mean local SEO, content partnerships/affiliations, moving to the bottom of the funnel when focusing on keywords and content, or full scope/scale SEO but on a very short list of topics/terms.
6. Long term focus
If you have the luxury of thinking about a long-term strategy, or more likely you're affected by reduced search but still have some budget for SEO, then you can do things that will build for the future.
With a long-term focus and strategy, you can get ahead of competitors who cut budgets entirely or are focused on short-term thinking even if there is no demand.
I can speak from experience with clients in past downturns that we collaborated with even when their demand slowed, choosing to invest in building long-term strategies that put them on top when demand picked up again.
Things you should invest in if you have any budget, even when you don't have demand and want to think about the future: website tech, infrastructure, your content base, your thought leadership platform, and how you serve the entire funnel as an authority in your industry.
If demand has dropped in the short term, I'm willing to bet your competitors are taking their foot off the gas, enabling you to outperform them and come out stronger on the other side - if you're not already at the top on your key topics and terms.
7. Measuring effort
Never stop to measure what's happening. You want to have your own set of performance data so you have an objective judgment over everything you do.
This means being able to create correlations where you can between reductions in budgets, markets and other resources and performance.
This will allow you to continue (or begin) to know the true impact of downturns, disinvestment, and market factors on your SEO efforts now. This will also give you comparative data for the future.
If you have data from past downturns or budget reductions, use that as a guide too!
Don't do anything without projections, expectations and measurements. Whether you're in a public company or a small business, data is a goal that eliminates as many gray areas as possible.
Conclusion
Again, I will say that I hate writing articles on this topic.
However, I am a realist and over the past few months I have personally seen the impact of economic conditions on my clients and ultimately my agency.
If you're facing a reduced budget for SEO, that's better than no budget at all.
In fact, I would fight for some level of budget and investment if you go back and read my "long-term focus" section above.
Regardless of your situation, I know it's tough. I'm right there with you.
It can be tough mentally and physically. Stay strong, my friend.
SEO is important, and by focusing on it, being objective with it, and doing what you can with the resources and opportunities you have, you can get through it and come out stronger on the other side.