2013 has started with a bang for SEO. With Google making an example of Interflora to highlight that *Paid Advertorial Links are still Paid Links and therefore bad*, I'm sure there are many SEO teams and Agencies that are now deciding what to do with that budget burning a hole in their pocket. Don't tell me you don't... according to SEOmoz's Pricing Survey in 2012, the average retainer cost of an SEO client was £2,500 - £5,000 and some of that had to be going on advertorials and the like.

So I wanted to offer you some options to spend the rest of that £5,000 budget on to help move your SEO strategy into 2013 a little easier.

£2,000 per month: In-house designer/content manager

This might be less of an option for an in-house team, but this will be something you don't regret. If you visit any major job board in your country/area (jobsite & reed for me) and just search for something like "Content Editor" (come on people you work in search, you can work this out XD).

This £2,000 (roughly average wage for X job title), will only be well spent if you hire someone that's going to help you make kick ass content that will replace the links you're losing by no longer buying. So the sort of things you want to see are:

• Design Skills
• Infographic skills
• Copywriting experience
• Handling data
• Marketing knowledge
• Some social knowledge

Now I know that would be the ideal employee, but you get the idea. Start generating the content in-house with a great design team and you'll definitely save money in the long term. You'll also receive instant feedback and changes rather than going through a painful email chain before seeing any movement - so it's great for your sanity too!

£349 to £1199 per month: Building One Infographic Per Month

Recently Claire Stokoe gave a great presentation at LinkLove 2013 and I wanted to highlight her point that infographics aren't a fad and have been around for hundreds of years. They aren't dying from saturation and they're not useless to people now. Just do them properly.

But for this fairly small amount of budget a month, you can get a reputable design agency (www.designbysoap.co.uk - no affiliation, just liked their pricing and work) to design you an infographic. If you don't have the time for the data research, the upper budget limit allows for them to get the data together too! So there really is no excuse now. £449 is an absolute steal for someone to do most of your job for you (£1,199 is for interactive infographics, or Intergraphics). Just make sure the topic is useful, it's designed for people not just for content's sake and also expand to more than your customers - if you don't expand your audience you'll never sell more products. I know it sounds silly but there are so many businesses running content campaigns that are only really relevant to their current customers. D'oh!

full infographic at http://www.designbysoap.co.uk/portfolio/how-to-zombie-proof-your-house/

£100 to Unlimited: Paid Social Campaigns

If you've already got the above or you've got great content or just a really cool business, then it's about marketing that in a different way. I know this means moving your budget into a different team or department but it makes sense. It all ties in to content marketing. Ian Lurie shared a SlideShare deck a few months back that stuck with me about doing content marketing properly; if you're going through all this trouble to generate the content for your "Content Marketing Strategy", then it doesn't stop there. You've got to actually market it then...

All marketing channels should tie in to your content campaign and nobody reacts to cool, funny, awesome, effective content like the Facebook (or other social media channels) community. Get the right paid campaign towards the right people and watch your campaign fly. The same can be said for getting a paid search campaign for your content too (c'mon seriously just read Ian's deck).

£500 to Unlimited: Host an Event

As I mentioned above, I went to LinkLove London recently. Whilst I can probably assume there was a lot of money spent on that conference (great job guys!), they're also getting a whole ton of links, social shares, new customers and a general authority from the SEO community. No you don't have to mad and invited 1,000 people to Earl's Court, you can start with just getting 20 people together, give out breakfast and coffee, show them something new you're doing and give them a product or something worth coming in for (I'm not talking crappy pens and branded bags - seriously?!).

Better yet, make those 20 people consist of five of the most influential bloggers in your industry (that you can get through to) and the rest some of their readers. If you don't want to guess this, why not use the social media budget above to target the users of their page with a paid social campaign for your event? Think they'd be excited and talk about your new products with their favourite bloggers? Of course they would!

