SEO Pricing: How Much Does Search Engine Optimization Cost?

Since the start of SEO, providing a simple answer to the question ‘how much does SEO cost?’ has been tricky. While the mechanics and toolkit for SEO are fairly similar for most projects, there are a huge amount of variables to take into account when building a strategy and budget. It’s often difficult to judge to true cost and potential ROI of an SEO project at its start.

Understanding the Many, Many Variables

First off you have to understand the marketplace dynamics which affect SEO success and pricing. How competitive is your industry? How competitive are the areas you serve?

For example, an SEO website tune-up for an Orthodontist in a small suburban town might shoot the site to the top of local rankings, while the same tune-up for an identical practice in a major metropolis might only improve rankings slightly.

Furthermore, the value of improving rankings can vary dramatically from business to business and the amount of available traffic in a particular market. For some local businesses, being on the first page of Google results leads to a dramatic increase in leads and revenue while others only a marginal difference.

Next comes considering the starting position of a business’ complete digital presence. How large is the website? Is the site structure well for SEO? How much keyword-rich content does the site hold? How many technical SEO issues does the site have? How many links and referring domains are pointing to the website? Is the business listed accurately on local listing sites? The list goes on.

For example, it is not uncommon for an outdated and slow website to rank higher than a technically-perfect newer website because the older site has a robust and hard-earned back-link profile. No site’s SEO is perfect. The entirety of the digital presence has to be taken into account and then you can develop a strategy that addresses important weaknesses.

Common Pricing Models

Back in late 2011, SEO powerhouse MOZ conducted a survey of over 600 agencies in order to understand variations in SEO services pricing models. While this survey is now seven years old and MOZ admits the survey isn’t perfectly scientific, it does provide a solid general understanding of how most agencies price this type of work.

Some key takeaways from the survey:

• Project-based pricing is by far the most popular model. Around 70% of the agencies surveyed said it’s their most commonly used scheme with projects falling into the four price ranges: $1,001-$1,500, $1,501-$2,500, $2501-$5,000 and $5,001-$7,500.
• Monthly retainer pricing models, specifically the monthly rate, vary radically from agency to agency. The two most common were $251-$500/month and $2,501-$5,000/month.
• Most agencies offer project-based, retainer-based and hourly based pricing models in order to fit the diverse needs and budget of clients. It is a competitive marketplace and it seems agencies are very willing to adjust their systems to retain clients.

CreateAgile ROI’s SEO Pricing Model

Over the years working with hundreds of SEO clients, we’ve learned how to expertly tailor our SEO services to the unique variables of each client, and we tailor our plans to our clients’ budgets.

We determine a scope of work by breaking down factors such as:

• How big is the website? How many pages need optimization?
• How much content development is needed, particularly if the site is obviously lacking important pages?
• How many technical issues need to be fixed?
• If it’s a local business, are there multiple locations requiring business profile listing setup or edits?
• How many backlinks does the website have? If there are not many, we’ll allocate more budget to focus on building a strong link profile.
• How strong is the competition?
• Are there aspects of the work that our client can handle on their end?

The standard service we recommend is $1,000/month. In month 1, we focus on conducting an SEO audit, optimizing the top 20 priority pages, and beginning to address technical issues. Then, in future months, we shift our focus to content development and link-building.

For businesses with multiple locations, we recommend extra budget (for example, $250 per month) in order to build citations for each location and build out location-specific content. So, if a business has 4 locations, our standard recommendation would be the $1000 standard fee plus 3 x $250 for the 3 locations, for a total of $1,750 per month.

For larger websites, we’ll often quote a higher initial fee in order to optimize more pages, faster. The typical 20-page website would have a $1000 month 1 fee. For a 50-page website, we’d quote $1500 for month 1, and for a 100-page website, we’d quote $2500 for the first month.

At the same time, a major factor in pricing our SEO services is the client’s budget. We can customize the scope of work to match a client’s budget down to $500/month. At a reduced fee, we have fewer hours to invest in the work, so we execute our strategy at a reduced speed and with a reduced scope of work. In practice, this means it may take us two months to complete the initial optimization of priority pages, and we’d develop less content per month and build fewer links per month on an ongoing basis.

Meanwhile, we understand that some businesses have budgets of less than $500 per month. In that case, we offer our SEO Consulting and Reporting services for $250 per month. This service includes a 1-hour phone call with an SEO Consultant and monthly reporting and with analysis on SEO metrics and recommendations to improve performance. This service is a good fit for clients who are looking to handle the implementation work in-house but need expert guidance. And for clients who need some additional hands-on help, we can also provide implementation work on an hourly basis in addition to the monthly consulting fee.

Conclusion

A successful SEO strategy involves evaluating many variables and forging a path forward within the client’s budget. ‘How much does SEO cost?’ will always be a tricky question, but it’s important to recognize that — with the right strategy — progress can be made at nearly every price point.

Click here to request a quote for SEO services.

Based on the information you provide (your website, type of business, size of your business, and monthly SEO budget), we’ll follow up with recommendations regarding our SEO services.

Then, if our SEO services seem like a good fit, we’ll introduce you to an SEO Consultant on our team to discuss how our services can help achieve your goals.

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