How Much Does Good SEO Cost For a Highly Sort After Keywords?

I've recently been asked to give a quote to do SEO for a site selling health insurance. I was not given any other prerequisites just how much would SEO cost. Quoting for SEO is a little like quoting to build a house, it all depends on what the outcome the clients wants. Do they want a small 1 bedroom apartment or a 30 bedroom estate home with all the trimmings. The biggest factor is competition. Health Insurance has a lot of websites and businesses all trying to get a cut of the pie, many of the websites have been around for years for have seniority over a new site in Googles eyes anyway.

But ranking on Google on the first page can be done, if a client has the money to invest in it, of course it can be done. I would even go onto say that they could rank in first place of a Google search result, knocking Blue Shield CA out of first place, for health insurance; I could do that, if and only if, I had the resources, but even then I still can't give an accurate quote. The big question is what keywords you want first page or first place. Most business have little idea which keywords are best, or the ones they do think would be worthwhile, in fact aren't.

But lets say for this example "Health Insurance California". The first step is to do that exact search and research who's ranking on the first page now for that term. Also look at the sites that are using pay per click, and find out what they are paying for adwords. Then look at the various ways of doing that search, "California Health Insurance" "Health Insurance California Family" Health Insurance California single person" "Health Insurance California self employed" the list goes on.

There are some big company names on the first page of Google, and pay per click business are paying between $250 and $3.4k for advertising a DAY. Average price for a click is $6.34. Round that off to $6 for easy figuring. Realistically if you are looking at even the mid range of pay per click of $1000 a day, if you are looking at saving $35 k a month on adwords, you can't really expect to pay an SEO $2500 to do it. Yet you would be flabbergasted at how many people do expect that kind of deal. And what's more clients expect first page results within a few weeks... taint going to happen.

As a general rule of thumb though, an investment of 4 months of a mid-range pay per click, would get some impressive results. Ok, how much are we looking at for this example? $1k a day, for 120 days. $120k. That's actually a little high for good results, but there isn't any business that would spend $120k on getting their site to rank well in Google for say 50 different keywords or keyword terms. That taint going to happen either.

In the real business world $120 isn't that much money, you can bet that Blue Shield would spend more than that on newspaper advertising probably a week. The internet is a wonderful thing, and there are cazillions of opportunities out there, you just have to have either money to invest in a website, or be willing to put the work in yourself.

I often suggest to clients that want SEO like this they use an SEO consulting service, they do the work, and the consultant just tells them what to do. I have some clients that have gotten some very impressive SEO results, and saved themselves 10's of thousands of dollars in the interim.

Lynny Brown an SEO living in San Diego, she has a wealth of online business experience over the past 10 years. Working from home, as an SEO Consultant to small business owners, people that own, and know how to edit their own websites. Often website owners have built their own websites, and would like to learn skills in online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). With so much mis-information on the internet now about SEO and website marketing, learning these skills can be very time consuming. Lynny carefully studies her consultant clients websites, and gives her clients hints and tips that pertain to just to their website. These clients always have the option of not doing what she suggests, or all of what she suggest; it is their website after all. Her consultant clients have had much success, which of course reflects well on her SEO skills.

10 Blogger Types: The Good, the Bad, and the Sleazy

These past few weeks I’ve watched how things played out in the blogosphere after breaking the story of Google’s new “unavailable_after” tag. I have to say that what I learned was extremely interesting and educational to me! I have been writing articles for the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and other publications for many years and have seen bits and pieces of my work get picked up in various places; however, it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame when you break an important news story.



Sharing What I Learned



As with most of my more popular newsletter articles, requests for republishing started coming in soon after it was published. What made this one different was that many of the more popular bloggers in the search marketing space picked up the news quickly — and then things really went crazy.



A Google search this past weekend for “unavailable_after” brought up 93,000 results! I don’t know for sure, but I imagine there weren’t any results for this phrase previously, or at least very few. 93,000 pages all mentioning unavailable_after and, presumably, my original article. Pretty cool, eh? Unfortunately, it’s not as cool as it appears at first glance.



