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SEO - The Cost of Search Engine Optimization
Feb 08, 2020
SEO Pricing - Our Take On Marketing Agency Pricing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What is it? Hubspot
gives the best definition of SEO: “It refers to techniques that help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This makes your website more visible to people who are looking for solutions that your brand, product, or service can provide via search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.”
SEO Audit
“The Audit” - Be careful when agencies are trying to sell you an audit. Some will charge thousands of dollars for an audit that is generated by SEO software and brand it as their own. When factoring in the cost for this service, look to see what they are providing you. Is it an audit report? Are they providing a detailed summary with actionable steps or is it a bunch of PDFs with overwhelming information. Some agencies will use this as “bait” to get you to fix thousands of issues that may be detected on your website. In reality, many of the items report are not actual issues - so be sure to ask questions about every fix that they recommend.
Check out the pricing we received when we asked agencies in our article: Cost to Hire a Marketing Agency
If you are tight on funds, purchase online software like SEMRush or Moz to help run an SEO audit. If you aren't too familiar with SEO and website technical terms, you may want to hire an agency or freelancer to help you understand the results. This shouldn't cost most. Do not pay thousands of dollars for someone to "read" your SEO audit. You can hire someone and pay for one hour of their time to review your results. Expect to spend less than $100 for someone to help you understand the results.
On-Page SEO
This is a big “IF.” For example, pricing will vary based on the age of the website, how many pages you have, the platform being used and how big of a mess it is. Furthermore, it is hard to understand the pricing until you dig into this yourself. There are many apps that “promise” to fix your SEO, but it does take a skilled person to improve your ranking.
There are different factors to consider when paying for on-page SEO:
- Technical Fixes (this can get expensive) - Speed, Javascript/CSS problems, HTTPS, Broken Links
- Keywords - You may get a separate quote to identify keywords
- Titles, Headings, Meta-Tags, Image Alt-Tags, Structure - These make a difference, but can also be self-managed if you are tight on funds.
- Internal Linking and External Linking - These are important for Google Search and allow for credibility to be built by crawlers. Oftentimes, businesses do not have these set up on their blog posts or other content on their website - making it much harder for bots to crawl the website.
- Schema - How is your website structured? Did you add additional code to allow for Google to quickly index your website? You can check if Schema is being used by adding the SEOQuake extension.
Expected cost: $800 - $10,000
Yes, you are already asking, "Why such a large range?!" It depends on the size and condition of your website. If you are a small business with only 10 pages on your website, expect to spend less than $1000. For this price you should be receiving speed updates, keyword optimization, image optimization and alt titles, heading updates, internal and external linking as well as connecting to Google Search Console. You need to make sure they provide you with an SEO report before and an SEO report after. You need to understand how much work needs to be done on your website.
We have worked on websites where the SEO work ended up taking our team weeks to complete. These were websites that required a full rewrite of content, Javascript fixes, image fixes and more. These companies were charged $4,000+ dollars to complete the project.
Off-Page SEO
You are going to need this to improve your online ranking quickly - but it does come with a price. Furthermore, you will meet agencies or freelancers who promise you hundreds of backlinks (quality websites who are linking back to your website) and that they are “gurus.” Like we mentioned previously - run when you see the word "guru".
When hiring an agency, you should consider the following:
- What is their method for obtaining backlinks? It better not be commenting - most websites have a no-follow attribute for comments, so this becomes a dead end.
- Are they promising you quick results? It takes at least 30 days to see results from backlinks.
- Are they going to audit your current backlinks? What if they find spam? Will they submit these for you to Google to disavow?
- There are many websites that you can easily get backlinks from but you want to make sure the person you hire is providing quality backlinks (less is more when it comes to page authority).
Expected cost: $500 - $2000 per month
This pricing depends on whether your agency is reaching out themselves or if they are using an online database to purchase backlinks for you. You need to ask what their method is, how many backlinks they will provide and understand what type of backlink you will receive.
Local SEO
If you are a local storefront, you should 100% invest in local SEO.
- Are you showing up on Google Maps? What about Yelp?
- Do you have reviews? Are they bad reviews or good reviews?
- What about when someone searches in your town - do you pop up on the first page?
- What about local listings (newspapers, Angie’sList, etc.)? Are your business details correct? Most importantly are you listed as an option within the relevant business searches?
Expected cost: $300 - $2500
The price will vary based on your individual need.
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Google Updates Google Search Algorithm May 2020 Update Small businesses need to be on the lookout for impacts on their local SEO. Early data shows the update is ranking directories and aggregate listing sites higher while reducing search positions for pages with minimal content. BUT... as with any update... give it a few weeks to see how the algorithm learns and adjusts. Until then, you may see a fluctuation in search rankings. One thing to keep in mind is the continued focus on search intent with this update. If you haven't shifted your blog content to focusing on user intent keywords, then now is the time to do so! Google Surfaces - Product Listings Free For years it was only possible to have your products listed on Google Shopping through paid ads. Google announced they are allowing brands to feature their products through Google Surfaces for free. This is huge for small businesses! You can opt into Surfaces by creating a Google Merchant Center account. Google Local Inventory The next awesome release from Google is the ability for local retail businesses to list their local inventory on Google Surfaces for free. Buyers will be able to shop local inventory without having to visit the store.