How to Do SEO for Low-Budget SMEs in 2024?

If you are in the white-hat SEO industry, or have been operating your own corporate website for 2-3 years, you will personally experience that Baidu search traffic has been adjusting round by round in recent years.

Recently, approaching the new year:

- Batch after batch of websites losing ranking

- Sharp traffic decline

- Websites not being indexed for long periods

These are topics we frequently discuss and questions we get asked every day. Actually, having been in the industry for a long time, we can view all this calmly.

To be honest, adjustments to traffic distribution mechanisms are normal, because every company has specific practical problems to solve at specific time points.

Some say: Baidu SEO has long lost its value.

Actually, we do not think so. Most of the complaints from users are about non-commercial traffic.

In fact, for this type of routine information retrieval and querying, there are many platforms that can provide convenient alternative queries.

On the contrary, commercial attributes and high-quality customer groups are still distributed based on Baidu search traffic. There is a simple logic here.

Any scaled company, in the process of doing planning and data analysis, is still relying on PC-based search in recent years. This is a normalized issue.

Mobile and short video traffic is good, but most of the target service groups are still C-end users.

Therefore, we believe: Baidu SEO organic traffic, in the future development process, commercial attribute traffic distribution may become more vertical, but the intensity of competition will also increase day by day.

This includes:

- Platform official systems

- Well-known industry brand websites

- Various small and medium enterprises

Therefore, we believe that future traffic distribution may increasingly follow the 80/20 principle, with top traffic倾斜ing toward authoritative sites that can provide high-quality page experience and services.

Here we may need to give small and medium enterprise websites, especially startup companies, SEO operators or founders, a frank reminder.

We may: spend more time competing in the remaining fragmented traffic, fighting among ourselves like thousands of troops crossing a single-log bridge.

Therefore, how we establish standardized SEO operation processes becomes particularly important.

This includes:

- Professional SEO strategy

- Efficient SEO project advancement process

- High-quality SEO resource utilization efficiency

To this end, we recommend that in 2024, as SME websites, you may need to focus more on core popular keywords, long-tail keywords, and organic search click visits.

So, why should SMEs focus on long-tail keywords and organic search clicks for Baidu SEO in 2024?

Based on past SEO practical experience, Huding Technology will elaborate through the following content:

1. Core Keyword Ranking Display

In the SEO process, we know that core keywords have high search volumes, so most companies naturally choose these keywords when selecting keywords.

This is normal and logical.

But for SME websites, we need to think about how to produce specific results within existing budget constraints.

When you decide to rank for a keyword, you just need to search for the target keyword and make the following basic judgments:

- Is there 1688?

- Is there AiPurchasing?

- Are there large numbers of Baidu system result pages, such as Baijiahao, Baidu Zhidao?

- Are there large numbers of third-party new media authority sites, such as Sohu, NetEase, Bilibili, etc.?

If you do not find 1-2 SME website search results on the first page, then at this stage, we think SME websites can temporarily put aside the intention of ranking this target keyword on the first page.

Because the optimization cost is very high and the cycle is generally long. The cost per keyword is usually between 7,500-15,000 RMB.

Yes, that is for one keyword ranking.

At this point, we need a monetization mindset: based on target keyword ranking, first get organic search clicks. Accumulate natural click volume across the site, thereby improving page authority.

Then, work on target keyword first-page ranking.

2. Long-Tail Keyword Strategy

At this point there is an obvious question: what kind of words constitute a perfect long-tail keyword strategy?

This point is very important.

Here we will discuss in detail the relevance of long-tail keywords:

Earlier, when doing keyword ranking, we often heard that those who win long-tail keywords win the world. This is absolutely correct.

And we very much agree with this established saying. But in reality: let me emphasize again: competition is too fierce.

Therefore, the long-tail keywords we discuss here are not the same long-tail keywords as before. Is that a bit confusing?

This requires us to think: what is the purpose of doing long-tail keywords?

Generally: easy to rank.

Yes, this is a relatively easy factor to understand, but at this stage, what do we need to do?

Getting naturally growing search clicks is very important.

Long-tail keywords, in principle, are relatively easy to rank for at the current stage.

But the important issue is: many people achieve rankings but cannot get naturally growing search clicks.

For newly built enterprise websites: we can directly say that your SEO ranking project has failed. Even with rankings, if you cannot get naturally growing search clicks for a long time, then the overall page quality assessment, based on user visit data, will gradually decrease, and later rankings will not be given, or even page indexing will disappear.

Why is this so?

High-authority sites, Baidu products, and bidding systems massively cover these potential long-tail keyword contents, especially the latter.

So,很多时候 when we do SEO projects, the current time point is a systematic data analysis process.

Find: relevant content with certain search traffic, where the bidding system and authority sites have not deployed massive long-tail keyword content.

That is: surviving in the cracks.

Only in this way can we obtain a certain probability of display within limited SEO resource investment. As long as our entire site can obtain naturally growing, stable search clicks.

Then, for any subsequently highly competitive keywords, we can achieve keyword ranking based on on-site and off-site strategies, rhythmically and relatively easily.

You might ask: why do we need to do SEO so meticulously? The most direct factor is: limited budget for SMEs.

To put it bluntly: in over 90% of cases:

Using the budget for one keyword ranking, hoping to rank for 5 or more keywords, all on Baidu first page, and also hoping for an annual fee.

But few people think about a very simple question: why should you be given a ranking?

The 3-5 bidding positions above may consume 300-500 RMB daily, with monthly spending exceeding 10,000 RMB, while our annual fee is still hovering around 10,000-20,000 RMB.

The high-authority websites above have brand keywords with daily search volumes exceeding 10,000, years of site operation history, and the resources they invest and brand search trust they obtain come with considerable operating costs.

So, why should I give you a ranking?

Because your page style is beautiful? Or because your page content quality is good? Or because your page loading experience is nice?

Without any brand search visibility:

We believe it can only be because: all your site content is SEO-standardized, and your target priority crawl pages are scarce.

Only then can search engines possibly prioritize recommending you among massive homogeneous information.

Therefore: we need to quickly locate slipped-through long-tail keywords when doing new or old site keyword ranking.

This is what we believe is the most effective strategy that SEO agencies can offer to low-budget clients at the current stage.

That is: long-tail keywords that authority sites and bidding have not yet deployed at the current stage.

How to do it?

This is another data analysis process.

3. Organic Search Click Guidance

Well, the above has been verbose enough. Let us talk about what constitutes a low budget. From the current perspective, SEO projects with annual budgets under 20,000 RMB are considered low budget.

Simply understood: if our initial budget is within this range, then the above strategy is the most effective strategic solution at the moment.

Of course, we cannot rule out: Baidu search algorithm being readjusted again in 2024.

Currently, we estimate that in 2024, for low-budget SME websites to achieve ranking results, most will need to adopt this strategy.

So, next, what elements do we need to ensure to smoothly advance the overall site SEO ranking?

1. Reasonable Brand Organic Search Click Guidance

As mentioned repeatedly earlier, SME ranking competition is fierce in 2024. To better help enterprise sites quickly achieve rankings.

We still recommend: under specific conditions, we can through new media platforms and short video operations, reasonably encourage relevant users to produce reasonable natural brand word searches. This sporadic authority growth is still very helpful for overall site trust.