Firstly let's consider the facts, the 2007 SEMPO State of the Market Survey states that approximately 10.5 percent of companies marketing budget is spent on search engine optimization whereas 87.4 percent is spent on pay per click advertising. This may seem reasonable to you however 60 to 70 percent of all clicks on search engines are on non-paid listings. Knowing this makes the budget allocation look skewed in completely the wrong direction.

So what are the reasons for companies not investing the correct amount in SEO? The first reason is a lack of knowledge, many people are not sure what SEO is and there are so many companies out there that claim to be SEO experts it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. It is obviously much easier to set up an advertising campaign and know exactly where you are appearing and how effective that ad is. Whereas with SEO it may take some time to see results and there are no guarantees as to where you will appear in the search results.

So, what should you do when looking for an SEO consultant and how do you decide whether to work with them? Firstly we would always recommend discussing their services with them. Find out what they do and how they do it. Ask them for examples of sites they have optimized in the past and the results they have got. In addition get detailed information on the strategies they use. If they talk mainly about the main content on the site and textual changes then you are probably dealing with a company that knows very little. You should always make sure a company talks about onsite factors such as content, title tags and headers as well as offsite factors or link building. Find out how sites build links, do they use a variety of tactics that will also result in your site being seen? Make sure they stress the importance of anchor text to you, it is not necessary for you to know all about this but your SEO company should know it is one of the most important factors for ranking.

It is important to remember that SEO does not mean free traffic, even if you have someone in house doing the work you still need to pay them and their expenses. Think about what you are prepared to pay per click on your paid advertising and remember that unpaid links get a lot more clicks and are not limited by a daily budget. This means as long as you keep your SEO effort up you will always appear high in the results regardless of the time, day or week that you look. Just think of the extra traffic you will get for the money you spend out compared to your paid advertising.

Finally you need to think about how you are going to measure your SEO effort to determine the quality of it. The easiest way to do this is to use a similar method to that used for your paid advertising. If you spend ?1,000 per month on your SEO effort and you can make money at a cost of ?1 per click then you will need 1,000 clicks in a month to make money. When measuring your SEO effort use your analytics tools to see the traffic being driven to your site through unpaid search engine results. This will give you the most accurate pictures of how effective your campaign is.