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Yeah, don’t get sucked in by someone who promises high SERPs or the best SEO. Most SEO for small businesses comes from being successful, not loading up websites with keywords.

Read this. Most of the meaningful SEO you can do yourself. Anyone offering professional SEO will attempt to game the spider algorithms and requires continued work and upkeep.

Just have a nice, clean and useful page; keep it up-to-date; and focus on the customers. The happier they are, the more likely they are to recommend and cross-link your page, which will help your rankings.

As far as website design goes, you're isn't bad. It's not cutting edge, but it's nice and modern. For 3k you'd probably get a similar, template-based layout. The only design changes I'd recommend are replacing the sketch-style “Share” with a simpler, sans serif typeface that better matches the rest of your site (and shrinking them to a more standard size); finding a slightly cleaner title typeface. Yours lacks anti-aliasing and is inexplicably rough.

A good, serious freelance web designer is going to charge you at least $60/hr, plus expenses (stock images, web font licencing, server costs, etc)–an agency, even a small one, will likely be closer to $100/hr, though that can vary wildly. Stay away from anyone that charges a flat fee for the entire site and be cautious of people who charge by the page–they tend to be completely template-based and overcharge.

As far as recommendations, I'd go with Ashley Bush, but only because I went to college with her and know both her and her husband are killer artists/designers. Not sure what her rates are.

Another local (Rosslyn based) option for GREAT design work is Think Tank Creative – website address: http://www.creativebythinktank.com. As with Swag, no idea on the rates.

Also mimicking Swag, having just started a website of my own, I learned quickly by doing research that SEO “companies” are pretty BS. A lot of them just spam message boards (as you've seen on here) with random, unrelated or semi-related links.

Only other thing I have to add is be careful with the sketch version of the social media links. Some companies have specific rules on what logos you're allowed to use for brand continuity. I was just researching it yesterday, and couldn't find any specifics for Facebook, but Twitter has very specific rules. Basically, if you don't use one of the logos Twitter provides (and the “T” is no longer one), you need explicit permission.

I took a look at some of your code using “inspect element” in chrome…you need to be careful because what most people you hire will do is just add a few meta-tags and keywords to the pages. This takes just seconds for any experienced coder. While this does help with SEO, it's not going to bring you millions in business.

I used to work for a company that did small business websites and promised SEO boosts…always felt bad about it because while we were delivering what we promised, people had lofty expectations of what the changes could actually do. 

You also have to ask yourself why your company needs to do well in search engines, and what that really means. Are people searching for “professional auto detailing” or is the majority of the population simply going to search “DC Car Wash”?  What is the digital audience, what are you paying to try to attain through Google search? You may be better off making sure you do very well on “word of mouth” social networks…such as Yelp, Angies List, Google Reviews, etc. That is free and may have more bang for your buck.

Also, do you have two websites? http://www.autodetailingarlington.net/ and http://capitolshine.com/.

http://imageia.com/

I'm a huge fan of Dan's.  His website includes links to sites he's done–it's worth checking out.

I am a website developer and marketer. I had a look at your website which seems to be wordpress based. You do not need another website, all you need to do is optimize the one you have. It is quite simple to do the book  “SEO for dummies” should tell you everything you need to know.

However you will not get a huge amount of traffic with such a small website, you would be better of with a blog and a writer, as the larger the website, the more the visitors. However, if I were in your shoes I would go with a proper, well managed AdWords campaign. Auto detailing in Arlington should not be that expensive to get on adwords, probably just pennies a visitor. I do these types of things for many websites including the one in my signature link, I could do it for you for not too much money…however, if you are willing to learn to do it yourself then other than costing you a hundred hours or so of your time, you will never have to hire someone again. There is an adwords for dummies book i would suggest you get yourself into.

If you wanted to hire me for a month to do it, it would cost you about $600 to get you all set up. I would have your initial campaign ready for you in a week then tweak and monitor for you for a month then you would be on your own. From that point on you should be able to manage it yourself if you are willing to learn the Google interface. Actual money spent on advertising month by month would be up to you but you should see a very decent Return on Investment. By the time you spent your $3000 it would probably be years down the road and you would probably be thinking about expanding. I would think 50 000 targeted visitors in Arlington looking for detailing could be bought with $2400.

Again though the best way is just to learn this yourself.

If you want to contact me follow the link and e-mail me from the about us page, as I do not frequent here, even if you don't want to hire me take my advice on this and you will do well.