Is there an Average Price for Internet Marketing and SEO?

Nowadays the internet is the number one advertising medium, it doesn't matter if your a web based trader selling your products and services mainly online or a painter and decorator or plumber with no real ties to the internet apart from a small website displaying your business details, if you don't advertising online or market your website in some way your not going to get a lot of new business .

The internet is the first and for 90% of people under 40 years of age the only point of contact made with businesses. The days of yellow pages, the phone book, local press and directory enquiries are long gone and have been replaced with search engines and smart phone apps. The harsh reality is that if your not found on the first page of google for your chosen keyword or search phrases then your business isn't going to succeed no matter how pretty or expensive your website is and so many business owners that are certain that they have a great idea or product fail because they do not market or push their websites correctly.

Search Engine Optimisation or Search Engine Marketing as some people like to call is at present an unregulated industry so finding a good professional company amongst the mass of bad or even scam companies can be difficult, In large cities such as London, Liverpool and Manchester, SEO companies are on the increase and for every good company their are 10 bad ones eager to take your cash and give you nothing in return, so when seeking out a company to work with always check out their testimonials and their achievements, look on their facebook page and follow their twitter account for a while .

Once you find what appears to be a decent professional company with genuine client feedback and evidence of their search engine achievements, what price do you expect to be charged for their services ? like any marketing campaign, if the campaign pays for itself by increasing profits then the cost is not really relevant, you should however avoid cut price offshore SEO companies offering to do a 6 keyword campaign for less than £100 a month, whilst initial results may seem quite good your site will eventually drop into oblivion due to the black hat automated systems used by the cut price offshore SEO gurus. Good SEO needs to be done by hand which is where the high costs come from, a professional SEO company will have researchers, link builders and copywriters all working together to market your site properly and ethically to get you on page one for your chosen keywords so if your expecting to run a good 'local' SEO campaign for under £300, think again, if your looking at national work then your looking at £400+. also avoid any company asking you to sign up for 6 or 12 months, a good company will be able to show you initial results after month one, you'll also see an increase in visitors and hopefully sales so are confident you will keep up the campaign without tying you into a contract, if a company tries this, run a mile

In Summary, SEO isn't cheap but is the correct way to go, a flashy advertisement in the local press will probably set you back the same amount as one month's SEO but bring you in zero business, plus once published it's forgotten about whilst SEO keeps on working week in week out to bring you new clients and business , now is the time to move into the 21st century.