As businesses continually recognise the importance of a strong online presence, many fail to perceive the actual cost that is required to achieve this presence. Search visibility is possibly one of the most important things to your business, if you are not on the first page of a Google Search it is unlikely that your potential customers may never find you – regardless of how good you are at delivering your service.
Just because you have got a new website does not mean that you are going to instantly appear at the top of Google for desired keywords or even your businesses name. Search Engine Optimisation is a long and detailed process, no one knows every element which is used in Google’s complex algorithm but effective use of what we know does work is essential. Things such as the number of quality links you have, age of domain and quality of unique content are taken into consideration when Google is spidering your website, and your ranking is then determined.
It is very possible that initially a directory site listing your business may rank higher than your actual website and businesses with names either the same or similar to yours may also rank higher than you. This is where Search Engine Optimisation becomes a fundamental part of the online success of your business. Search Engine Optimisation when done correctly will increase the search visibility of your website and hopefully attract high volumes of quality traffic to your website. The cost of Search Engine Optimisation varies greatly, and depends on many things, such as the level of competition within your industry and how competitive the keywords you want to rank highly for are.
Paid Search marketing is one of the best and most successful ways of marketing your new website. It places a sponsored link at the top of Google and some of the other major search engines and usually attracts high levels of qualified traffic to you website. We usually recommend clients who have just had a website go live start with a three month Pay Per Click campaign, usually with a £500 per month budget depending on the competitiveness of the industry and the area that they want to target. When we are running the Pay Per Click we are gathering information on how the customers are finding the website and this is forms the basis for what we will target with the Search Engine Optimisation.
Search Engine Optimisation is a long term strategy, it will not get you to the top of Google instantly, but Pay Per Click will and that is why both go hand in hand. It would be impossible for us to tell you how much it would cost to market your website for a year, or six months but it is usually quite a bit more than the website itself, however, most of our potential clients focus on the cost, when they should focus on the benefits!