Designing a Small Business Website

What does it cost for SEO? This page provides information on the cost of
Search Engine Optimization and what return you can expect on any investment (ROI) in this.

 

 

 

 

Information on the cost of search engine optimization (SEO) and measuring the ROI (Return on Investment).

 

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Costs of SEO and Return on Investment (ROI)

Search Engine Optimization is not free unless you do it yourself. There is no such thing as a free lunch and you will already know that anything that is guaranteed to generate business for you comes at a high price.

Cost or SEOA large company may have people or agencies working full time on optimising their website. They constantly monitor this and adjust it whenever its performance drops. Successful agencies can charge fantastic sums for this but, asa small business you probably don't have a high SEO budget available to you.

What compounds the problem is that many small businesses go into the web design process with no conception of what it takes to get found on the search engines. This often does not occur to them until their website has been built, which may then too late. When they realise their omission it often takes a full website redesign to correct this.

Web designers should point this out to their prospective clients at the outset but many of them don't. This can be done in innocence since some of them know nothing about SEO and some of them only do Flash web design so telling people the full story about SEO could lose them the job. (Flash websites can look attractive and gimmicky but they cannot be properly optimised and the search engines don't like them.)

For a major SEO project expect to pay thousands of $£, but many small website designers and freelancers offer SEO as part of the design process. If SEO is important for the success of your website you must ensure that your designer has the required experience. For this all you have to do is ask them for examples of successfully optimised websites that they completed.

We deal mainly with small businesses and our SEO prices are more realistic. These are often built into the cost of the website. A very basic, optimised website can be designed and optimized for as little as £400. A fully optimized ecommerce website would probably start at about £1000/£2000. Charges for optimizing an existing website will be negotiable bearing in mind that a full redesign may be required.

ROI on SEO

Let's say that you are a consultant who can earn upwards of £1000 for a typical assignment. A single conversion of an enquiry from your website could be more than enough to cover your outlay. Subsequently converted enquiries are all profit!

Ongoing SEO Requirements and Website SEO Reviews

We mentioned the Google sandbox or new site filter in our page that discusses how long it takes to rank in the search engines. This filter can mean that you are unable to review the success of the SEO on your website until it "comes out".

Once you are happy that your site is clear of the sandbox it may be advisable to review the SEO. At this stage it should have settled into a reasonably stable position in the search engine results. If you are not receiving the traffic you expected then a SEO review may be required.

You will have to analyse the traffic you are receiving and determine what needs to be done to improve your website’s performance. This may include reviewing the page titles, headings and text content.

Traffic Conversion

traffic conversionIf you are receiving an acceptable level of traffic and it is not being converted to sales you may have to consider your website content. It may be that when people arrive at your website they don’t like what they see and decide to go no further.

In this case a full content review will be necessary. Realistically, is what you are offering attractive in comparison with your successful competitors? Look at their websites to see what they are doing if necessary.

Do not trust yourself to assess the content on your website. Ask friends and acquaintances to visit it as though they were seeking the product or service that you offer. Tell them to be completely honest with their critique. It is imperative that they tell it like it is.

It is even better if you can enlist the help of people you don’t know to do this. They are more likely to be objective in their observations.

 

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