We should be breaking this SEO thread into like 6 different sections:
Opportunity & Keyword Research
Competitive Analysis
Content Creation & Optimization
On-page & Off-page Optimization
Link Building & Reputation Management
Places & Vertical Search Engines
Then Search Marketing is another ball game
Search
Display
Retargeting
Bid Strategies
Targeting / Demographics
The key to knowing how much you have to invest for results is to see the opportunity, know the customer, and know the competition. The first step is heading to the Google Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTooland looking up exact variations for what people search for aka keywords. If you are in a local environment and provide a service then you would type Service City, Service City StateAbbreviation, City Service. Sort by local searches (United States only) then see what the volume is. Do an expected value table for the services you provide with the search volume. If you don't know the value of your customer, then you need to figure that out. If you know your value try to figure out a conversion rate and if you need a place to start then try 5%. It would go like this:
Service Revenue * Local Searches * Conversion Rate or... $300 (made this up) * 156 * .05 = $2,340 in potential revenue. Now there is one rate we need to add to this which is the click through rate. Depending on the service, market, and your optimization you may range anywhere from 20% to 50% for the 1st position, then deteriorating rapidly from there. 2nd might be 10%, 3rd 5% etc. If you are a lawyer, chances are someone will look at the top 5 before making a decision. If you are a plumber and seem to have a good price, they will stick with their first option. So let's account for that click through rate.
Service Revenue * Local Searches * Click Through Rate * Conversion Rate = Expected Value
Sometimes I'll check the 1st position and 3rd position to note the different so let's say I do both:
$300 (my service revenue) * 156 * .25 * .05 = $585 per month if CTR is 25% ~ 1st position
$300 (my service revenue) * 156 * .05 * .05 = $117 per month if CTR is 5% ~ 3rd position
In my experience, local services tend to have higher click through rates and conversion rates. So I've just determined that spending up to $117 on one keyword might be worth the investment. The other factors to consider now are competition.
Login to your free Bing Webmaster Tools Account, Open up masspagerank.com (only checks root domains, use prchecker for individual pages), and then your free version of Open Site Explorer. Now Google your target keyword aka landscaping austin. First thing to do is note the AdWords, this tells you how willing your competitors are to engage in online marketing. If you see tons of adds that are competitors, including 3 up top, and more than 3-5 on the side then it might be a tough market. Take the first 7 organic results and run their URLs through masspagerank.com. What does their page rank say? If it's blank, NA, -1, 0, or 1 then they are new and just starting or haven't started marketing themselves. If it's a 2 or 3 then they are building a reputation and might be competitive. If they are a 4 or above then it could be tough competition. Page Ranks in my opinion are only good for a quick idea of what potential competitor you are up against. You can still outrank a 4 if you are a 1. Now open up your Bing Webmaster Tools Site Explorer and/or Open Site Explorer and then look up each URL. Note the number of unique domains linking to their website, along with the total quantity of links. If you Google Landscaping Austin you will see this most likely:
Lots of AdWords
Local Places either at the very top, or maybe a few organic results
Organic:
#1 yelp pr 3
#2 goodness grows in austin pr 3
#3 hill country landscape pr 1
#4 jw landscape design 3
#5 greenbrothersaustin 1
#6 olyeller 2
#7 linktown.kvue.com 5
Yelp can be tough to pass because of its high CTR's and branding. It's like what Amazon is for products, but it's doable. The other results are mixed from 1-5. Notice how the 5 isn't at the top. Again pagerank really isn't a huge issue. If all of these results were PR 3+ or 4+ we could be a little worried and move on to other strategies and techniques.
goodness grows in austin: I see 5 linking root domains and 44 total links, with no anchor text being targeted for our keyword
hill country landscape: I see 1 linking root domain and 1 link, with no anchor text being targeted for our keyword
jw landscape: I see 6 linking root domains and 28 links, with no anchor text being targeted for our keyword
greenbrothers: I see 8 linking root domains with 29 links, with no anchor text being targeted for our keyword
olyeller: I see 74 linking root domains with 807 links, with no anchor text being targeted for our keyword, however we do see more anchor text combinations and several similar keywords
Let's stop now and look at our competitors. How does olyeller have more links, but ranks lower than jw landscape and also has a lower page rank? This is where experience plays a huge part. Basically they've built a profile of bad links with 0% of them being nofollow, while keyword stuffing on every page. Basically they've overdone it. Not to mention while they were pretending to optimize they missed the most important keyword:
Austin Landscaping: 390
Landscaping Austin: 320
Landscaping Austin TX: 170
You might say, we should target Austin Landscaping, but you would be wrong. Landscaping Austin TX also sets us up to target a second keyword at the same time. Therefore we should focus our efforts on the 490 local searches we will capture by targeting Landscaping Austin TX. If you remember, our original search was "Landscaping Austin" this is typically natural for users to type the service they want then the location. A lot of times you see City Service as the most searched term, but remember many businesses brand themselves as City Service, not the other way around and if users are looking for that business then you are left with misleading data and wasted dollars.
In summary, not one of these businesses has targeted the highest demand keywords and not one has successfully generated a link targeting the keyword either. These businesses have clearly done some sort of SEO, because of their title tags and the way content is distributed on their website. It's just crazy how all of these businesses think they are getting the highest quality SEO or even just good advice but fail to see things right in front of them. These are basic concepts.
I'll keep sharing more information as I can. Hopefully this helps people and doesn't create competition for myself
This again is basic SEO and the more advanced SEO comes into execution and recognizing opportunities. Two things that clearly separate the quality of work you will receive.