If your website is to be effective it’s important that it is optimised to work well with search engines. That means not just ranking highly in search results, but allowing local customers to find you on the web too.
Of course good SEO is going to cost you money, but how much should you be paying and what can you expect to get in return for your money?
Low Cost SEO
The cheapest SEO packages start from around £50 per month, but at this level you won’t be getting a great deal. You’re likely to find your content ends up on obscure sites and has poor quality keyword inclusion. While SEO is undoubtedly important, rather than go for the cheapest option you may even be better off doing the job yourself.
Mid-range SEO
In the mid-range you’ll be paying from £2,000 upwards for optimisation of a site. This should include fixing any page problems on your site to ensure that it’s search engine friendly. It will also look at the types and volumes of keywords that you should be targeting in order to drive traffic. Though they may work with your suggestions to begin with, the SEO agency should be able to make extra suggestions to improve traffic.
Companies like http://www.elevateuk.com/seo-services/ offering local SEO services should be able to help you with content management, to help keep your site up to date and turn it into a trusted resource too.
High-end SEO
At this level you can expect to be paying £10,000 to get a project underway, with ongoing costs of perhaps £3,000 per month. At this level SEO becomes part of your high level marketing strategy. The agency should work with you to understand who your customers are and how best to reach them.
They will then put together a plan to help you understand what you need to do to improve your SEO performance in both the short and long term. This should include some concrete goals in terms of percentage increases in traffic and in sales.
If your business has a large online retail presence or you have a lot of competition on the internet, you can’t afford to ignore SEO. At the same time you need to ensure that you’re getting a solution that works and is giving you good value.