Search engine optimization isn't just about building links to your site. Each site is unique in its own way, every webmaster has built his site with a target market in mind, and each niche has its competition. When hiring a company to optimize your service for search engines, they should first do an assessment of your current standings and only then design the best action plan.

No SEO professional can estimate the price for optimizing your site in 5 minutes. If he tells you, 500 dollars for example but upon a thorough analysis he finds that he has twice as much work to do, how can he then ask for 1,000? You will argue that you have budgeted according to the initial estimate and can’t come up with another 500, he won’t work twice as much for half the pay, and the deal is off. You will lose his services, he will lose you as a client: it’s a lose-lose situation.

To come up with a good estimate, an SEO professional needs the time to do a thorough analysis of the site. This is done by an SEO audit that should cover every single detail related to on-site issues, keyword research, competition, forecasts and linking building activity.

Why is an SEO audit the first thing you have to do when having your site optimized? Let me give you a few analogies:

• When you go to the doctor with a stomach ache, do you let him take you straight to surgery without a diagnosis?
• When you take your car to the repair shop, does the mechanic start by replacing parts before he tries to figure out what’s wrong?
• (My personal favorite) When your computer crashes, do you simply format the hard drive and reinstall everything instead just rebooting?

I believe you answered "No!" to each of the above. Then why would you jump into building links and rearranging your site structure without a prior analysis?

As a rule, you shouldn’t simply go with off-the-shelf, machine generated SEO reports. They are highly unreliable, leave a lot of important issues uncovered (I’ve yet to see one of those ‘free SEO audits’ that does a competition analysis or a keyword assessment) and can sometimes mislead you into thinking your site is in good condition.

How much the audit will cost depends on your needs and the third party service provider you are hiring. A junior SEO would probably charge you in the range of a few hundred dollars for a quick assessment, while a well established SEO agency can bill as high as $50,000 for a report that covers mostly all aspects of your site. Set your budget according to your needs and don’t necessarily go with the cheapest provider you can find. Some firms will also include the audit as part of a ongoing contract.

When you contract an SEO professional for optimization services, remember to ask for an analysis first. You can’t go without it, pay for an audit and it should save both you and the service provider a lot of trouble.