is it SEO i need?

[Willapp]

SEO and/or PPC (Pay Per-Click) is what you want.

Both are reasonably specialist skills though, although there are many agencies out there who will quote for either (or both, often the same agency for both can be beneficial as there is a certain amount of shared knowledge to be gained from each).

Of the two I would say it's better to start off with PPC as it provides instant exposure at a measurable and controlled cost via budgeting, and also allows the identification of the most relevant search terms for your client's business. These can then be fed into an SEO strategy which is much more of a longer-term venture. Typically you won't see any return from SEO within the first few months (unless their current website is very badly put together and can be quickly made much more SEO-friendly).

It is possible to have a go at both PPC and SEO with a little bit of understanding (though as they say a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing sometimes).

A good PPC agency will usually charge some sort of initial fee plus a monthly fee which is usually 10-20% of your PPC budget (providing the budget is suitably large, most will stipulate a minimum monthly fee to cover time spent). The beauty with PPC though is that the results should be very measurable and transparent so it's easy to see what return you're getting for your buck.

SEO is often much harder to judge in terms of investment vs. return but over time should deliver more traffic via natural (i.e. free) search for relevant terms.

Hope that helps.

[SimonMac]

A good SEO strategy will help, but a good one will not be cheap if you don't know how to do it yourself?!

[TheFaQQer]

Ask AtW - seriously.

[scooby]

I was going to post this in Business, but thought I'd start here.

A Northern company I'm working with (Logistics, so if anyone needs some, give me a shout!! ) need to improve their search returns. We need to do this in a low cost way, but any increase in advertising and customer contact is what we really need.

Any ideas on solutions and costs? Open to private messages...