The Rankings Letdown



For one thing, I kind of expected that my original article would be showing at the top of the search results, but it wasn’t even close! Although, when I looked at it with my SEO eye, I had to smack myself because there were good reasons why it wasn’t in the top. For one, the unavailable_after tag wasn’t the focus of my article since it was a synopsis of everything Dan Crow had discussed at the SEMNE event. For another, “unavailable_after” wasn’t even in my article’s Title tag, again, because it wasn’t the focus.



But What About the Links?



I did think that all the links pointing to the original article should have given it more “oomph” to rank for that phrase despite the fact that the article wasn’t optimized for it, but apparently they didn’t. The good news is that the article does rank #1 for “getting into Google” as one would expect, which in the long run is probably much more important!



My SEO Efforts



I was still intrigued (and slightly annoyed) about not ranking for “unavailable_after,” so I added it to my Title tag and the top headline to see if that would have any effect. As of today, Google hasn’t re-indexed the page, so the jury is still out on that one. I also began reviewing the pages that were showing up before mine in the search results. What I found was an enlightening look at the SEO blogosphere. Unfortunately, it wasn’t always pretty, and at the end of my review I was pretty disgusted with some bloggers.



The 10 Types of Bloggers



Here are the results of my review and the 10 types of bloggers I found. You’ll notice that they range from good to bad to sleazy.



1. Good: People who ask permission to reprint your article and add a bio with links back as requested.



These are people who are generally looking to add some content to their own sites. They usually republish the article in full, and are happy to add whatever bio and links you specify.

2. Good: People who republish without asking permission but at least link back to the original article.



I don’t really have a problem with the folks who haven’t asked permission if they at least have the courtesy of linking back to the original article. Sure, it’s not as great as controlling what the links say in a bio, but it’s generally fine.

3. Good: People who blog about something you wrote and who link to your original article, providing their own unique commentary or spin to go with it.



This is the best type of blog post as it isn’t a complete dupe of yours, and it gives credit where credit is due. Watch out, however, as sometimes these types of blog posts are critical of what you’re written. Personally, I have no problem whether people agree or disagree as that’s the foundation for blogging.

4. Okay: People who blog about what some other blogger blogged about, and link to both the original article and the blogger’s commentary.



I probably should put this one in the “good” category — as it really is fine — but it still is irksome when the secondary blogger’s post seems to get more credit than the original piece.



5. Bad: People who blog about what some other blogger blogged about it (as in #4 above), but who link back only to the blogger and not the original.



I was surprised at how prevalent this one was. I don’t think that most people intend to snub the original author, but it happens a lot! Sure, you could say it’s okay because the post they DO link to posts that link back to the original, but that’s just not good enough. I strongly believe that the original writer should get credit where credit is due in a more direct manner.

6. Bad: People who blog on the topic and then Digg their OWN post instead of the original.



I almost put this in the “sleazy” category, but I guess it’s sort of borderline. It seems to me if the topic is Digg-worthy, it should be the original article or post that gets Digged. Unfortunately, that’s often not the case.



7. Sleazy: People who don’t ask to republish but do it anyway, and don’t even link back!



When they don’t even put the original author’s name on it, I believe it’s copyright infringement. If they do mention the author’s name, but never link back to them in some manner, it’s pretty sleazy in my book.



8. Sleazy: Scrapers who link or don’t link, but add contextual link ads and other crap to the content.



Unfortunately, this is extremely prevalent these days. I would guess that a good portion of those 93,000 results in Google fall into this category. I can’t imagine those pages actually get any traffic, so I’m not sure what the point is.



The next 2 don’t quite fit into the good, bad, or sleazy categories, but were additional types I noted:



9. Strange: People who blog but somehow get their facts wrong.



One post got the name of the organization (SEMNE) wrong and called it SEMPO. I’m not sure why or how, as it was right there in black and white. I don’t believe there was any malicious intent going on, but it was strange nonetheless. (It was corrected immediately upon notification, so that was good!)



