I’ll explain it with a story…

A good friend of mine owns a service-based business. He called me frantically one day and says, “My referrals are down, and my website isn’t producing anything. No leads, no calls–zip nada”

For a new site, this isn’t uncommon but he published his almost 3 years ago…

Now he admittedly cheaped out on the website because he just needed something up quickly. He said he spent around $800 for 10 pages. He also mentioned that his web team is working on high-value SEO strategies, such as updating content and creating blogs, as well as optimizing on-page SEO. They charge a monthly fee of around $1200 for this service.

Everything looked fine. He couldn’t fathom why his website wasn’t producing any traffic.

I told him I’d take a look. 

The problem he was describing is usually attributed to one specific issue 

And I was hoping that it wasn’t that.

Unfortunately, after an extensive web crawl, my worst fears were confirmed. 

None of his web pages were indexed…

That’s 61 pages, full of content that Google is completely unaware of. 

So what’s indexing? Why does it matter?

Indexing is the process that allows search engines to crawl and store the content of your website. 

This helps search engines understand the content and context of your website and allows them to show relevant search results to users.

Example: Plumbing websites need to be shown to people searching for their services. If you are a plumber with a website, Google needs to crawl and index your site so that it can include your business in search results. 

So clearly non-indexed sites can have a catastrophic impact on your SEO goals and results. 

Your website will not appear in search results, making it near impossible for potential customers to find you. 

ultimately affecting your website’s visibility, traffic, and revenue.

In his instance, that’s 3 years of lost visibility, traffic, and, revenue.

Of course, this news came to him as a shock.  

He had no reference to the concept. 

And it’s not that the indexing problem was hard to fix by any means. 

It’s that it had been negligently ignored for years. 

Unfortunately for him and his quest to just get something up quickly, he did not do his due diligence.

And therefore neither did the web company he hired. 

He opted for cheap and fast rather than right and punctual…  

So how much should a website cost?

You can take the route, my friend did, for some, and their business model that’s just fine. 

For some businesses a quick cheap $150 website from a 3rd party freelancing site like fiverr.com does the job. 

Now if you run a service-based or e-commerce business you should seriously consider employing expert developers and designers to commission you a professionally done website. 

Doing that you can look to spend anywhere from $2500 on the low end to $25,000 for a fully integrated and supported solution. 

For $2,500 – $5,000 you can look to get a 

• Sales-Driven Landing Page
• Event Promotion Landing Page
• One-Page Scrolling Website
• Single Product E-commerce Funnel
• Blog Driven Website

From $7,500 – $12,500 

• Multi-Page Website (2-5 Pages)
• Basic Business Website
• Basic Service-Based Website 
• Minimal E-commerce Website (2-5 Products)

From $15,000 – $25,000

• Large Multi-Page Website (6-15 Pages)
• Large-Scale Business Website
• Large-Scale Service Based Website 
• Large E-commerce Website (5-100 Products)
• API Driven Website

These are prices for websites built in the US by a team of high-end designers and developers at around $150 an hour. 

You may think this is expensive but understand that for these businesses, their website is sometimes their only revenue generator hub. 

They do not have brick-and-mortar locations so their entire existence relies on fully functioning and expertly designed websites. 

So what’s the big difference?

Well, what’s the difference between gas station sushi and sushi made by an Itamae? 

The end result is the same right? at least at face value anyways. Until you start to unravel the layers of both do you actually see the artistry and attention to detail of the Itamae. 

The moral of the story, there are two things you don’t cheap out on… Websites and Sushi.

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