It is one thing to have a website but it is another trying to get up on the search engines above your competitors. Competition depends very much on locations you are targeting and the phrases you wish to rank highly for. The more generic the phrase and the wider the location band in which you wish to target the more competition there will be. This inevitably means that you will need to invest more time and more in to your marketing to try and compete.

Ideally if you only have a small budget, you need to be realistic and initially target keywords and phrases that are less competitive. This will allow you to combat a few phrases and hopefully draw in some business before going for the competitive phrases.

Keyword research is vital before starting marketing as you not only need to know how competitive they are but also the search volume of traffic as there is no point targeting phrases that are easy to win but no one is searching for them.