At any given time how many people are actually working on an SEO project? Of course there are factors here that help dictate this so let's set a couple of parameters.

• The site is small (less than 20 pages)
• Competition for the keywords is moderate to semi heavy
• The site has no current online presence
• The company has earmarked enough dollars to aggressively compete in PPC and also spend enough man hours for organic SEO.
• There is 6 months to produce great results

Again, let's look at how many people this might take at any given time, keep in mind that this is done in phases not all at once.

• In-depth site analysis (technical & seo) - Let's throw two people at this because we have the $ to do so. That means each person must analyze about 10 pages, ouch that's gotta be exhausting
• Keyword analysis - This is a one Person Job as the products they are competing for are very focused.
• Keyword mapping - Let's throw two people at this again.
• Shopping Cart re-design - There is a shopping cart with this site that has been put in a frameset with some javascript re-direct. This is a one person job and they can build proper meta tags, product descriptions, image tags, etc while they're re-working the cart.
• Site re-construction - The website utilized i-frames in several sections and pop-ups to present information. To break these out to individual pages would involve one person
• Content creation - Additional content needed to be added to the site so let's dedicate two people to this.
• Integrate content and Optimize site - Let's put three people on this as the site has now grown to about double the size it was.
• Create sitemaps - (Google & static) One person
• Begin site submission and link building - As this is ongoing with the link building, we will devote two people to this for the first three months and one person for the last three months.
• PPC Keyword research - As any search marketing firm knows, your organic and ppc lists are not exactly the same but they are similar enough that the time to build a ppc list shouldn't require more than one person.
• Construct PPC landing pages - As we have a person with a proven track record of creating landing pages that work, this is a one person job
• Implement tracking - This is a one person job
• Results tracking - This is a two person job, one for organic, one for PPC

So we've got the project running and set for 6 months and at it's peak I see where we might have 4 people working on the project at any given time. So for arguments sake (hey we all know there are problems and extra people might jump in on a project) let's double that to 8 people and say 4 are full time. So a fourth of our staff are full time on a project that is not only paying them full time but allowing us to hire more people to work all the new projects we have. (Oh and yes with our track record they would receive at least a 100% ROI) I guess they were right, we would not only be able to handle the project just like the big company but we would grow as a company and the big company wouldn't (they've got about 192 people that are twiddling their thumbs since the project didn't use everyone in the company). Now that's not fair so maybe that's where the unfair advantage comes from.

Sure, I jest somewhat but I think the basic points are valid. At any given time no company would have more than 4 people working a project of this size, it wouldn't make sense to spend the man hours unless it's the only project you have.

I wish them the best and hope their competition doesn't call us.

Mark
Search Engine Marketing - Dallas Web Design