SEO | Is It That Big Of A Deal?

What Is SEO?
There isn't a hotter term of the moment right now than SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  SEO is basically a set of "best practices" to get your website to play nice with search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.).  The idea is to get your website ranked on that oh-so-coveted first page of rankings.

How Will It Help Me?
Surveys show over 90% of people do some kind of online research of a product prior to making a purchase.  Even if they went to a brick and mortar store to do their purchasing, they've been online doing research and reading reviews.  Customers are even conducting searches on their smart phones while in the store.  This is the biggest reason to consider SEO; the internet has changed the way people make purchases.  Most consumers don't look beyond the first 2 or 3 pages of search results, and the search engine's purpose is to make sure that the first pages of returned results are the most relevant to what the consumer is looking for.  Today typical competition for web pages for any given keyword ranges from 800,000 to 1,100,000.

Is It Worth All That Money?
As of June 2011, the average cost of SEO services in the United States hovered around $9,000 to $14,000 per year for a typical service industry company (plumber, electrician, etc.), about the same for accounting industries (high end $14,000 to $18,000) and even more for legal practices going after ultra competitive keywords that bring in the big bucks in clientele ($20,000 plus!).

I believe it's being abused and spoken of in a higher fashion than necessary.  In particular to charge customers exorbitant fees unnecessarily.  That's just my opinion as a one-person office trying to get off the ground and thinking about the small to medium-sized business owners who cannot afford those types of charges.


Why Do You Not Charge Separately for SEO?
When one builds a website page, you start out with coding at the top, add the meta tags, keywords, etc. below that (information search engines crawl for).  I feel that is part of building a site, it's automatic, it belongs there.  I don't believe in charging separately for something that is part of the overall page coding.

One aspect of optimization I do charge separately is back-links, or you may have heard them called reputable links with authority.  This is very involved and time-consuming.  Watch for future post detailing what is involved in linking and the tagging for SEO optimization.

Summary
The answer is, yes, SEO is that big of a deal and very important in order to get on the first page of search results, standing out in a crowded marketplace like the internet, getting more business.

However, SEO is not the end-all, be-all and is somewhat intrinsic to the basics of maintaining your website.  Don't stress about SEO, implement it then forget about it.  Focus on delivering value to your readers and potential customers, creating great content of worth to them and keeping them on your pages.  Google monitors how long people stick around!