Posted by Cameron Francis
on
12 Oct , 2018
in
Digital Marketing SEO Tips
You were recently flicking through some websites and read an article about SEO and how it can help your business to get more clients. You’re all excited and cannot wait to get an expert to help you launch a robust strategy. You do your due diligence and identify an SEO firm in your area and quickly schedule an appointment. You meet them, and after establishing that they are right for you, they give you a rough quotation, and your heart stops beating for a moment. Well, this is very common, and the truth is that good SEO services are expensive. You can always opt for a “cheaper” service and get seduced by scams that promise to get you ranked within a few days by offering their services at a lower price.
However, that is a short term solution to a long term problem. SEO can be costly, and this can be justified by the nature of the work an expert is expected to undertake. Please read below and find out more:
Understanding The Cost.
Before we look at the SEO services offered by experts, keep in mind that the cost shouldn’t be considered in isolation. The cost is relative to the business in question and what one firm might see as expensive can be peanuts for another firm. That being said, no fixed amount of money cuts across all the companies that are looking for SEO services. A professional SEO firm will try to tailor a perfect SEO strategy for your business before handing out the invoice. However, businesses are expected to fork out a decent some of money if they want it done properly. Following are some of the reasons for this:
SEO Needs Time.
You will notice that there are many businesses out there promising to get you ranked on the first page of Google within a few weeks, but this cannot be guaranteed. Google’s ranking algorithm is top secret, and all that the SEO experts can do is try to optimise the secrets they know in a bid to improve your rankings. In reality, a complete white hat SEO campaign will take a minimum of six months, and throughout this time, an expert will be trying to work on several aspects of your site to improve its rankings.
Some other marketing strategies such as the paid ones, like Adwords, are short term, but SEO is long term as it is an organic way of appearing to your clients. It all begins with proper planning – on page SEO, social media marketing, email marketing and link building among other things. It is fairly normal to see some websites shooting up the SERPs within a few months, but good SEO is all about stabilising a site’s ranking and not seeing it drop from the first page after just a few days. In a nutshell, a good SEO campaign takes time, and an expert will be working on your site for a long time, something that justifies the price you have to pay.
Research.
One might argue that even if it does take time, an SEO expert has performed most of those tasks before and should therefore, be able to easily replicate them on your site. However, this is not so. You cannot copy paste an SEO strategy that worked for company A and use it for company B. All companies have varying SEO needs, and the competition in the various niches in which they operate in is also different. An expert needs to do a lot of research as that will be the foundation of their SEO strategy. They need to first learn about the market and try to see what other companies are doing in order for them to craft a good strategy. Keyword research is also fundamental and it involves finding the targeted words that one should rank for. Doing this research is not easy, and it takes time and effort, and this is another reason why SEO services are costly.
Competition.
There are millions of websites on the internet today, and people are creating more websites with each passing hour. Try searching for a keyword in your niche and check out how many results you see. Imagine trying to surge ahead of all these websites and appear on the first page of Google. This is not an easy task, and your SEO expert needs to be committed to helping you rank well. It’s important to remember that all the other businesses out there, including your competitors, are also trying to get on the first page of Google with their SEO strategies. If you set a hefty target for your SEO expert, you will be required to pay for it since the task at hand is not easy.
A good SEO campaign is not over when you finally get your desired ranking. It should aim for longevity. You could easily appear on the first page of Google, then sit back and relax thinking you are a step ahead of everyone else, only to let your competition surge ahead of you and push you back to the second or even third pages. Your SEO expert has an uphill task to get you ranking well, and if they can do it, it is only fair that you compensate them well.
Expertise and Tasks.
We mentioned earlier that you will come across scammers in the SEO field and these are people who are just trying to get money for nothing. Well, the real SEO experts are professionals with knowledge and expertise in that area, and a layperson simply can not do the things an SEO expert can do. For example, they may need to change some aspects of your website, and this can involve going into the code and adjusting it. An SEO expert is a person with several skills that enable them to optimise the various things that come into play when trying to boost a website’s rankings.
Aside from the above, you should expect some reports from your SEO experts and these should be available to you after about a month or so. These guys engage in many tasks that all start with website development, content creation, social media optimisation, and email marketing among other things. Imagine one entity taking care of all these aspects yet, you’re only prepared to pay them peanuts? The question should be, can you afford NOT to use an expert?
SEO is a vital aspect of your business, and it can yield huge rewards if you get it right. Do not be scared of digging deep into your pocket as the ROI of a well-done SEO campaign is well worth the investment.
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