It’s time to face the facts: search engines aren’t something that you can ignore. With 53% of website traffic coming from organic search, you need to have a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in place.
SEO is essential for building web traffic and improving the reputation of your business online. However, it’s important to understand the costs when planning your SEO budget. SEO is well worth it, but it can cost you upfront, so you need to be aware of what to expect.
So how much does SEO cost exactly? In this guide, we’ll explain the typical costs of SEO services.
SEO Service Pricing Models
When thinking about getting SEO services, it’s important to realize that there are different pricing models that are common.
Here are the main pricing structures in the SEO industry and how much you can expect to pay for each of them.
Hourly
Particularly when hiring independent contractors or freelancers, you may end up paying for SEO services hourly.
When hiring SEO services hourly, you should know what you’re paying for. It’s important to ask for a breakdown of their work so that you can understand whether you’re getting your money’s worth or not.
On average, you’ll need to pay between $100-$150 an hour for SEO services. However, this price commonly goes up to $250 or more.
Monthly
To get ongoing support, it’s also not uncommon to pay for SEO services on a monthly basis.
Larger SEO agencies, in particular, will offer monthly SEO packages in which the services provided will be clearly outlined. These packages are often comprehensive and will provide a wide range of SEO services for one price. This could include content writing, keyword research, link building, and more.
The cost of monthly SEO service packages will range greatly. On average, the cost could be between $500-$2,000 per month. However, depending on your needs and the company you hire, it may cost you up to $5,000 or even much more.
Project
If there’s a one-time project that you need help with and you’re not interested in ongoing services, then you may end up paying per project.
To do this, it will be necessary to discuss the needs of your project at length to ensure that the SEO agency fully understands what you’re looking for. Projects will be customized to your needs, and you can choose what you want out of the services.
With this in mind, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact amount. Projects vary in scope by quite a bit. You might pay anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 per project on average. However, project costs could go up to $5,000 or a lot more.
What Affects SEO Prices?
No matter what type of pricing structure you use, there are many things that can affect the cost of SEO services. Here’s what you should consider.
Your Current SEO
One of the things that can affect the cost of SEO services that you may use will be the current state of your website’s SEO.
If you’ve never done anything to improve your website or if it’s been years since you’ve done anything to it, then SEO professionals may have to do a lot more to get your site ranking and ensure that it’s optimized.
Fortunately, there are a lot of things that you can do to work on your own SEO and improve your site before hiring professionals. Be sure to click here to check out the best free SEO tools.
Content Creation
If you need content created as part of the SEO services that you’ll be getting, you may also find that it costs you quite a bit more than if you only need other types of SEO services.
Creating great content is a big part of SEO and helps to ensure that there are plenty of valuable pages that a searcher could end up on when searching for your site. Creating high-quality content can be expensive, so it will be necessary to pay a good bit more to ensure that you have great content on your website.
Backlink Needs
Building backlinks is a difficult and time-consuming process. Backlinks are a big part of building a great website and can help to prove your relevance to Google and other search engines. If you need more of them for your website, you may find that SEO services will cost you significantly more money.
Competition
Whether you run a local business or operate far and wide, the competition that you have will also affect how difficult SEO is for it as well.
If you’re in a competitive industry or a competitive city, then you may find that it will be harder for you to get great rankings for your pages and site content. In this case, it may be necessary to pay more for SEO services.
SEO Company Differences
It’s also important to realize that specific SEO companies vary by quite a bit.
The people running the companies and the experts behind them will all have different levels of skills and expertise. Even the companies themselves may vary even if they have a similar caliber of people working for them.
All of these variables can affect how much you pay for SEO, so keep this in mind during your search. It’s a good idea to get quotes from multiple SEO companies before hiring one to ensure that you’ll be getting quality services for the best price.
So How Much Does SEO Cost?
So how much does SEO cost, and how much should you plan to budget for it? While every business is different and has different SEO needs, by now, you should have an idea of what to expect. Be sure to get quotes from different companies and consider the pricing structure carefully before making your choice.
Searching for more SEO and digital marketing advice? Read over our blog to find more helpful tips now.
