What does SEO cost?

We do search engine optimisation (SEO). In a slightly different tack from most SEO companies, we bake the tools into our websites then show you how to create good, solid content then let the system's magic do its thing. This doesn't cost any extra. However, should you wish we can write really effective content for you.

Apparently you can get what looks like the same thing for a significantly and reassuringly bigger price. And not from central London, either; this is from India: The SEM SEO Company from Chandigarh India wrote me offering their services which start at £350 per month and go all the way to over £700 for their top tier service. Bloody 'ell, I thought, until I saw what was on offer - essentially you'd pay for everything we include in our website development services, plus some (admittedly) labour intensive but utterly useless blog posting, commenting and backlink creations. "Useless??" you say? "But don't all SEO companies do this?" Well many do, but this past April (November 2010 if you are based in N. America) all of that became, not just irrelevant, but possibly harmful.

The reason I say that is that's when Google rolled out its Panda algorithm update (or King Fu Panda, as we call it here, as it uses dodgy SEO companies' efforts against them!). Google had become aware that link farms, synthetic blogs and other distorting SEO tactics were harming the quality of the search results it returned on its search pages and acted to exclude them. In the USA 12.7% of search results disappeared almost overnight. These were mostly synthetic blog posts either copied from the original, or compiled from snippets of the original authors' posts.

But I digress. The point is that none of this is necessary. You should be able to do all of this on your own site easily; it should be part of the package you bought with your website build tick and it should all the SEO boxes once you click the big, friendly "Save" button.

Some folk have these things but don't think they know what to write about. We have heard this story from some of our customers and we are developing a system to monitor the Internet and social media relevant for posts about issues relevant to their businesses. This will be able to feed them topics to comment on or write about. 20 minutes a day is all that's called for.

But other folk are pressed for time, or they freeze up at the keyboard with writer's block. They may not be able to craft grammar as smoothly as they might wish. For these folk, help is at hand and we have people.

Our authors will compose original works based on research into a topic and post this on your site, not on external blogs that earn others Google goodwill. If you're short on time or personnel, our people can get up to speed very quickly and either post for you, or create drafts that you can polish and perfect at your leisure before publishing.

Contact MorganAlley for a chat about how to get to the top of Google. You can do this!