Hello petergriffin, Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

We are a small e-commerce retailer and I currently look after all the SEO myself. However in order to grow I thought I'd look into getting some professional help.

There is a very strong chance that if your budget is limited, you probably know just as much, if not more than the person you'll be working with. Maybe you'll want to find someone to compliment what you already know?

Paying between £6000-12000 per annum seems like a massive amount. We considered pay per visitor pricing structures but were quoted £1000 per 35 additional visitors from our baseline.

Pricing is all relative. It all comes down to the ROI. If you spend £6000-12000 per annum and see a positive return, wouldn't it be worth it to you? The tough part is determining whether or not the company you've chosen is going to work hard for your money and show you that positive return.

Paying between £6000-12000 is not unreasonable as long as you are going to get ROI within a specified period of time. Eventually, it needs to be performance based, but near term, there will be ramp up time and an investment will be needed.

As pageone mentions - it's all relative.

I would stay away from the "bedroom" SEO's as you mention because you probably do know as much as them. Like anything else, you get what you pay for so don't just shop on price, shop in results from the firm that you are hiring. Make sure that they are getting results in this day and age.

£6000-12000 is very reasonable. Some firms charge that much, or more, per MONTH.

Your best bet if your budget is limited may be to do this on your own.

Competent SEOs don't work cheap. You might be able to find someone who really knows their stuff and just starting to consult. Or someone who's an in-house by day and just looking for a little extra cash at night.

Another reason why it's not cheap is many would rather work on their own sites. Lots prefer recurring revenue from personal properties to searching for and dealing with clients. It's always an option for a competent SEO.

I think many of us here have been in the same situation as you peter - and there were probably lots of different solutions. We decided that we weren't confident enough that others were going to provide a goor ROI and as a small company we thought we needed the knowledge for the long run. We did hire one company for a short time, but used this as an information gathering time as much as anything.

Principles of SEO are not complicated, but I think a lot of people shy away from the hard work, so as long as you understand these main principles and are up for some hard graft, we've found that you can do it your yourself.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

I was some way in the same situation as you are now petergriffin. From personal experience I would strongly recommend trying the SEO for yourself before hiring (over)priced expert.
Distinguished SEO companies which have already proven themselves on big projects will probably charge even larger amounts then you have mentioned. Unfortunately going for a no-name company could easily lead to loss of investments.
If you do wanna get started on your own, here are a few steps I've taken as a beginner and they were great start:
1. webmasterworld.com, of course
2. check Richard John Jenkins's "Search Engine Optimization" at lynda.com, its a 9 hour video lesson. Wont cost you much, but it will be a great start. Although it's dealing with static web pages, the concept is more or less the same with php.
3. get acquainted with .htaccess tricks, especially mod rewrite. Though many will say that the pretty looking URLs are not a big deal, I believe search engines do appreciate it, and your visitors will appreciate it even more.
4. there are many great SEO tools on the web (many are free) that will check your site for many things: broken links, text 2 code ratio, headings, meta etc. Find 'em, use 'em ! : )
5. organize, research and monitor progress

Bottom line is that unless you're dealing with a gigantic site and counting profits in billion dollars, there is nothing a SEO company can offer you that you couldn't learn in a month or two.
Be aware that paying someone wont make them give out their secrets! Standards change all the time, SEO tricks get obsolete and get replaced by new ones. When this happens you'll have no other choice then to pay them again to implement new stuff. Some will say it's normal procedure, I call it extortion : )
Good luck and all the best to you SEO guru guys, your clients are not on these forums anyway : )

Ask prospective SEOs to make part of their fee performance based but beware that measuring performance improvement attributable to the SEO person can be difficult.