Aussies living in Bali vs outsourcing to India and Philippines

Australia is a great place to live. It’s a country with so many positives that there are too many to note down. There is one things that people whether locals or visitors do complain about and that is the cost of living down under. Everything and I mean everything is expensive. The cost of labor is very high and thus the costs of goods and services provided is relative.

Digital marketing is no exception, many SEO and Digital Marketing firms will charge over $1000 per month for basic SEO and for competitive industries and corporate businesses which require extra time and effort charging $4000 – $5000 per month is standard. As a result many businesses in Australia especially startups and small businesses with a limited budget are forced to seek providers overseas primarily India or the Philippines. But they are unaware that here in Bali, Australian’s favorite holiday destination there are a Team of keen savvy Australians who produce quality SEO and Digital Marketing services and we can compete with Indian and Philippines providers on price and completely outdo them in workmanship.

So how do we here at SEO Bali Web Design Stack up Against Indian and Philippines SEO Firms???

This is a general review, no two SEO/Digital marketing providers are the same but let’s see what the guys in India and the Philippines will have more success in than us.

They will most definitely get you ranked quicker on page one. In fact they will probably get you ranked on page one within two months. Wow that’s quick but is that a good thing? No, it’s actually part of a problem. As soon as they get fast rankings for you they are also much more likely to get your site severally penalized or completely thrown out from Google’s search engine. Their whole operation is on volume rather than value. They are still offering lots and lots of poor quality unnatural link building methods. They are aware they are doing the wrong thing but is sounds really good telling a client we will add 100 links for $100 or 300 links for $200 and they are all Edu (education links), yes but what good are they if the Edu links are in Russia. They are not spending time researching content to write about what is applicable to your business and creating content that is unique and meaningful. No it’s all about time so they are just going to copy and paste and article they find and adding in a few sentences and delete and few sentences hoping google won’t notice. Google will notice and a server penalty is imminent.

The Indian and Philippines guys are much cheaper than Australian providers but they work is incomparable. We have worked and learned from some of the biggest and best SEO/Digital Marketing firms in Australia and have complete respect for firms like WME, ROI, GMG Digital, Melbourne SEO Services and SEO Empire. They are not good, they are brilliant, but yes not cheap.

So what do we do well……… We are dollar for dollar as competitive as any provider in India or the Philippines. We will not get you ranked as fast as these off shore competitors because quality SEO takes time but we will earn our place for you without trying to trick google and you the client will benefit in the long run. We do for the most and equal job to the best guys in Australia and we are for the most an Australian Team living in Bali where the cost of living is much cheaper than Australia and in turn we can provide a quality affordable Digital Marketing service for you regardless of if your business is in Australia, Bali or elsewhere.

Author: Rod Sinclair

Digital Marketing Dreams vs Goals

Digital Marketing Zero Budget Unrealistic Goals

Occasionally we come across clients who want to achieve “big things” and have big ideas but just lack an overall understanding of how internet marketing works or for that matter how business or the real world see to work.

Not long ago we were approached by a young lady who was extremely passionate and full of energy. She told us she wanted to achieve big things, very big things. The young woman explained she has a product and she wants to be everywhere. She said, “I wants to be all over Facebook, Instagram, google plus and off course google search.” She excitedly told us she wants to come up at the very top of page one for hundreds of search terms closely or even remotely related to her business and she was ready with her extreme marketing presence, ready to conquer an entire industry.

We were very impressed. We were like wow, she understands the power of marketing and being everywhere a potential customers might be and put her product/service in front of them. We were impressed with her energy and her confidence and were pleased she clearly understood that for her business to succeed she would need a strong marketing presence and being everywhere would really help.

Then we asked her a few questions. Do you have a website? What is your marketing budget for Facebook, for Instagram, and for Google Adwords and Bing Ads campaigns? In order to achieve her vision of achieving “big things” and being everywhere she would need a budget.

She responded. “About $20 per month.” We were in shock, we assumed she was joking and playing with us. We asked again, what $20 per day, is that for Facebook ads or Google Adwords. Her response. “No that’s the total budget, that’s what I have $20 a month and I want value for my money spent. What can you do? How can you help me to promote my business? I am very ambitious and want o be everywhere, I want to be all over the internet.”

