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It has become increasing clear that search engines will be the marketplace of the future. They are the most convenient way to find information that is more current and detailed than the two-bar search system of online phone book directory formats. Those companies who are organized to compete and expand by visibility in search results for their industry keywords will have learned that Search Engine Optimization is the centerpiece of today's marketing strategy. Marketing budgets are allocated on the concept of ROI (Return On Investment) and not all elements of your marketing efforts have a previous track record to measure when you try to forecast the turnover. A company with a new web site may have gotten the impression from a designer or other source that the site came off the drawing board optimized and ready to jump to the front of the line. The site may have been designed to be search engine-friendly without a mention of Search Engine Optimization as a complete marketing effort to bring visitor traffic from search engines. The site architecture must enable easy reading by search engine spiders when the design is done, but that's just the groundwork stage. There are possibly hundreds of sites in the same market with similar product or service content, and those who want to dominate the rankings must put a quality SEO campaign together, a task normally done best by an outside specialist firm. Once the necessity is established, company owners will do inquiries reflexively based on price. I'm astounded that so few businessmen ask to see some samples of promoted sites and samples of writing. They never ask "How much return will I get? or "What will be the results if I'm patient and pay you properly for your work?" They only ask "How much?" This can sour the relationship right from the beginning because it tells the optimizer that no research or due diligence has been done beforehand; the site owner assumes that every SEO person is the same since the term is thrown around without much accuracy. If a site owner is realistic he'll believe the consultant who tells him that this form of marketing is a marathon not a sprint. The results are gradual but long-lasting. Most important is the fact that high quality work will inevitably produce quality results. This translates into a return that is thousands of times the amount of cash that was spent on the SEO campaign. SEO programs are priced based on the estimated hours spent analyzing competitors, keyword research, hands-on editing of HTML on the site, creating article content, formatting, submitting material carrying links, site diagnostics, sitemap creation, communication, and reporting of rankings progress. Rates in SEO vary depending on the experience and scope of the campaign. Remember that web services firms have fees that must cover office overhead, sales commissions, salaries, and company profit. The number of hours will usually be sufficient to bring success, but at a high rate. A mid-size manufacturer can expect to be shown a quote of between $10K - $20K depending on the complexity of the site and the competitiveness of the market sector. It is worthwhile approaching independent SEO consultants with lower overhead and who will give it his personal attention. Entry-level SEOs charge a rate of $40 to $50 per hour. Mid-tier consultants charge $100 - $200 per hour and proven and high-demand consultants can charge over $500 per hour. A good campaign should have about 90 - 120 hours of execution time but in many cases the misinformation factor combined with the bad economy hampers the ability of the SEO to charge the $4500 to $5000 that would inspire a truly successful campaign. It must be emphasized that Web 2.0 is ever more content-driven and search engines like to read quality content, just as we humans do. The search engine will find the multiple links to your pages within the published articles and associate that content with your site as the originating source. Each link is a "vote" for your site as an authority on the industry worthy of retrieval, and the rankings of your URLs are promoted as a result. These are conservative figures but if 10 customers per month are generated by organic results and each customer represents a net profit of $300 over 5 years then the SEO has produced $180,000 profit. This figure can be considerably higher depending on the market sector. It is obvious that serious SEO research has to be centered on quality rather than who has the cheapest price. Creative people can be moody if they feel they have been shortchanged with an under-priced contract and this can make the difference between mediocrity and brilliance. SEO consultant Pat Boardman is the owner of SEO Web Design a Canadian company providing Search Engine Optimization, Web Design, Web Hosting, and Internet Marketing for North American clients.
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