Online Marketing is becoming an essential marketing medium for a successful business.  If a business can successfully marketing their product or service online they open many new doors to potential customers and sales leads.  A well structured and organised SEO consultant will suggest two avenues for online marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Paid Online Marketing (like Pay Per Click).  Ideally you would be able to afford both paid and unpaid marketing campaigns but if you are like most businesses you are on a budget and need the proof that online marketing actually works.

The most common phrase I hear is “But everyone knows who we are and what we do” in relation to their business.  This is just not true otherwise every potential customer would already be beating down your door wouldn’t they?  There is always room for growth and if you sell a product or service then there is always online marketing potential.

So, let’s explore why SEO is far superior to paid online marketing.

1. SEO is a long term strategy for your online marketing.  Should you implement pay per click or other paid online marketing then as soon as you stop paying your bills to the advertiser the traffic to your website will stop.  Although you pay for setting up an SEO campaign with a reputable agency often their other client’s results are so impressive it is almost compelling to go with SEO instead.  With SEO, should you stop paying for the refinements a reputable firm might charge at an ongoing rate, you might only see a slight leveling off of website traffic.

2. With pay per click marketing you pay for every visitor delivered to your website whether they like your service or not.  With Search Engine Optimization your website will hopefully appear high in the free search results and this will mean you do not pay for a click through to your website – effectively once your SEO is setup every click or visitor to your website is free.

3. False or fake click throughs.  In a study released in August 2007 it was determined that 18% of click throughs on pay per click links on Google were false.  In other words this could be competitors clicking through to your website just trying to cost you money in advertising.

4. The psychology of clicking on sponsored links.  If you appear in both the paid and unpaid search results then you would see about 80% of your website traffic come from the unpaid free SEO website links.  There is a psychology associated with consumers clicking on paid advertising links especially if they are labeled as such, like in Google “Sponsored Links”.  Searchers see straight through this and know it is a paid advertising link.  Consumer preference is placed on the freely generated results and links at a rate of 4 to 1.

5. Over the period of one year the cost of setting up the initial SEO campaign will have more than bettered the underlying website traffic that an equivalent costing pay per click campaign will have achieved.  From my client examples there is about a 4 times website traffic factor weighted for SEO against pay per click.  I was amazed myself!!

In a recent newspaper article in Melbourne, Australia, it was shown that holding a position in the top 3 spots in the search engine results pages for a competitive term is worth an estimated $1.5 million.  It was also shown that holding the top spot generates 3.5 times the traffic that the number two spot generates.

When it boils down to it a well executed Search Engine Optimization campaign will get your website massive amounts of website traffic.  Of course selling the product or service is then the responsibility of the actual website so make sure you couple your SEO with good design, clear and prevalent calls to action and correct marketing principles like colour schemes and layouts.  In my opinion it is vital to get this SEO campaign mix correct so talk to a reputable SEO firm and gain some information on how they can help you.

The Buyback promotion

We are offering a huge promotion that will last till the end of the year.  That’s right for the rest of 2009 we essentially buying your business. 

There are many people that I talk to that tell me that they paid a lot of money for a website and never got the results that they were promised by the web design company.  Whether it is because of poor design, not finishing the project like they had stated, or it was simply not what they said it was going to be.  People are frustrated because they spend a lot of money on web design but never get what they paid for.  So now they are hesitant to spend more money on web design or any other design service for that matter.  That’s where the buyback promotion comes in.

How does the promotion work?

Let me give you an example so that you will better understand how the promotion works.  Let’s say that you paid $2500 for a custom made website and for some reason were very dissatisfied with the results OR  your project was never  completed. Bring your receipt for the web design service that you paid for by the other company and we’ll give you the amount that you paid for as a credit with OUR Company for our services. You only pay the difference between our cost and your credit.  You might be saying what’s the catch?  No Catch!

You could simply get a custom made high quality website for hundreds of dollars and finally get what you paid for.  Were simply giving you another shot to get that premium website that you’ve been waiting for.
This is an unheard of promotion and people might call us crazy but that’s what sets us apart from these other companies.  We not only want you business now, but we want your business long term and another advantage is that we are a FULL SERVICE design company. We want you to put us in charge of all your design needs. 

How do I apply?

Simply email us at buyback@wired2design.com or call us at 214-938-4294 and simply tell us your story and provide us with your receipt and we’ll get started today.  Consider this your web design bailout plan.

Visit http://www.wired2design.com/buyback-promotion.php to learn more!

Take advantage of this unheard of promotion and redeem your website today!

I read this blog and had to repost as I thought this was the most honest answer when it comes to “How much does a website cost?” The questions is often asked and it’s amusing to hear web designer’s answer. I do have to give credit it to www.3232design.com for this blog.I wish most web designers and developers would give answers such as this.  To those who really try to figure an answer to this question stop thinking so hard and read below. 

“42 what?” You ask. Dollars? Pounds? Quatloos?”

Well, yes.

That’s because there’s not enough information for a meaningful answer. The cost of a given website depends on what goes into producing that website. This is related to, but not entirely dependent upon, an hourly rate for the concept, design, coding, and administration.

“Great!” You exclaim. “What’s your hourly rate?”

Hold on, there. Let’s suppose a designer uses a rate of $10 an hour. As a designer gets more experienced, she will create better designs, and at a faster pace. What used to take an hour now only takes twenty minutes, and the quality has improved. As time goes on the designer realizes that she is making less money for creating higher-quality websites. So she does the obvious thing and raises her hourly rate to $30.

Now how much does that website cost? For the quality and amount of time it takes, not much more–because our more experienced designer is much faster now and the quality of her design has gone up. But you don’t know that, all you know is her hourly rate is more than that other guy ($10), and way more than those generic HTML templates where you can get 12 for $25.

So our designer then decides to charge on a bid basis and not use an hourly rate except internally to aid in estimating the project. This way her clients can make more reasonable comparisons between designers based on a total cost for the project, and they want our more experienced designer because her designs will tell their marketing story much better. And with her added experience, she may have suggestions on how to improve their marketing message.

Which brings us back to the original question. How much does that website cost? Once you know what you’re doing with your website you can begin to find meaningful answers. If your site is just a few static pages, it probably won’t be as expensive as one with a lot of programming, which adds to the cost depending on the complexity. If you want a really exceptional design that will win awards, that will take longer to develop and might cost more. But the designer needs to know what you want to do to figure out how long it will take, and thus what your site will cost.

“OK,” you say, “I want a website like yours. What would that cost me?” So I break down what was involved in designing my company website: the marketing copy, the conceptual design, coding the blog, contact forms, portfolio page and Flash navigation…

“Hey, I don’t need all those things,” you say. And you’re right, unless you are me. And even then maybe your marketing message doesn’t require a blog, or a Flash navigation. You may need similar elements, but customized for your applications. “Just give me a ballpark range,” you say.

42-ish.

There can be a lot of variation even in a website that just needs a few static pages of content. Will you need stock photography? Do you have your copy written, or will you need a writer? Maybe your copy includes a lot of complicated tabular data that needs to be translated into HTML, or it turns out that you really need something entirely different from what you thought.

A good design firm will walk you through a process where you can answer all those marketing, design, and technical questions in a straightforward, step-by-step manner. You can then compare pricing from different design firms based on the costs for creating the same content, and when the costs are different you can factor in the quality of design or whether or not you think your designer will be loads of fun to work with, and will offer you creative solutions that will make you stand out from the crowd.

And when you’ve gone through the process, you’ll finally know it won’t cost 42.

It’s probably closer to 43.