Your customers need to find you online, which is where search engine optimization comes in. When someone searches for your products or services, you want to be the first business they see. After all, over 90% of interactions with businesses come from search queries on Google and other search engines.
The best way to take advantage of all that SEO has to offer is to partner with an expert SEO agency. While by now many businesses understand the importance of SEO services, they need to know something even more important: How much does SEO cost?
This article will discuss all of the factors that affect SEO costs and the different types of pricing available from SEO companies.
What Are SEO Costs?
How Can Your Business Prepare for 2021?
We know you were hoping for a straightforward answer here, but we can’t give you that. SEO Pricing depends on a number of factors.
The reality of SEO services and SEO pricing is that the cost can vary drastically depending on the types of services you need or if you’re looking at SEO packages. To learn how much SEO might cost you, it’s best to get quotes from SEO agencies so you can ensure you won’t get overcharged.
How Do SEO Agencies Determine SEO Pricing?
For an accurate SEO services quote, you’ll need to give an SEO company background information about your business. This helps the SEO agency and their team determine what types of SEO services are right for you and how much time it will require, along with the type of content needed.
Important factors that an SEO company will consider when giving you a quote are:
- Your current web rankings
- Your revenue
- Close rates
- Campaign goals
SEO marketing service providers do not typically provide an exact quote for their services without getting key information about your business. While you might at first see a monthly fee for an SEO package, SEO consultants need a deeper understanding of your needs before they can give you accurate pricing.
What Do Businesses Pay for SEO?
There are several available SEO pricing models used by both freelancers and agencies, including:
- monthly retainers
- project-based SEO Services
- hourly rates
- performance-based
- custom SEO pricing
According to Sparktoro, most SEO services are structured as monthly retainers. The Sparktoro survey also discovered that the median monthly retainer for SEO is between $2,500 and $5,000 per month.
Depending on just how much much SEO help you need and the type of SEO services, such as link building services, on-site SEO, and more, you can expect to pay anything from $30 an hour for a freelancer to up to $20,000 per month with an agency that has a dedicated SEO department.
What’s Considered a Fair Price for SEO?
SEO is not unlike other types of services; Ultimately, you get what you pay for. So if you’re hoping to find quality SEO services that get you tons of leads each month for a low price, this is the end of the road. The average annual salary for an SEO professional is around $50,000 per year, which means that you should be wary of companies offering their services for dirt cheap.
SEO costs sometimes vary because of the type of professional you work with. The more experienced an agency or marketing services provider is, the more expensive they will be. Most SEO professionals charge between $2,500 and $5,000 per month in the US.
Is Monthly SEO Pricing the Best SEO Pricing Model?
Monthly SEO pricing is the most popular SEO pricing model, but to determine if it’s best for you, you have to take a look at your business and its budget. SEO is not a service that you hire for one month and then stop; It is a recurring monthly expense.
The pricing of SEO is also impacted by the types of SEO services you choose. Many SEO services require constant, monthly attention, such as link building, content marketing, and monitoring.
How Much Does Local SEO Cost?
Many business owners will only require local SEO instead of national or even international SEO. When you do local SEO, your business will show up in local search results. If you believe that local SEO can help you obtain organic traffic to your website, then the biggest question you can ask yourself is, How much will SEO cost a local business?
Local SEO services are great for small businesses because it’s much cheaper than national and global SEO services. Instead of targeting the entire country or world, you’re only trying to target a small area to get people to come to your business location or increase your website traffic.
Local SEO pricing also varies from services provider to services provider, so it’s important that you do your research to find local SEO packages that fit your budget.
Factors Impacting SEO Services Cost
While SEO prices will vary depending on the company you work with, they can also be impacted by the following factors:
Industry
Some industries are more competitive than others, so they’ll require more robust SEO strategies. The SEO projects cost, when taking into account the industry, is typically based on how many monthly searches that specific industry has.
For example, companies with thousands of searches for their products or services each month will spend more on SEO than a local business with fewer searches and less competition.
Location
The location that you’re targeting will also impact the cost of SEO. Everything from a city’s population to the exact area you’re trying to target and even individual factors can result in higher SEO costs. For example, a service for scorpion removal would be more competitive in Alaska than it would be in Minnesota.
More populated metro areas will also have more competition, which will cost more for SEO efforts. Costs for localized SEO work will cost more in big cities like New York and Los Angeles than they would for nearby small towns.
Type of SEO Campaign and Services
Specific SEO services cost more than others. SEO pricing is typically determined by what your goals are. Certain goals will require different services. For example, suppose you want to build your website to gain higher rankings on organic search engine results pages (SERPs). In that case, you’ll pay more than a business that simply needs help optimizing its Google My Business Account.
Other types of SEO services, including keyword research, technical SEO, SEO strategy building, and SEO audit creation, can impact your SEO package costs.
Current Visibility
SEO pricing models and monthly SEO services pricing can change depending on your business’s current standing in terms of brand awareness and online visibility. If you’re a brand new company with zero brand awareness, there’s going to be a lot more work that needs to be done, which means increasing your SEO spend than a business that has established a search presence over the course of many years.
Determining your SEO Budget
Instead of asking how much SEO will cost your business, consider asking yourself how much you should pay for the services.
When you discuss the services with different SEO specialists or an SEO service provider, you should be exploring the types of services you need to beat out your competition. An SEO audit can help you understand where you stand versus your competitors and what SEO work needs to be done to outrank them.
SEO Return on Investment
Like many other marketing strategies, there is no guaranteed ROI for SEO services. The job of SEO is to bring more traffic to your website. From there, it’s up to your business and your website to convert.
The good news is that many brands and companies see positive results from SEO strategies that result in more leads and conversions.
SEO is not a fast-track to results. It takes both time and money to reap the benefits, which means you won’t see an instant boost in web traffic within the first month. However, SEO can help you reach long-term goals to help you beat out your competition. It will only take about six months for your business to start seeing results from SEO in most cases.
Final Thoughts about the Cost of SEO in 2021
While we were unable to provide you with the exact thing you came looking for– a single number to let you know how much you should pay– we hope we were able to provide you with the knowledge that allows you to understand the price of SEO.
When looking at your budget, realize that there is no one-size-fits-all amount that a business should pay for SEO services. The cost is based on a number of factors, but the key is finding an agency that can help you reach your goals.
In many cases, an SEO agency will be happy to work with your budget as long as it makes sense for their business. Instead of trying to lowball a professional agency, understand the value of SEO and how it can help your business grow.
