I'm planning on creating a country-specific reptile forum. There isn't much competition, but the competition do have a loyal fanbase. So I was wondering, I know it's hard to give a specific cost, but how much (ball-park figure) should I expect to pay to get a pro SEO team to work on the site (aiming for two keywords in the top five in Google results)?
you can choose the intresting topic for your forum. but i recommend you to have a forum with general topics. i think it does not have much costs
i wouldn't think about seo team because if you want to pay for seo you will always need to do that. google always updates its stats and obviously your website will loose rank sooner or later and imagine paying for seo every time it happens. read these forums and learn how to seo yourself.
Between work and Uni I don't really have enough time to do all the work involved in SEO. I was hoping that if I got good SEO rankings right away I'd have a decent list of active members by the time the stats would drop, so I wouldn't have to worry about it because they'd keep the SERPS fairly high.
the thing is that to progress you will need to promote your site, other wise you'll stick with that amount of visitors that you got from the beginning and remember that you'll need to update site to keep those members in. so paying for the seo is useless in my opinion. if you don't have time for website managing than you won't succeed.
paying is equally with losing your money.i mean paying for something like:adwords,banners,... if you really want to boost your traffic up,so you can build the search engine friendly website with intresting topic which fascinate every one and like an old usa provorb: "which gets every one into the act"
Is it really that much of a bad idea? I'd have the money for a SEO team to do a 3-6 month campaign at the start. After that I'd like to advertise on other forums etc. But is it all pointless?
Are you hoping the SEO team will double as your marketing team as well? Because you need to decide what exactly you want your SEO team to do for you before you can start to figure out how much to spend on a service.
That would be good haha. I see sites like www.webprofits.com.au and www.yodel.com.au that have packages for marketing and SEO. Something like that would be awesome, however companies like this (especially in Australia) have a massive rep for overcharging by thousands. An SEO and basic Marketing/Advertising package to get a forum off the ground, get good SERPS, a few hundred active members, a bit of content etc. Just to launch the site and get things rolling. That's what I'm looking for. I'd hope to be paying around $500AU for that. But I expect the price will be a lot higher right?
First, I think you need to clarify whether you're looking for someone to do strictly SEO tasks (on-page coding for things like metatags, interlinking pages, etc) or someone to assist with your marketing efforts (writing/posting articles, moderating forums, etc), as the two require very different skill sets. It sounds like you want someone who can help you with all facets of marketing. If that is the case, I'd do a posting on sites like Guru.com or eLance.com asking people to bid on a certain # of hours of work (maybe 10 to start off with to determine whether or not the person is a good fit). Alternatively, check out something like Agents of Value - you can typically outsource to the Philippines for much cheaper.