How much should website optimization cost for a medium sized business ?

Question

I have a medium sized business ( aprox £250K turnover) and want my website to be maintained and optamized - the range of prices that have been quoated to me is crazy !- from £100 to £3000 a month - how do you know what is reasonable and how can you check up on companies work - as a website they have "optimized" might already of been popular in the first place ? Is this type of work actually benificail or will maintaining the website and keeping the information a links up to date enough to sort out the optimizing side too ?

Any advice apprechiated as companies keep telloign me I need this - but don't want to be taken for a ride.

Answer 1

Maybe a three-six month deal to see how it goes. It depends what the business is. Is it just for web presence? Or do you hope sell more product or services through the website? Do you want to spend money on Adwords, local directories or just increase your visitors? We, at http://www.ds32.com are looking after acouple of sites optimization. Our clients are very happy so far although the processes are more art than science. We would love to help promote your website using the techniques we have gathered running our primary financial site. This is www.shareworld.co.uk This site is beginning to reap rewards from our labours. As an example try and Google the phrase "Beginners guide to investing" and see where we come. this is quite impressive and lots of large corporate financial sites would like to be able to show you that.When you think about it is quite an important search term for this sort of site and very competitive. If you feel we could help please contact us on DS32

Answer 2

Be very wary of companies offering optimization services.  There's so much of it you can do yourself that you don't need to pay them the sort of figures you're being quoted.  If you don't have the time or knowledge to do it yourself, ask your web designer to do it for you as part of writing the site.

One of our sites comes up on the first page, frequently at positions 1, 2 or 3 and that's because of how we've written it.  In fact, it comes up ahead of the company that manufactures the products that we're selling!

Your keywords, descriptions, meta tags and alt tags are all important in optimising your site.  So, too, are using headings on your pages.

In addition, there are free services from Google that help with understanding how your site is working and making it work better for you.  Check out business solutions on the Google home page.

Optimisation is not rocket science, although those who're selling it would like you to think it is.  (No disrespect to the answerer who is in the trade and who has given you a balanced answer.)

Try making some improvements yourself or getting your web designer to do some and check the difference it makes.  Keeping your site up to date helps.  Search engines soon 'lose interest' in sites that remain static.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Your web-site should have been optimised by the company that built it, although the 'standards' for optimisation do change fairly often as search engines 'improve'. Even £100 per month is too expensive unless you're in a very competitive marketplace (e.g. printer cartridges, insurance etc) - it shouldn't be necessary to update the optimisation more than once or twice a year, assuming it was well-written in the first place. We tend to tweak our client's site for free where we spot anything that could be improved, or charge £50-£100 as a one-off for more involved changes.

If you post your web address on this forum, people can take a look and give you an idea if anything needs to be done.

Answer 4

send me a message with your url

i will provide you a FREE report

which explains where you stand what you need

so you can decide whether to go or not

Answer 5

That is a very good question. To be honest choosing the right optimisation company is one of the biggest decisions that a company can make because as you said, you don't want to be taken for a ride, and unfortunately there are companies out there who will do just that.

I would say don't think that a company who charges the most money per month will actually give you a better service because a lot of companies I know, and I'm in the industry, charge a shocking amount of money in return for tickling your site, whilst some charge a lot less and work tirelessly on your behalf.

I would say the best thing to do is to ask companies for testimonials, maybe even try to speak to a client of theirs to find out what they have done for them. Also ask for physical proof, what keywords have they enabled companies to be found for and carry out the searches yourself. If a company doesn't actually give you this proof then it is a massive indication that they won't be the right company for you.

Building links into your site is a great way of increasing your online visbility from an 'off-site' perspective but the search engines require effective 'on-site' optimisation as well, one without the other will very rarely lead to a positive result.

Just remember, don't go with the first company you speak to, always try to get information from a variety of companies and choose the one who you get the best vibes from. Most importantly though, make sure you find out exactly what they have done for clients in the past. Then you'll be able to decide if it's going to be value for money......... or not.

Hope that helps.