How much does SEO cost? How much time do you have to discuss the various models and prices out there! However, a new survey sheds some light on the subject. Over 500 people and companies who offer search engine optimization services were asked about how their models. Turns out, it's most common to charge $100 to $150 per hour, in the US. But by-the-hour consulting is only one of four nearly co-equal ways of charging. Also popular is project-based pricing, where the average price is between $2,500 to $5,000, in the US. That's also the same average price for those who buy on a monthly reta [...]

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Since at least 2005, Google has been using a large, worldwide focus group to help review its search results and the quality of the web pages that rank well in its algorithm. The people in this program are called Quality Raters and, as you can imagine, the work they do is important to search marketers everywhere. Google was actually advertising Quality Rater jobs in late 2004, but today the Quality Raters don't actually work for Google; they work for contractors such as Lionbridge, Leapforce, Butler Hill and possibly others. According to Lionbridge's Internet Assessors Program job page, it h [...]

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Increasingly over the years, search engines -- Google in particular -- have given more and more support to SEOs and publishers. But 2011 marked the first significant reversal that I can recall, with both linking and keyword data being withheld. Here's what happened, why it matters and how publishers can push back if Google and Bing don't change things. Where We Came From Some might believe that search engines hate SEOs, hate publishers and have done little over the years to help them. They are mistaken, either choosing to deliberately ignore the gains or, more likely, are simply unaware of [...]

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Trada, the crowdsourced PPC marketplace, has secured an additional $9 million in funding from their existing investors, Google Ventures and Foundry Group. This additional seed of Series D financing brings the total money raised for Trada to $17 million. Trada basically lets you offload your PPC management onto a community of SEM experts, who spend the budgets you set up as they see best. The money is spent on Google, Bing, Facebook and other PPC platforms and Trada handles the payment exchange between the SEMs and the company advertising, while taking a small percentage of that spend. [...]

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SEO is the number one source of leads for both B2C and B2B marketers, beating out both PPC and social media marketing in a recent survey of online marketers. But more of those surveyed say they plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2012, ahead of SEO and PPC. The numbers come from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which was compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September; about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers. Whether [...]

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