I was for about 30 seconds literally speechless, then I responded. “Your budget $20 per month. Add a zero, and you get $200 that is the absolute minimum you would really need to promote any business on the internet. Now add another zero, $2000. This is a fairly strong budget for most companies in most industries and they should make some reasonable money with a budget of $2000 per month but it’s not enough for you, you want to be all over the internet. Well add another zero. $20000 this is a healthy budget for most companies with several staff, a decent sized office and an dozen or so high value clients but to truly be all over the internet somewhere between $200000 and 2 mill would be, well a start. Now she was speechless.

I smiled and told her, “we are not good at our job, we are really good but we are not magicians, we cannot make miracles, businesses need marketing to success and marketing costs money. The bigger your goals are the bigger your marketing budget need to be. Earn some money come back in a year with a budget of somewhere between $200 and $2000 per month and let us see what we can achieve. I further told her that as far as costs go 50% – 80% of costs involved with a new business are allocated for marketing. I was cautious not to break her spirit. Her idea was sound and she saw the need for strong marketing, now she understands she needs a strong healthy budget to back it up. Money makes money if it is managed and spent wisely. If you have a website that is great, to make it work for your business we can help you with your digital marketing needs for a very affordable price.

Author Rod Sinclair
Digital Marketing Expert

social media marketing good bad or a waste of time

Social Media Marketing The untold story

Everyone today spends a great deal of time on the internet interacting socially via sites like Facebook, Instagram and the likes. Some platforms are great and widely used, others are simply a joke. The one fact remains, everyone is using Social Media frequently. Watching porn was once the most popular activity on the internet and it remained so from day one of the Internets mainstream existence in the mid 90s to around 2012 and since then has been overtaken by Social Media. But is Social Media all that it claims to be for Digital Marketers and people trying to promote their website?? Lets find out.

You will notice on our website we don’t have a Facebook Page, a Twitter Page, a Google Plus Page although that one is coming. Why??? Well we have another SEO/Digital Marketing Website in Australia and we market that site heavily on Social Media so doing it twice over for our business here in Bali is at this stage not a priority. We know this as Digital Marketers and the money we would have spent on Social Media is invested elsewhere in our Grand Marketing Strategy. So will Social Media work for your business??

It depends on what your business is about. Social Media especially platforms like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are excellent if you have a B2C Business (business to consumer, selling to the public) If your business is B2B (Business to Business, selling a professional service to other businesses) then platforms like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram will not work as well as these platforms are for consumers, people who simple wish to interact with friends or people they find interesting. If they are socially spending time on say Facebook and happened to see an ad for a really cool Mercedes car, or a really nice Omega watch or a great looking sports bra well they might click “like” or even click to the advertisers website but if you are selling software for accounting services on Facebook or Instagram good luck. It’s not the ideal platform. Better platforms for B2B are Linked In or Twitter or even Youtube. You still can get good results say on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and drive traffic back to your site but it’s a more difficult path because you are selling a B2B service on a platform with primarily a B2C audience.

Something else, lets say you have a B2C product which you believe would sell extremely well on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Great, but it’s not enough. To really promote your product on Social media you need to run a paid campaign. Depending on what your goals are and how many people you intend to reach you may have a promotion and spend the minimum required amount which is around $50 and reach a few hundred people and gain 1 or 2 dozen likes. Great. This many not be enough for you, you may want to spend $500 per month or $5000 per month. It depends on how many people you wish to interact with your ad campaign. Typically you need a few thousand likes or followers for Social Media to have the impact you desire.

It gets better. One platform is not really enough, you should have at least two or three platforms with a few thousand followers on each platform. Lets say Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest all have your type of customer and your B2C product should be well received. Well if you want to promote your product in a powerful way you would have an allocated budget for each platform this means you would spend $50 or $500 or $5000 for Facebook, then say a similar amount for Pinterest and then perhaps a similar amount for Instagram. Now these figures are plucked from the air but you can see where this is going. You need to advertise regularly on each platform and have a budget for each platform. Usually the bigger the budget the better your reach will be. Hmmm this takes some serious money, you are beginning to realize to market your product/service on social media effectively is not cheap. More followers/likes means more money spend to get these likes/followers and one platform is not enough.