I mark this down as £500 just due to the cost of a small venue (or your offices), the cost of some refreshments and some of your merchandise.

However, if you can't afford to host or you don't have time to host a speech, you could also sponsor one or speak at one. Either would get your brand out there, a sponsorship normally gains you a link and additional brand coverage and speaking normally endorses yourself as a thought leader in your field. Plus what better way to connect with your potential customers than to actually meet them at an event. I'm a big fan of events and I encourage you to do everything you can to at least get yourself there.

£Any: Spend it on actually working

This response I feel a little shame in offering, it's one of those bullshit things you get told by the annoying guy you meet at a marketing conference. But it works.

Let's say your day rate is £100, now I know (not because I've done it, just been involved in meetings) that Advertorials costs around £50-100 per link. So you're telling me if you worked that day you wouldn't get between 1-2 links, so you automate it and buy it instead? Come one now. If that's the case then you need to take a look at whether SEO is the right career path for you and whether you'd be better suited to PPC (this is NOT a dig at PPC, just less of a people and conversation industry).

In one day's work, you can establish a relationship with a high authority blogger or even just a high authority social media junkie. This might get you a link, although I wish we wouldn't measure links as a KPI, but what it will get is an established connection with the people that matter in your industry - or not even in your industry but they connect better with your customers than most brands ever will. Even if they don't link now, having their endorsement will lead to more links, better consumer trust and ultimately more traffic/conversions.

£0 to £1200: Visit more SEO conferences

The advertorial budget was for you to buy links yes? Well instead, why not look at some of the industry's best minds and companies to see what they're doing and to get the help that they're offering you. There are a lot of free events that you can get yourself to (Brighton SEO, #SearchLondon, etc.) that offer a lot of value plus you meet the day to day workers that are out there doing your job. Then there's the paid conferences that normally can hook you up with some of the biggest "SEO Celebs", such as LinkLove (although this has ended now *sad face*), SearchLove, Mozcon, etc.

You'll take actionable points away from these that will benefit your SEO work and your business more than a few cheeky links ever will.

£20 to £Thousands: Invest in better tools

Again, a bit of a vague answer and I apologise but that's only because the selection is so varied and prices differ so much. But you could invest some of this budget into reporting, insight or automation tools that save you your advertorial budget again in time, effort and new data.

Some favourite tools of mine (no affiliation again, just good resources):

Outreach:

• BuzzStream - Makes finding and contacting people easy. So many awesome features and there's a plethora of guides out there for help and cool uses
• Cision - Similar to BuzzStream but more of an already established database. The cost is higher but it means contacting journalists and webmasters instantly, plus you can filter by industry.
• Rapportive - Plugs into your Gmail and provides you with contact details for that person.

Social Media Management:

• HootSuite - Collate all of your social media efforts into one place. A freemium model so free for most features. It also incorporates Google+ if you get the premium versions. Best uses of this I've seen are in another Ian Lurie deck

SEO Tools:

• Positionly - A useful and cheap tool to track positions (amongst other things) that you can pick up for a very cheap monthly cost
• SEOmoz - Compared to most advertorial budgets, SEOmoz is a steal. It does everything, go buy PRO now (you're welcome guys ;))
• AHrefs / Majestic - Both very similar tools for viewing link profiles in a very in-depth way. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Both also offer a free version, go try these if you haven't already.

Some of these tools will increase your SEO output and mean that you're getting more for your budget. They'll also help you gain better, cleaner and more authoritative links to your site, plus provide better insight into yours and your competitors website and customers. That's way better than a couple of nasty links on a regional paper if you ask me.

So that's some ideas on how to spend the advertorial budget that's now sitting in your pocket - or just any of your SEO budget if you're running out of ideas and need something to freshen up the campaigns. I'd love to see if there's anything you guys are doing that I've missed or what your experiences are with any of the above. I'll be hanging around the comments or you can catch me on @DigiMatt pretty much any time. :)