I certainly understand your hesitation. You want to increase your business activity via your website. When you asked for estimates from various companies in the website promotion field, you were shocked! With such a wide variance in prices, you started thinking that things probably need to be checked out in detail. On one hand, it’s clear that paying peanuts will only get you monkeys. But the fact that you pay more money doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get appropriate value.
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So what do you do? How much does it really cost to promote a website? What separates one supplier from another? How important is the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) term? Before I answer these questions, I’d like to stress another important point. Your financial investment is not your only concern and it shrinks in stature before your real problem - having your website handled by an unprofessional person who can do irreparable damage!! It also doesn’t matter how much you’re willing later to pay a SEO professional to fix the damage: some problems simply cannot be fixed.
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For example, you may wish to upgrade your well-established website. If your suppliers don’t work correctly, it’s a snap to lose all your advantages with the search engines. A few wrong moves and years of hard work get wiped out, sending you back to the starting line as if you are building a completely new website. Another example is when an amateur ‘expert’, even through a lack of knowledge, uses unaccepted or invalid techniques which can cause the search engines to remove your website from their search results.
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Promoting a website in the free results section of search engines is a long and arduous process. The table below includes some of the steps involved and the minimal time needed by an SEO expert for each step. The table assumes that the website is in English, contains 50 pages of information and deals with a field that is not highly competitive. It also assumes that there are not a large number of competitors battling for top ranking for certain keyword phrases.
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| Promotional activity |
Minimal time needed |
| Submitting the website |
10 hours |
| Keyword Research |
130 hours* |
| Optimization of website structure |
10 hours |
| Optimization of website content |
50 hours |
| Ongoing monthly activity |
20 hours monthly |
* This is a highly detailed process. It involves an in-depth analysis of all possible search terms for a client’s business environment and the selection of the most appropriate search terms. Correct keyword selection is the cornerstone of Internet success. |
From this table you can understand that preliminary SEO activity will comprise a one-time investment of around 200 hours, followed by a monthly time investment of around 20 hours for six months minimum. What does this mean in money terms? Let’s assume that more than one person will be working on these various stages. Let’s also assume that the negotiated rate ends up being $25 per hour. This brings us to a one-time investment of $5,000, plus $3000 for six months of ongoing SEO maintenance, or $8000 in all.
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Let me stress again that these figures relate to a website outside a problematic field and where the work is done by a SEO professional rather than a SEO expert.
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| Website promotion, unlike many other fields of activity, demands SEO professionals who have undertaken intensive training and have proven skills. A consultant who gives a website owner inappropriate advice can cause great loss! |
| The cost of website promotion people and others who deal with Internet marketing is very high. If you add to this the time needed to promote a website, as mentioned above, you reach one conclusion – promoting a website is far from trivial. |
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