Feb
28
What Does SEO Cost?
February 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It might be a better question to ask … what will it cost if I don’t optimize my site?
You can pay very little in this day and age to get your site “optimized”, but to what degree will it be done?
I see a lot of people from Asia advertising their SEO skills and trying to make a living at SEO. For one thing, SEO is not easy. It’s not difficult work that you will break out in a sweat over, no, nor should it give you a headache from straining your brain power. However, SEO isn’t something that you just lean right off, nor is it something that you can learn, completely, in even a year or two of working at it.
I have been at SEO since 1997. I found that back then if I got my affiliate sites up in the ranks, I could earn commissions and bring money home to put food on my table. It was really easy back then, simply put one more keyword that the person in the #1 position and you would then be in the number one position.
The engines quickly caught on to this though, and it became more difficult all the time. The engines caught onto all of the simple tricks quickly and over the course of the past decade, they have become very, very smart. They don’t fall for these tricks any more and you need to really do the right things to get yourself listed. This is all actually for the overall good of every website out there. And in reality, it has made the job of optimizing easier … that is easier if you are doing it for yourself.
I say that because, no one knows your business like you do. If you are writing all of your content, and you know some SEO regarding content and keywords, all you really need to do is right quality content, and make the keyword density right, and include the right keywords. Not all the difficult of a task.
It becomes more difficult for me to optimize a site that is out of my realm of knowledge. I’m not much of a “car dude” so if I have to write about automobiles, I’m going to have a hard time of it. I have worked with clients in many fields where I was not really up on the subject. It was difficult for me to write copy for them. I have farmed it out to those more adept at, and also have had the client himself write the copy. Either method can work.
So, what does all this have to do with what optimization costs? It takes time. Writing content doesn’t just happen, and taking that content and analyzing it for keyword density, and to ensure it includes the most important keywords, it a time consuming practice. So is the on site code and updating. Time, is money. Time spent well, by someone educated in SEO is invaluable. Time spent optimizing by someone who does not know what to do, or how to really get close to the engines’s algorithm … is a waste of time and money.
I’ll say right out, today I charge most of my clients a $500 monthly fee with a campaign minimum of six months. This is basics and gets the job done on nearly all sites. But it is a time frame too … I won’t be spending 60 hours a month of your site, but I’ll be working smart and getting the job done. Compare this with the Asian, who perhaps, would not care if he had to work 160 hours for a $500 USD fee. But what would you get? Well, I’ll leave that to you to figure out. I’m not trying to put down the Asians, who have flooded into the market, not at all, and I would imagine some of them know SEO well, or at least I hope so.
As mentioned a bit above, the engines have really honed in on the algorithm. This translates to on-site work that needs to get a certain number of things done, and done in a certain way. This can really be learned by anyone, and then analyzed and worked on more. That’s what SEO is all about. You can learn how to do this yourself. Why not spend a smaller sum of money, learn how to optimize your site yourself, or have your staff learn it, and save a bundle of money over time. Check out my SEO Training Course to see how you can do it.
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