Search Engine Optimization [SEO]: quanto pagarla?

SEM/SEO: Ottimizzare o non ottimizzare?
In questi giorni mi è capitato di leggere diversi post di autorevoli rappresentanti del settore SEM/SEO italiano che affrontano da diversi punti di vista il mondo dell'ottimizzazione per i motori di ricerca.

Penso ad Andrea Cappello e a Marco Loguercio, giusto per citarne alcuni.

Quello che mi ha colpito particolarmente (anche perchè anche a me spesso è stata chiesta la stessa cosa) è un articolo riportato da Search Engine Lowdown How Much SEO Can You Get for $1000? :

Mike Grehan's gotten involved in an SEO industry discussion surrounding how much SEO you can actually purchase for $1000.
The short answer is, of course, NOT MUCH: I flew to London last week, in part for a Search Marketing Association UK meeting. I took the opportunity of having a crowd of SEM firm owners around one table to air their thoughts.

I asked, "If a potential client came to you with only a grand, what would you say to him?" With such industry veterans as Barry Lloyd and Ammon Johns present, the answers varied from "I'd say let's go to the pub" to "Buy a couple of good books, such as Aaron Wall's and Andrew Goodman's, then take your wife out for a nice dinner."

In answer to a commentator who suggested that "1K would get you a couple hours (give or take) of phone consulting from a leading SEO firm.... Will their site rock the SERPs [search engine results pages] for competitive keywords? Of course not. But it would give them a foothold.
"I have experience as a consultant with two of the leading companies in the industry.

The first part of my job is getting a tight grip on what my clients' products or services are, their markets and their competition, what their overall marketing strategy is, and the best way to integrate and implement search.Following this discovery period, I can then usually go back to a client with, literally, the bare bones of a plan for us to work on as a team. All this takes considerably more than a couple of hours.