For many people considering search engine optimization services, it is difficult to understand why the cost of services can range in price so much. It is overwhelming, with people overseas offering to get you top placement for $200-$1000 to Search Engine Optimization firms charging $20,000 per month.

Why is there such a price difference? Ultimately, it comes down to expertise. It is unrealistic to expect lower priced vendors to be able to rank effectively for competitive terms, especially in places where it is obvious that other Search Engine Optimization experts were involved. What is a competitive term? Anything keyword which generates over $1000 of traffic per month in Google Adwords.

Search Engine Optimization firms in the higher price brackets invest a lot of time and money into keeping up their knowledge of what is happening in the SEO world. They continuously do tests of theories and validate if their techniques are effective. They figure out things that no-one else knows which gives them an edge in ranking their clients. That extra knowledge is what makes the difference between being number 10 and number 1.

Some people think that the larger the firm, the more expertise you get. But very often, you will get very little additional expertise by going with a large SEO company. SEO is a very difficult business to scale without losing quality. Usually, only a few founding members of the company have the knowledge to truly understand what is going on with the rankings. Since, SEO is inheritly a competitive industry, it is common to not share the hard-to-find information, even among co-workers.

Most of the larger firms depend on their reputation to get new business, but often most of the expertise is kept within the founders of the company. That means with larger firms, only their largest clients get the founders expertise. The rest of the clients get outsourced services in order to scale their business.

For many potential clients, the best firms are the mid-size companies that have a smaller, prestigious client list who demonstrate a high level of expertise and give a lot of founder attention. They are very selective of their clients and don't over-extend themselves. Going with a large company offering cheap prices seems attractive to some but chances are there is very little difference between them and hiring outsourced teams yourselves. Usually, they will have weak references and very little impact to their business. If they did have such a huge impact, ask yourself why they would charge so little?

The people in offshore countries that are charging such low prices generally have very little expertise. They know how to do something repetitive and hire people to do it very cheap. That is their strength. With the right people guiding them, they can be effective. But many people simple don't have the experience to manage them yourselves and see results that get great placement. Unfortunately, without the right person guiding them, their efforts usually result in little to no changes to ranking. And even with some movement, The difference between being ranked 35 and 15 is very little traffic. Unless you are in the top 3, you're losing almost 70% of the potential traffic.

It is a common notion that no matter what industry you're in, everyone thinks that Search Engine Optimization is a very simple thing. They can't believe that other people in their industry is investing a lot of resources to get ranked higher. However, even the most traditional businesses like restaurants and construction companies are investing in their online brand. The ones that aren't are missing out on business every day. All you need to do is some on-page optimizations with meta-tags and get a lot of links and you'll rank number 1. However, for anyone that's ever tried this, it becomes very clear that for anything competitive, that strategy is only the very beginning. Real search engine optimization, especially against other SEO firms is a constant battle for top visibility. The landscape is continuously changing. Google's algorithm is changed throughout the year and major changes are expected a couple of times a year. Google factors in hundreds of different elements into their search system and they are constantly weeding out and penalizing companies that game the system. If you're serious about your online marketing, finding a good seo firm be the difference between making or breaking your business.