Quality SEO Costs and Scammers

Anil points out a Clickz article discussing the cost of seo compared to your ROI. I've long been an advocate of only spending money on marketing where you will make it back. Call me crazy but I think that model works. Why else would you spend money on marketing (in this case search engine marketing) if you didn't think you'd make it back? Obviously, anyone who employs a search engine marketing firm "thinks" they'll generate enough in revenues to pay for the cost of optimization, otherwise they wouldn't be spending the money. But it's hard to determine who's for real and who's not.

The search engine marketing industry isn't a regulated one and doesn't have a "real" advisory coucil yet. Even though attempts have been made to put one together. So you're best bet is to go with a company that eats their own dog food and has enough satisfied clients to make you feel comfortable.

Anil also talks about content being key. I whole heartedly agree with him on that point. If you have good, unique content, the search engines will love you and 50% of your ranking problems will be over. But it's also critical that your site is spiderable. That is, can it be crawled by the search engines. If your site can't be crawled then it doesn't matter if you have thousands of pages of unique content. If the spiders can't find your pages then they won't get indexed. If they don't get indexed then they won't rank. Site architecture is critical in ensuring success in any seo campaign. Combine that with a solid linking program that emphasizes a win/win scenario for your visitors and yourself and good content and you've got a winning strategy.