Cheap Websites that cost you money

Had a conversation socially with a Stanford-le-Hope business owner yesterday when the subject of websites came up (it often does with me for some reason). The resulting exchange demonstrates that ‘mates’ sometimes cost you money and also that a little knowledge can be a costly thing. The conversation when something like this:
[Essex Tradesman] I got a good deal, a mate of mine done me a good website a few years ago, it should have been £1200 but he done it for £300
[Delicious Webdesign] Sometimes ‘good deals’ from mates end up costing you money, if you consider your website presence essential then not doing it correctly initially may end up costing you in terms of lost business. I have just attempted to find you on Google using your main search term with Stanford-le-hope then Essex as geographic qualifiers and you don’t show within the first 20 results.
[Essex Tradesman] Yes I know I don’t show up but that’s because I cant afford to continue to pay to be up there.
[Delicious Webdesign] If you talking about paid for advertising, its called Pay Per Click or PPC, this is where you pay to have you advert appear at the top and the side of the search results. If you have had a website for two years and knowing that your main search term is not very competitive in your local area you should be appearing in the ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ results that naturally appear below the sponsored results. If I was you I would either go back to your ‘mate’ or get us to have a look at your website as there is almost definitely something wrong.
[Essex Tradesman] I thought you have to pay to come up high in Google, didn’t know about ranking highly without paying for it. So what you are saying is that if I had the website made properly by a professional website company I would be having people phoning me without myself having to pay to advertise.
[Delicious Webdesign] Yes exactly. We have created about 3 similar websites for similar businesses in your area and they have hundreds of ‘free’ visitors to their websites every month.