Most of theses so called "SEO experts" are only in it for the money. Sure, they do some SEO stuff and your site's search rankings will improve - but you can do the same if you follow some of the free SEO tutorials / advice given all over the internet.
Google doesn't share their secrets and algorithms to the SEO expert cause they spend a lot of cash, google publishes this info on the internet for everyone to see. And anyone who has some time to read-up and learn how to apply the right SEO settings will achieve good results.
The R7K or R10K that you were quoted is to cover their: fancy office to impress clients, staff, electricity, water, phones, insurance, fancy cars, training, and probably a beach house in Richards Bay or something.
They generally spend a few hours with you on the campaign, and then a few hours a week, maybe a month to monitor it - definitely not R7K's worth.
Some free SEO tips:
- If you're building your own site then make sure the navigation, content, layout, etc is SEO friendly. i.e. a search engine should be able to navigate through your whole site and be able to get back home. search bots doesn't see stuff like you and I. They see mostly code and need to navigate around using the <a href=""> links. Don't use JAVA, of flash for your navigation.
- IF you use a CMS then use some of the popular SEO tools for that CMS. Both Joomla & Wordpress has some nice SEO plugins. Use them, and follow the developer's and plugin community's recommendations.
- Use friendly, easy to read URL's:
http://www.mywebsite.co.za/cars/performance/ferrari.html tells me, and the google bots exactly what that page is about.
http://www.mywebsite.co.za/content.php?cat=5&id=32 doesn't.
- Use H1, H2, H3, H4 tags to emphasize paragraphs, headings, etc.
- Use keywords to describe the page, in your header, as well as in the body. Thus, on the page above make sure you have "ferarri,cars,performance,red,tips, comparison" - etc. And use those keywords in your actual article. This will help the reader / searcher to see what the article is about when google search brings it up. Then when they click on your link, google notices it and flags your article as appropriate for the search term "Ferrari performance tips". Your next article, on how to restore a beelte to it's original condition would have the keywords "beetle,vw,restore,restoration,old,antique" for example.
- Content is King! Everybody says it, cause this is the most critical aspect of SEO. Your content needs to be fresh, en constantly updated. Don't copy & paste other guys's stuff, google has already seen it and probably already thinks it's BS. Be original and try and add new content on a regular basis.
- Link to, and if you can from, other high traffic sites which could boost your site. Look for a site which sells cars care kits, or a site which talks about cars sports and possibly have events about motor racing. This site will most probably be updated daily and could help your sites ranking.
Here's an example:
http://www.carelinegroup.co.za didn't do very well but has increased their sales by about 80% in the last 4 or 5 months since applying these techniques.
http://www.zoozooland.co.za has grown so much that the lady has a waiting list and now needs to find a bigger property for the kids. She didn't do well before the SEO techniques were applied to the website. Another lady with a guesthouse could not keep up with guests during the last 3 years, right through recession and constantly had to refer guests to another guesthouse down the street. At the same time another guesthouse around the corner had to close down cause they didn't get any business in, and didn't have proper SEO on their website.
At R7K a month you could easily employ someone who could run your marketing department or webmaster and one of their duties would be to apply SEO techniques, while another would be to add new content to your website on a regular basis.
