I’ve personally performed SEO for websites starting in 1997-1998 part-time and eventually went full-time and started First Place Positioning in 2001. Being in the SEO industry for 15 years (web design last five years) the difficulty still arises explaining and getting some business owners to understand the value of making a strong investment into the optimization and marketing of their website.

I came across this article on the popular website Search Engine Guide; it was written by Stoney deGeyter and he explains in logical fashion the importance of looking at SEO (website marketing, social  media, link building, etc.) as an actual investment rather than a cost or expenditure.

I’ll let Stoney take it from here.

Enterprise SEO for the Small-to-Medium Business
by Stoney deGeyter

Every once in a while my company comes across a web marketing prospect looking for SEO, link building and social media services to get their uber-competitive keywords ranked #1 on Google. And then the bomb drops – their budget is a whopping $500! Whenever I come across these people who want so much for so little I want to wave my magic wand, click my heals together and rub the magic lamp sitting on my desk so that I can wish for an intravenous injection of whatever kool-aid they’ve been drinking.

Good SEO isn’t cheap, but that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive, either. Getting a quality SEO campaign isn’t so much about cost as it is about the value that the SEO campaign brings to the site. If the SEO campaign is profitable, then it really doesn’t matter how much it costs. Heck, if someone could promise me $5 in return for every $1 I spend, I’d mortgage my house, my car and even my brother to pull together every bit of cash I have. Unfortunately, I’ve already mortgaged my brother, and even the best SEOs cannot make such guarantees!

But that doesn’t mean SEO isn’t profitable. Done right, it is. In fact, SEO is one of the least expensive forms of marketing out there. Why so many website owners still refuse to invest as heavily in SEO as they do other marketing, I’ll never know.

Many small businesses spend more on building their website then they do on turning it into a business generator. Without SEO, your website is just a brochure. But an optimized website is a lead generator and a ridiculously awesome sales machine. Brochures are great and all, but I’d put my money on sales!

But many small businesses are “strapped” for money to invest into marketing. I get it, I’ve been there. But marketing has to be seen as an investment, rather than an expense. Smart investments are not always cheap investments. You can play the penny stocks all day and make $5, or you can invest in a company that’s going to return dividends of thousands.

Can Small Businesses Afford SEO?

Many small business owners want enterprise level SEO for pennies on the dollar. You don’t have to look too hard to find an SEO that’s offering cheap SEO services. But you also don’t have to look much further to find SEOs that provide cheap SEO services with very little optimization value.

Quality SEO isn’t difficult but it does take both knowledge and the time necessary to implement that knowledge. Essentially, SEO is a combination of research, diagnosis and implementation. All three of these are necessary to create an effective optimization campaign.

SEO without Research is Like…

Imagine for a second you bought a vehicle and you want to enter it into a race. You take it to a mechanic and ask him to make it a winning vehicle. There are a couple things the mechanic needs to know: 1) What kind of race will you be entering? 2) What are the vehicle specifications or requirements for that particular race?

Without getting getting answers to these questions, you might find your vehicle is prepped for the wrong kind of race. You might have paid $500 to be the winner of the pinewood derby! Yay!

Everybody wants to be a winner, but unfortunately, that’s $500 wasted because your mechanic (SEO) didn’t do the needed research – not only find out what you’re racing against, but also to figure out what needs to be done to get your vehicle (website) prepared to compete properly.

SEO without Diagnosis Is Like…

Let’s say you brought your car to a mechanic because you’ve been having problems. The first thing the mechanic does is try to diagnose the problem. In some cases, this process can be amazingly simple, but in others, it can be incredibly difficult.

There are a lot of tools available to help you diagnose website problems, but these may not always find the core problem. Or they might find multiple problems. A good SEO needs to be able to identify and diagnose issues, and this ability comes from spending time educating themselves about good website marketing strategies. You don’t know what’s wrong if you don’t really know what’s right.

Show a website to a “cheap” SEO and they might tell you that your tags need to be better optimized. Show the same site to an experienced SEO and they might spend a couple hours doing some digging to find the real problem. The more educated the SEO is, the more likely he or she will be able to provide a proper site diagnosis.

SEO without Implementation Is Like…

Say you brought your car to a specialist. He or she researches and diagnoses the problem and tells you exactly what you need to do. You thank them, take your car home and then never do anything about it. Maybe you couldn’t afford to do anything, or you were just looking to save a buck to do it yourself. Bottom line is, nothing got done.

What good is that to you? Sure, you know what needs to be done, but until you actually do it, you’re not going to get the benefit out of the research and diagnosis. SEO is no different. Unless the SEO recommendations are implemented, either by you or someone else, the diagnosis and research are all for nothing.

The cost of quality SEO is almost directly proportional to the skill level of the SEO and the time it takes to do the work. A low-skill SEO might charge you only $50 per hour, but might take 50 hours to do the job. A high-skilled SEO might charge an “outrageous” $200 per hour, but can get the same job done in just 10 hours.

While the $50-per-hour SEO might sound like a good deal, once you do the math, you realize you just spend more money on the same job. To top it off, the low-skilled SEO very likely didn’t do as good of a job, so you just paid more for less. That’s not good value!

SEO Can Always Be Affordable, but It Isn’t Always Cheap

SEO doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, the expense of an SEO campaign is just relative to the return. To some small businesses, anything more than a few hundred dollars can seem expensive. But if the value returned is several thousand dollars, then it’s not so expensive after all. Similarly, you may save money on cheap SEO, but $500 spent on SEO that provides $500 is much more expensive.

SEO often has more value than the sum of its parts. Investing in research, diagnosis and implementation can appear to cost a great deal, but the returns are often exponentially greater. The idea is to consider SEO an investment, rather than a cost. Any good investment gives a good return. And as long as SEO is delivering ROI, there truly is no cost at all. With that, every small business can afford enterprise level SEO. How much you invest isn’t a matter of how much you have, but how much return you want.

Article Link

See ADVERTISING COST COMPARISION CHART for traditional advertising costs and audience reach matched up with SEO.