10. Dumbasses: People who just blog it cuz everyone else is.



Good blog posts are good for a reason. Simply writing about something because everyone else has is not a good blog post. ‘Nuff said!



And on that note, I implore you to look at your own blogging practices to see if you fit in any of the categories above. If so, here’s hoping it’s one of the good ones!

Types of Logos: Text, Symbol and Combination Logos

There are three basic types of logos: text, symbol, and combination logos. The type of logo that will work best for your company depends on a number of considerations, such as the size of your company, the uniqueness of your name, and a variety of other factors.

Text logo

A text logo (also sometimes called a logotype or word mark) is a logo largely made up of the text of the company's name. This type of logo can have some graphic elements—lines, boxes, borders—that interact with, surround, or even form the letters. However, the graphic elements should be used as an accent to the text, not as a major or equally-weighted part of the logo.

A text logo works well when:

• You have a multi-word business name. If your business name is made up of many words, that are not commonly or easily abbreviated, or when an abbreviation may not be appropriate developing a text logo will keep the logo design as simple and clean as possible.
• You're working with an innovative, unique business name, as with Yahoo or Google. In each case, the business name is enough to make the logo memorable.
• You're designing a logo for a large company that offers many types of products, services, or a combination of both, that may be hard to define or "wrap up" in a single picture or symbol.
• You're designing a logo "for the long haul"—there is less concern about your company "outgrowing" a text logo—they are timeless and classic.
• Trademark protection is highly important—as long as your business name is unique, then a text logo will also be unique.

A text logo may not be the right choice if:

• Your business name is not unique; this can mean difficulty for building your brand recognition. Then, without a symbol, the logo will be more difficult to remember or to associate with your business.
• Your business name does not describe what you do, it can be hard to tell what products or services you offer when just a text logo is used. Taglines or other graphic elements will need to be employed to tell your audience more about your business.

Symbol logo

A symbol logo is the opposite extreme in design from a text logo. This type of logo includes neither words nor letters—only symbols, images and shapes.

A symbol logo works well when:

• Your company already has a high level of brand recognition. If who you are and what you do are already widely known, then you can use a symbol logo as an elegant and clean solution.
• You have been using a combination logo for some time and have now built up enough brand recognition for your symbol to stand alone. This is a common transition for a logo design to take when your company grows.
• You have a unique symbol in your industry—you wouldn't want to be confused with or mistaken for anyone else in your industry!
• You have the time and energy to trademark your logo, and then to police and enforce that trademark. This is how you ensure that your logo continues to be uniquely yours.
• You have a global presence and can develop a universal, graphic symbol that speaks to you and audiences. Additionally, a symbol can have meanings on many levels, and can also have different meanings in different cultures

A text logo may not be the right choice if:

• You are a company just starting out, you must have the budget and desire to educate your audience on your new symbol logo. This can be a difficult task.

Combination logo

A logo that in some manner combines both a symbol and the company name. The symbol and text can be integrated together, side by side, or with one located above the other.

Combination logos are the most common type of logo for several reasons:

• A combination logo offers the best of both worlds. This type of logo offers a memorable logo graphic that tells the story of who you are, what you do, and what makes you different, all in conjunction with your business name for easy identification.
• A combination logo is an excellent choice for a small- or medium-sized company or a company just starting out, to begin to build brand recognition, because a combination logo is both visually strong and explanatory. The symbol can speak to the services that the company offers, while the company name increases the company recognition.
• Combination logos are easier to copyright and protect than a symbol-only logo, because the logo symbol will always be used in conjunction with the business name. This automatically makes the logo unique.

You can use this guide to determine the best type of logo to design or to have designed for your company, based on the size of your business, how well-known you are, your business name, and your business plans, among other factors. Choosing the right type of logo design is the first step in building your company's visibility, credibility, and memorability.