We are nearly done. One final thing to know, Social Media is not meant to sell a product or service. It’s purpose is to create awareness, trust and credibility and it does this very well. Selling your product or service is another story. It can drive traffic back to your website which can boost your Organic SEO but when it comes to selling that is the job of your website and your sales team. Don’t expect Social Media Marketing to be the Holy Grail and make you a millionaire overnight, that’s not its purpose. People who use Social Media are seldom looking to buy a product or service, they are using it to interact with other people or update their latest life event. They are not looking at buying but if they see something of interest something usually B2C they will click “like” or look more closely at the product/service and perhaps visit your website. We use Social Media a lot, but not for Bali SEO Web Design. Looking at the cost involved and the objective of Social Media now you know why. Contact us it may be worthwhile doing this for your business or perhaps we can suggest another equally powerful marketing tool.

Author : Rod Sinclair
Digital Marketing Expert

cheap crap seo vs affordable quality seo

Affordable Quality SEO vs Cheap Crap SEO

Marketing your website is a necessity in today’s world. Digital Marketing can in fact make or break a business. You may have no website and no Digital Marketing and be doing OK until your competition invests in Digital Marketing and overnight you start to lose business while their business increases dramatically. SEO is the cornerstone of Digital Marketing. We all would like to get our website to page one for key word phrases that relate to the service we provide/sell but not all SEO Providers are the same. Some are good some are bad, some are expensive some are affordable. We all want to make our money go further, it is possible to get quality affordable SEO and what are the signs to look for that indicate an SEO Provider is producing poor SEO that may in fact harm the websites ranking in the long term. Lets find out.

Things to Watch Out For

Advertising Number of Backlinks Added per month

So many SEO companies still do this and it is plan wrong. They have in their promotion offers like $200 per month 200 backlinks per month $300 per month 400 backlinks per month. These backlinks are low quality and unnatural. Google will penalize your site and initially you will gain a quick boost in SEO and then get de-ranked completely and your site may never recover. Any SEO company today charging money for adding backlinks is crap. Stay away. In Bali there are many SEO companies doing this. They have no idea what they are doing. This practice should have stopped in 2012.

Advertising edu links.
Edu links are education website, Google regarded these websites are premium quality links. Alot of poor quality SEO companies advertise that not only will they add hundreds of backlinks to your site but also sell the idea that they are high quality Edu links. Google will take one look at these links and see they are completely unnatural. Say your business is in Bali, all these Edu links have been added to you site and these backlinks are all in Russia from very low quality Edu sites that have nothing to do with your business. Google will come down hard on this.

Scrapping Content From Other Sites.

Sadly this happens even when the site is still being developed. People perhaps the web designer or SEO Provider wanting to increase content on a Client’s site does not know what to write about and just copies and pasts information from another site. Totally wrong, Google will crawl the site identify the content has been plagiarized and come down very hard.

Ranking Too Soon
Yes this is bad, lets examine why. With a new site Google allows for what is termed a honey money period. A window of about two months where Google relaxes their algorithm. If you at this stage start adding crappy low quality links it will in fact boost your site’s rankings considerably. Poor quality SEO companies know this is will often sell the fact that they can get your site ranked in a few weeks. Watch out for this. After two months when the honeymoon period is over Google will examine the quality of the links and see they are unnatural and of low quality. Expect an massive penalty.

So What should we look for in a Quality SEO Business

A Strategic Plan
At the start of the project they should look under the hood and audit your site. They should define clear google and objectives that is timed, measurable and clearly shows the steps taken to reach these goals. That is exactly what we do. We clearly highlight what we are doing in month 1, 2. 3 and 4. There are no surprises.

Focus Should be on quality work, not trying to beat/trick Google.
Previously there was a game being played between Google and Poor SEO Companies. They would try to cheat and outsmart Google. Well it was just a matter of time before Google’s algorithm became a lot more smart. The days of beating Google are over. Just focus on doing lots of quality work which incorporates sound on page SEO and content creation.

Content Focused.
The internet is flooded with lots websites so many of these sites are not live trading businesses. Google wants businesses that are live and trading to rank well on their search engine. They look for websites that create quality content. When you update your blog or site with new information it’s a message to Google saying we exist, we are real and we are continually creating new information for our customers. Some sites create an article once a month as they are already on page one and are in a low competition industry and just want to maintain their rankings. Others create an article once a week, sites trying to get ranked in very competitive areas create articles once a day then share it on social media so thousands of their followers can view read and click on the article taking then back to their website. Good SEO today focuses heavily on content creation and sharing.

Author: Rod Sinclair
Digital Marketing Expert