Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

To be quite honest, this question is far too vague.

The costs depend on what you do and where you do it. There is nothing that will really get past that issue. Not even the keyword help is much good for that! Whatever you do, remember that PPC is way cheaper than almost anything else - and faster too. That way you can find out your customer's likes and dislikes very quickly - that way you can scale this over other aspects of your business. Visiting cards, ads in your shops/on your website.

I am presuming you have a relatively good website. I will give a few direct and simple rules:

(1) Never send a visitor to your home page unless it is specifically connected to your keywords.

(2) Figure out who your client is and what they want. Forget the reasons for setting up your business - you customers don't know what you are thinking. They know what they want, and if you can supply that you are fine.

(3) Work out how to please them through split testing. Most people test two things twenty times. Test ten things twice, and I mean RADICALLY different things. What does your customer like against what they don't like - you will get two very different results.

(4) Set up an email autoresponder to keep them informed of changes you make or new offers they might be interested in.

Usually $10-$25 should see you for a day on PPC - depending on your geographical reach, cost per click and all sorts of other factors. Mine are usually a lot lower ($1-2 for my old business as a decorator). Setting up a shop ... a transport business or computer repair firm, that is a different question altogether.

Gemma's right: it depends and really, you'd do well to offer a little more detail. What's right or affordable to someone else may not be right or affordable for you. I know of several companies that spend 100s of thousands of dollars on PPC per month.

What are your goals? What seems reasonable to you in terms of affordability? What keywords might you be bidding on? How often will you rotate your ads and for which keywords?

The real question here is, "What makes the most sense for your company?" and much of that answer lies within your own team. But, here are some thoughts to guide you:

1. Before you budget for CPC advertising, know your existing cost of customer acquisition. How much is your company spending now to get a sale? This is how you'll know whether CPC has important value for your small business.

2. Before you invest in CPC, make sure the goal is named. For instance, "driving X people to the landing page" is a more realistic goal than "selling 50 widgets," as CPC ads are better at bringing viewers to a specific spot than they are at closing a sale. This will help you know whether you want to be the high bidder or a low bidder in paid placement.

3. Consider SEO as a separate entity, because that's about organic position, not about advertising. Your goal here is to occupy a top space for your company on one or more keyword phrases. Paid ads achieve that goal automatically by virtue of the amount bid. Some companies do very little SEO because buying a top ad position is so much faster than earning it phrase by phrase; so the budget gets redirected in that way.

4. Start slowly and test paid ad versions to see which looks like it will perform best compared to your existing cost of acquisition. Then direct the bulk of the budget to whatever version performs best.

5. Invest a little bit of your budget to test the difference between display and text versions of your ad. The results can be dramatically different.

6. Invest time and care in the construction and presentation of the landing page, as that's where the conversion takes place. A good CPC ad can deliver clicks but a poorly designed or confusing landing page can kill the sale.

7. Remember that with Adwords, etc., a careless choice can cause your ad dollars to be spent overseas rather than in your local area. This makes your test look unsuccessful even though the ad itself might be a good one. If you have any doubts, pause the campaign immediately to save your budget and then reset the campaign parameters to match your goals.

A good balance among these considerations will help you set the right budget amount and get the best ROI. Pace and measure your results daily in the beginning.