The Three Rules of Marketing

Its something they teach in marketing / advertising classes in colleges and universities: The Three Rules of Marketing.

Sadly it is often forgotten about when it comes to online marketing.

RULE #1 -  BRANDING AND POSITIONING

You need to brand your product / services and position your company either as a niche market or a general "all purpose" company.

When it comes to online SEO this means getting a good domain name and then positioning your content towards your target audience.

RULE #2 - ADVERTISING

You need to be BIG and BOLD. Nobody pays attention to small dinky bulletin boards. You want your ads to be IN YOUR FACE, brightly coloured, easy to notice, and appealing to people (eg. sex sells).

When it comes to online SEO this means making your ads on big / popular websites and you want a big bold banner placement on multiple pages.

RULE #3 - GET PAID UPFRONT

Why? Because nobody believes in marketing. And if you don't get paid upfront, then you don't get paid at all.

The industry standard for ad prices are a MINIMUM of:

$30 for a small link ad annually.

$50 for a banner ad or premium link ad (better location) annually.

$70 for a premium banner ad annually.

And when I say minimum, I do mean minimum. Really popular websites will want a LOT more.

And also remember that those prices are per annual ad on one webpage. Its not worth the publisher's time and effort if you want to only pay $5 for a 1 month ad. You're just wasting their time. When it comes to link buying you have to buy for the whole year otherwise they won't be interested.

Some really super popular websites might take ads for 1 month or so at a time, but they might be charging $50+ per month, so its worth it for them.

As a rule of thumb expect to pay a minimum of $30 per link on websites with a PageRank of 0 to 3.

A PageRank 4 website will typically cost $60 to $100 annually.
A PageRank 5 website will typically cost $100 to $300 annually.
A PageRank 6 website will typically cost $300 to $1000 annually.

And you probably cannot afford anything higher than that.

And that is for 1 little link ad. Expect a lot more if you want a premium banner placement.

Now you could buy links on cheap websites made in India... But don't expect much in terms of quality. You could get a link for $15 from a Made-in-India website, easily. But it will be shoddy SEO and shoddy writing... or worse, it will be Black Hat SEO or a link from a link farm. Which would actually hurt your website's reputation and possibly cause Google to ban your website.

No, if you want good quality SEO - hire a local SEO expert in Toronto or whatever city you happen to live in or near. Local SEO will get your company the best results.