There continues to be heavy debate about the value proposition of a Website Optimization Company and the services they actually provide. Lots of blogs and online forums actively argue that in fact this sort of Online Marketing is nearly pointless and certainly not worth a business spending any of it’s hard earned money on.

There is a school of thought that would argue that Search Engine Placement happens throughout website design and any good website design business will be able to make a successful attempt at optimization.

Online Marketing service providers however would argue that their particular kind of online marketing is something extra on top of the page design. The procedure by which a SEO Company attempts to push a website up the ranking and onto page one of the chief search engines is organic and involves an holistic view of the all of the elements that the search engine robots review when rating a particular site. To be successful the Online Marketing strategy must include the proper mixture of content and placement to make certain the most cost effective results.

The handling and creation of this content is seo companies add their worth. After reviewing the buying habits of a particular market they will categorise the search behaviour of the target market, identify the most popular word searched for ( keywords) and use them to build a relevant content base.

Sounds easy and cost effective on the face of it, but, when you take into account the amount of time it takes to position a site onto page one, particularly if your market is highly mature and there is a great deal of competition for those positions, then the amount of quality content required is staggering. It can take over a thousand content submissions, all original, and all high quality information to have any effect on even the least competitive ratings. You can presume that this reflects some 100 hours of a creative writers time, a creative writer that is knowledgeable about the subject matter and has a 100 or so original concepts to produce informative content.

Once the website in question has realised the coveted page one ranking then it is down to the SEO Company to put in place an effective ongoing management regieme to ensure that position is maintained. This is done through continual analysing of buyer habbits and continuing the supply of decent quality content while at the same time extending the website’s profile through engaging other forms of content, for example blogging and the yet untapped potential of Web 2.0.

In terms of significance this is hundreds of hours of work and the more competitive the environment then the more time and attention it will take. The question around employing a search engine optimization company as opposed to using a website designer comes to down to the services offered and the skill set in the companies in question. If the website company offers organic optimization services, inclusive of design be cautious. Simple economics would suggest they cannot employ the services of a creative optimisation team without increasing their price significantly, and if they don’t they won’t add value.