SEO Consultant Ireland

The majority of the SEO consultants have started doing SEO for their own site. After the initial SEO success they offer the SEO services to the ‘Friends and Family’ – the people they know. If that goes well after a few projects, the larger clients start lining up. The real legal entity gets established to invoice those larger customers – A SEO Consultancy. Good word travels fast – especially in the SEO world since the SEO people are extremely well connected since the social bookmarking and networking is the part of the SEO service itself.

If you are good professional SEO expert sooner rather then later an upfront description of the work you will perform for the client, will not be as it was in the start when it sounded like:

- I’ll get you on the first page of Google!

Than as you learned more about the SEO yourself (on the clients web sites!):

- I’ll get you on the first page in Google for many relevant phrases!

If you are a good SEO Guru, you will start taking larger and larger SEO projects. The bigger the budget the more paperwork is involved so SEO Proposal will have to evolve with the budget increases as well.

The general rule of thumb is the following:

1. No SEO Proposal should be shorter than one page. Write about yourself If you have nothing else to put in it.
2. In general, a two page SEO Proposal should be your starting size and from then on…
3. Your SEO Proposal should contain half of the page for each average monthly salary in your country.
4. Corporate clients expect a corporate communication and branding style so your SEO Proposal will start with a lot of your own branding, and end up with your accreditations and customer references.

Remember that sending the inappropriate type of a SEO Proposal to the wrong type of the recipient will most likely be a waste of your time. You simply need to understand what to send whom to. A start up where the managing director is also answering the phone, sill not have time to read your 25 page brochure-ware proposal. He has no time for that. He needs to know just- How much, and what do we get? Sending a short two pager to a global corporate will result in them asking for more and that only if they are really interested about you. They are used to their corporate way of communications, and will expect your SEO Proposal almost as the proper full blown tender.

If you had enough of reading about SEO, that is supposed to be so simple and easy, and jet somehow does not happen with YOUR site, here is an easy way out! The PPC World of Google AdWords. Here is the Table of Contents of the Whitepaper published earlier this year (see About section for the authors).

I only got the short sample but an interesting chart in it already about the Irish PPC market. It is the breakdown of the industries that people are using PPC most (Does it give you an idea what your next AdSense rich Blog should be about?). If you have the full copy of the whitepaper, I would not mind reading more about the PPC, so send it on!

Ireland Search Engine Marketing Report 2008
April, 2008

The research has been supported by the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA) and the Irish Internet Association (IIA).

Table of Contents

1. About E-consultancy 4
2. About research sponsors 4
2.1 About ICAN 4
2.2 About Cybercom 5
2.3 About Interactive Return 5
2.4 About RingJohn 5
3. Executive Summary and Highlights 6
4. Introduction 8
4.1 Introduction by ICAN 8
4.2 Methodology and Sample 9
4.2.1 Methodology 9
4.2.2 Turnover 10
4.2.3 Business Sector 10
4.2.4 Is search done in-house or by an agency? 11
5. Survey Results 12
5.1 Budgets 12
5.1.1 Percentage of total marketing budget spent online 12
5.1.2 Breakdown of online marketing budget by digital channel 13
5.1.3 Search engine marketing budget split 14
5.1.4 Do you expect budgets to increase or decrease? 15
5.1.5 Search engine marketing spend 16
5.1.6 How much are search budgets going up? 17
5.1.7 Allocation of paid search spending 18
5.2 Objectives and effectiveness 19
5.2.1 Primary objectives from search engine marketing 19
5.2.2 Relative importance of paid search and SEO on brand 20
5.2.3 How digital channels rate for return on investment 21
5.2.4 Return on investment (ROI) from Search 22
5.2.5 Tracking return on investment from Search 23
5.2.6 Effectiveness of ROI tracking 24
5.2.7 Use of web analytics tools 24
5.2.8 Rising click costs (CPC) 25
5.3 Search Engines 26
5.3.1 Search engines used for PPC 26
5.3.2 Best search engines for ROI 27
5.3.3 Is dominance of Google a threat? 28
5.4 Search problems and issues 29
5.4.1 Paid Search problems 29
5.4.2 SEO problems 30
5.4.3 Availability of training 31
6. Market overview 32
6.1 Market valuation and growth 32
6.1.1 Key sectors 33
6.2 Market trends 34
6.2.1 Advertisers seize opportunities as market matures 34
6.2.2 Search advertisers get more savvy as competition increases 35
6.2.3 Polarisation between sophisticated and unsophisticated 37
6.2.4 Google dominates as other search engines fail to step up 38
6.3 Barriers to digital marketing growth 41
6.3.1 Slow uptake of broadband 41
6.3.2 Traditional mindset of marketers 41
6.3.3 Skills gap and lack of understanding 41
6.3.4 Lack of transparency in market 42
6.3.5 Other barriers 42