Search
Recommended Products
Related Links


 

 

Informative Articles

Five Common Misconceptions to Achieving Success with your Online Business
How successful is your online business? Are you achieving the monetary rewards that you'd hoped to achieve when you set up your Web site? If not, you may have fallen prey to one of five common misconceptions to achieving success with an online...

Google Adwords – Online Riches Without Owning A Website Or Product!
Did you know that you can make money from Google Adwords without having a product to sell, or even a website? It’s true and there are many people all around the world quietly making lots of money doing it. So how do you do...

How To Get Free Web Site Traffic
Copyright 2005 East Tech LLC There are many ways to get free web site traffic to your website or business promotion. One of the best ways is the use of free traffic exchanges. These exchanges allow you to submit your website into the...

Three Key Facets Of Successful Network Marketing
Network marketing has many aspects, but promotion, persistence, and patience are three key elements which are critical to achieving successful results. PROMOTION is the lifeblood of network marketing. Whether you are using online methods or...

What Is Google Poodle & How It Will Help You
This is an extremely useful tool that will help you get an idea of how your site will look in google search engine results. See how search-engine friendly your site is, and can the spider crawl it easily? This will determine whether or not you will...

 
Why is SEO so expensive?

Why is SEO so expensive?
By Chris Genge

One of the questions our firm often gets asked is, "Why is search engine optimization (SEO) so expensive?" The simple answer -it isn't.

SEO is the most cost effective form of advertising with a low cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and high return on investment (ROI). Studies have shown that dollar for dollar, SEO is the best form of advertising... online and offline!

SEO is proactive... the customer is actively looking for the products and services you provide. Traditional advertising is passive... you are hoping to spark someone's interest and get them thinking about buying your products and services.

Compared with other forms of advertising, Internet marketing via SEO is very inexpensive. Think about how much your business spends on television, radio, newspaper, magazine, and even yellow pages ads. If you were to break these costs down on a monthly basis, SEO would probably cost the least and still deliver better results.

To test this, we looked into advertising in a couple of national US magazines as well as newspapers, yellow pages, and radio spots in some major Canadian cities. The following table represents the average cost per month for each.

Advertising Medium---- Audience Reach---- Size, Type, Frequency---- *Cost Per Month
Bus. Magazines (US)--- United States----- 1/3 column, B/W, 1/mth--- $12000
Radio (CAN)----------- Local------------- 30-second, 60-spots/mth-- $6000
Newspapers (CAN)------ Local------------- bus-card size, B/W, 4/mth-$2000-$2500
Yellow Pages (CAN)---- Local------------- bus-card size, B/W------- $180-$365
SEO------------------- World Wide-------- 10-20 Keywords----------- $249-$499
* Guidelines only as actual costs will vary depending on market conditions, geographical location, and your own preferences.

It is difficult to provide precise numbers because there are so many different variables that can come into play. What we tried to do was keep the variables as consistent as possible from one medium to the next. The


ads in the business magazines were the most expensive but they provided the greatest audience reach (next to SEO) and because the size of the ad was larger than the newspaper and yellow pages ad. Radio came in as the next most expensive. We asked to run a 30-second commercial that would be aired 60-times in a month (the recommended number of airings was 100). Newspapers came in third only because the frequency option we selected was one ad appearing once per-week (Saturday issue) and because the size of the ad was fairly small. The yellow pages came in around the same cost as SEO, but what good is a yellow pages ad to an online business? SEO on the other hand, had one of the lowest costs, provided the greatest audience coverage, and with a 24x7 frequency.

Which of these forms are you currently using? How effective have they been? Do your own research and see what you come up with. Because of the variables, your numbers will be different than ours, but when you break them down to measure the overall costs (CPA, ROI)... the majority of you will see that hands down, SEO is the best option.

It doesn't matter what form of advertising you are using... for online success, SEO really is the most cost effective and efficient way to promote your business. That's why SEO is gaining in popularity with everyone from small one-person operations to large, multi-national Fortune 500 companies.

SEO lets you target your message to the right people at exactly the right time... when they are looking to buy... at a fraction of the cost of other advertising media and a better ROI.

About the Author

Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a website promotion firm that specializes in search engine optimization and pay per click management. Chris writes on current and emerging search engine marketing theories and has been involved in the SEO industry since 1997. He and his team focus on researching and implementing the most effective search engine optimization techniques. To learn more visit http://www.1stonthelist.ca/