Todd also uses lawyers and auto mechanics when pointing out expertise and experience to justify high rates. Although I don’t think I’d have used a either as an example. There are more lawyers and mechanics that don’t have a clue what they are doing then there are one that are actually experts in their field.

I can relate to his concerns though. I’ve spliced fiber optic networks since 1987 and have seen pricing come down from $120+ per fiber to the current $30 or less. In the past 15 months I’ve seen the pricing down as low as $18. The reason for this is simple. Competition has increased.

Back in the late 80’s there where only a hand full of companies splicing optics. Today there are thousands. Why?–because companies trained their own employees to do the work for a fraction of the price. Schools opened that offered training and certification to the “guy on the street” so they could have a chance at a good career too. This resulted in a lot more capable, quality conscious people to do the work.

Todd’s analogy about knowing where to hit the printing press just doesn’t fly anymore. There are too many SEO experts like Dan Thies and Jerry West training people where to hit the damn machine for themselves. Btw- I hate that analogy. SEO is no more than  applied science and using the word hit and machine in the same sentence when talking science screams of ” I don’t know what was wrong, but I smacked it and it started working again”.

The plain truth of the matter is most small businesses simply cannot afford $1000-$3000 a month for a search marketing campaign. They simple do not have the money or can’t see the potential returns from spending the money.

Many SMB’s just don’t know what to look for before hiring an SEO firm. To be fair to the SEO’s that are feeling insulted and misunderstood Matt McGee wrote a great piece on Small Business SEM: Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations & Realities that covers 5 points about pricing and SEO services. It’s well worth the read if you’re considering hiring an SEO firm.

My advice to the SEO’s that feel that they are being degraded–crawl out from under your $1000 bills and get over it. Competition brings down cost. That’s capitalism.

I’d watch out for the paperboy too-

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

SEO Companies Too Expensive For Small Business

How crazy is that?

Evidently many of the local SEO services are either unaware of this or just don’t care that a Real Estate site holds the top position for their term.

Seeing as how I’m the new guy on the block in the Denver SEO service arena I’m going to take a whack at taking over that spot. I’ve never competed in this space before but from the looks of things it might not take too much work to takeover the #1 spot in Google.

Don’t get me wrong, the local SEO services appear to be very good at what they do and the evidence is all over the web if you do simple searches related to SEO in Denver Colorado but there is a hole for me to wiggle in.

I’ve listed the top 5 search terms for SEO in Denver, both broad and phrase match in the screen shots below. My target will be phrase match.

As you can see from the screen shots above the phrase match gets 95 total searches a day while the broad match gets 178.  These aren’t exactly smoking traffic numbers but from a local stand point it ain’t too bad. The estimated traffic for the #1 one spot for phrase match is 39 (SEOT). That’s 39 potential customers a day that could come from this search phrase.

Just for the record this website doesn’t rank even in the top 50 for this search phrase so I do have a little work to do but I’m confident I can get to the top of the first page with minimum of work and using totally white hat strategies.

If you are a business owner in Denver Colorado I would like you to check back in the next few weeks as I will post my results on how easy can be to compete in your local market.

Wish me luck!

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Denver SEO