This is another of those questions down the pub posts.
My usual reply when asked how much to make my website rank higher in google? is how long is a piece of string?
Seriously though, most people just don’t have a clue how much SEO costs or how much it costs to get a website ranking high in Google and the people who ask these types of questions are usually the ones most shocked when you explain just what work is required to rank higher in Google.
This became clear to me when I had some SEO enquiry forms set up asking people to request information about SEO.
I had the forms set up so people would enter their 3 main keywords, the approximate amount they would pay for setting up and their approximate monthly budget for SEO.
It soon became clear these forms were a waste of time as the majority of people entering budgets were so under the minimum amount I would even consider looking over their sites for.
A typical example would be a bookkeeper wanting to rank high for phrases like; Bookkeepers, Bookkeeping services, Help with Accounts and only having a SEO budget of £50 set up and £20 a month (yes, I did mean £20 not £200)
So back to the pub, I was asked again How much does it cost to rank higher in google and got a surprised look when I said it depends on the results of a website appraisal, some basic keyword research and some competitor analysis. They assumed you just paid a set amount a month and automatically got ranked in Google.
With Google being around as long as it has been now I’m surprised at how many people still know very little about it, but then again, take a bit of a break from my online activities and you soon realise that in the real world it is seen totally different to how anyone in the internet industry sees it.