Interview in e-consultancy.com with US online marketing guru Anne Holland: "US spent only $238.5 million on optimization this year.
That's tiny considering that the average Web site gets 73% more total traffic within six months of optimization....budget more for SEO.
At rock-bottom base you need $100-$500 per Web page. You may also need in-house training for your copywriters."
Why aren't marketers spending more? Holland notes three factors:
#1. Do-it-yourself syndrome -- "People think they can do this in-house. Search engines have a vested interest in you *not* being able to figure out how to do this. Google and others have giant tech teams working on changes to the organic ranking systems so you can't jerry rig your site to win. And you think your webmaster can win against them?"
#2. Low-ball payments -- "A software marketer bragged to me last Wednesday that he spent top dollar on SEO for his 200+ page site. Turns out his budget was $12k a year. At most that's paying for 10 hours of SEO work per month. It's not coming close to covering the work that's needed."
#3. Painful experiences -- "When SEO hit the mainstream big time a couple of years ago, a lot of not-so-reputable folks swarmed out to grab accounts. Some firms had one techie and 15 sales reps. Clients got burned, and now they are shy."
