Google and the other search engines have algorithms that decide which sites should be ranked at the top for certain keywords.  They send out robots (or “spiders”) to crawl all the sites on the World Wide Web to gather information.  Your website is usually crawled once every few months.  Thus an SEO campaign takes at least a few months to be effective and sometimes 6 months to a year to get your website up to the top of the rankings.  Because of this, most SEO providers have a minimum of a 3-6 month contract. 

The pricing usually starts around $200/month and goes up from there.  Pricing depends on your competition and location.  If you are in New York City, it will be much harder to get ranked high for a search like “CPA New York” compared to a local market with less competition like “CPA Tucson.”  This is because SEO is becoming increasingly popular and in large metro areas like NYC, there are going to be many other competing firms who are also using SEO.

Your SEO provider will give you performance reports that will allow you to see who is coming to your website, where they went on the site, what search engines are crawling your site, and other useful info that allows you to track the success of the SEO campaign.

SEO is not to be confused with adwords or Pay-Per-Click.  These are also effective ways to market online, but SEO is for improving your ranking in the organic or “natural” results, not within the sponsored links.  Studies have shown that 70% of people click on the organic results, as opposed to the sponsored links.  Thus SEO is used as a long-term solution for gaining clients.