from my experience the SEO service is a total rip-off. Monthly fees between R2,000-10,000 that's only for blue chip companies. would be ideal to have service providers targeting small businesses without the huge amounts charged.

Read ALL of this to find out how to cut your SEO costs.

Search engines are the highways of internet traffic. SEO is a huge billboard just before the off ramp to your company.

Huge billboards are very expensive, BUT there are easy and cheap ways to try out different advertisements before you create the giant. You can try different pamphlets and street pole ads, measure the results and change the advertisements until you have the perfect advertisement to put on your billboard.

The same goes for SEO.

A lot of people even internet marketers think SEO is the most important step in internet marketing. They are WRONG! Creating a user-friendly and search engine friendly website is the first step in online marketing.

A website that is Search Engine Friendly will save you lots of money in SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click).

Once you have a Search Engine friendly website, you need to know which keywords will convert to sales. A very cost effective way to determine which keywords bring in sales are Google™ Ads, also known as AdWords Ads.

With Google™ Ads you can track your keywords’ performance and work out exactly how much each keyword is worth to you.

If you know which keywords convert to sales and only optimize your website for these keywords, your SEO will cost you much less and you’ll know its worth paying for.

If you can then find an SEO company that guarantees their service you have nothing to loose!

COZA Marketing is a South African online marketing company that specialises in PPC Marketing (Google™ Ads) and yes we back our service with a money back guarantee, we are looking for an SEO company to outsource SEO services to.

Contact us at http://cozamarketing.com

i agree with the submitter that south african companies are slow to realise the potential of online and the internet, however there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel...we are an SEO company in SA and 90% of our clients are south african clients and may i add doing phenomenally well...so i guess it comes down to credibility and reputation of the SEO company and of course the results, and by the way, we also deal with smaller clients and they to are seeing fantastic results, so please if you make comments like 'meta-tags' above, justify your uninformed comment, regards, leon - purple cow communications

Leon, your company quoted me R10,000 per month (last year) on SEO for one website. As a small enterprise, surely that is out of budget for the majority of online startups. I just cannot afford such fees which are affordable to your established clients such as IOL etc.

Hi. How on earth can any start-up company pay R10 000 per month for seo services. It is ridiculous. Yes, it is easy for a large corporate company to pay this amount but not a smaller company. It is for this reason that our company concentrates on providing services for smaller companies, and in return we charge R1 000 per month for all the same SEO services.
www.aprisamarketing.co.za

I believe there is a very important point that needs to made here. The price of SEO largely depends on the competitiveness of the keywords being targeted and ROI. Charging a company a fee of R10,000 is only realistic if it equals that amount of effort to get the job done and the market being targeted.

A further important point to understand is that the business plan the business has impacts the ROI of running an SEO campaign. SEO and online marketing is well worth it and R10k a month is relatively cheap if your business is aimed at international markets. However it is completely stupid to charge that fee for the shop around the corner who is targeting only the local market.

The cost of SEO is relatively expensive if you are targeting very competitive keywords and it is therefore important to keep in mind that costs equals competition.

Just a final note that amongst the best SEO's is based in SA, the business community just needs to be informed on what they are missing out on.