How Much Should You Expect to Pay for Website Optimization?
The cost of marketing and especially Internet marketing is often a major issue for small businesses. Small businesses are usually advertising in print media and sometimes on radio, and the money left for Internet search marketing is often small. So they look for cheap ways to use the Internet to advertise — perhaps launching a Facebook page. They may have a website, but eventually they find that their customers have a hard time finding the website. Or perhaps they ask new customers how they learned of their business, and the customers rarely say, “I found you on the Internet.”
These small business owners start to do some research about search engine optimization and discover lots of Internet sites that guarantee a #1 search ranking for just a few dollars. They send their money in and discover that the Internet business can’t do what it promises or they learn that some small print in their contract states that the #1 ranking is guaranteed for a search phrase that nobody ever uses. Eventually they learn that search engine optimization is like many other things in life — you get what you pay for. And you get what you work for.
The Cost of Website Optimization Depends on Your Competition
So how much should competent search engine optimization cost? The biggest factor in determining your costs for Internet search marketing and search engine optimization is how much competition you have. If you live in a large city like Houston and you have a business with lots of competition like a towing company, you’re in deep trouble! You’ll have to spend a substantial amount of money to work your way to the top of search engine results for searches like, “towing company houston tx.” An SEO that promises to put you at the top of search results for a couple of hundred dollars is lying to you.
At the other end of the spectrum, if you have the feed store in Wharton, TX, and there’s no other competition in rural Wharton, and you only care about doing well in search results for Wharton, then it should be easy to do that. Any decent web developer can put you in that top ranked position with only minimal knowledge of search engine optimization techniques. Your SEO costs might be a couple of hundred dollars a few times a year for the feed store.
The Cost of Your Website Optimization Depends on Your Willingness to Contribute
Think about your own situation and the amount of competition you have before you call prospective SEO consultants. Expect to pay more if you market to a large market in a competitive business sector. The cost of your SEO program in a highly competitive market may be $1,500 a month or more to start, decreasing to $1,000 a month over a longer term.
Even in a large and competitive marketplace, you can cut the cost of your SEO effort if you focus on business niches. If you sell insurance in Houston or you’re a lawyer in Sugar Land, you’ll do better by marketing your niches than you will if you just market “insurance agent” or “lawyer” online. The insurance agent may be able to offer equine liability insurance for example and the lawyer might be a collaborative divorce lawyer. The SEO should ask you about niches in your business during your conversation and he or she should look for those niches to start driving Internet search traffic to your website as quickly as possible.
If you’re thinking of signing up with a search engine optimization company, get a “second opinion” to educate yourself about your options, and make yourself a little smarter before you make a decision. The second opinion shouldn’t cost you anything but a little time. Call IX Brand SEO Services Company at 281-343-3284 or use our contact form for a second opinion about solutions for your Internet search marketing needs.
IX Brand SEO Services Company is an Internet search marketing company located in Sugar Land, TX, just outside of Houston. We help small business clients throughout the Houston area and in surrounding counties, plus we have clients in several other States. If you have a business in the US, we can help you!
