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What is the true price of SEO?



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What is the true price of SEO?

How much SEO services cost? This is the question I'm asked by all my clients, friends and even family.

Everyone wants to put a price on SEO like it was some kind of finite one-time service. For PPC campaigns things can be fairly easy, you pay a certain amount of money for every click you get, it is easy, people understand the concept, for every visit they get a certain payment needs to be made. When we are talking about SEO things get complicated and it may probably the hardest activity to measure online.

So what does the average business owner that wants to invest in SEO needs to know?

1. Getting top positions in a search result on a national level is not the same as getting top ranks for a local keyword and local results. This, of course, will mean different costs. You also need to be realistic about the potential you have for the keyword you want to rank. If you have your doubts about SEO start with something small, try ranking for long tail national keywords first or local based keywords. Once you pay for such results you can figure out how much SEO is going to cost for more popular keywords.

2. Having a new website with a new domain can be a pain and it usually means you need to invest both first-time on-page optimizations but also off-page SEO once the on-page SEO part is implemented. So the initial SEO costs involving new websites can be slightly bigger because it involves the basic on-page implementation that you only do once. Like making sure the headings are SEO friendly site-wide as well as having a sitemap.XML file, a robots.txt file, etc.

3. Set some clear achievable goals. You can't ask your SEO company to rank you for "women shoes" on with a new website in just 1 month. You need to set some realistic goals first and foremost but also figure out how big of a budget you are willing to spend on SEO, because the truth is, depending on your niche, there will be always something to rank for and in essence this means they may be no limit on how much you can spend on SEO. Keep in mind SEO takes a time to implement and to get results, as your SEO for an estimation on your main goals and figure out if you have the budget to complete the campaign.

4. On-page SEO is a must but not all of your pages will need backlinks and authority. Together with your SEO specialist figure out which are the best pages to increase authority on. If you have 10k product pages it would be totally crazy to build backlinks for each and every product page. Concentrate the link building efforts on the listing pages or on special SEO landing pages.

5. The more pages you have the more SEO will cost. If you have really big websites, targeting a very developed niche that has loads of popular keywords expect your SEO to cost quite a lot. As I said, you don't need to optimize everything at the same level but you will definitely pay more for SEO than the guys that haves a 10 pages websites.

6. Quality costs. If you want to settle for a mediocre SEO company that does the exact same things they did 5 years ago, you can't really expect top results. But if you are ready to pay quality SEOs that use the latest techniques as well as the best available technologies you will need to dig deeper into your pocket.

So how much can SEO cost exactly?

At least for my client's contracts can vary from 200 bucks per month (the minimum package I'm willing to work for) to 2500 per month which is the maximum we currently have. But 2500 is nothing with some big SEO contracts other companies have into place. Big websites that need a lot of work done can sign contracts over 25k per month.

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TommyCarey
I have a very minimum of $550 per month with a 1 year contract. My maximum packages are depending on the clients budget because I can put as many people on the job as I need in order to get top rankings for whatever the client wants.

Some of my clients pay me solely for content creation and that alone is $1,000 per month. They get a lot of content for that $1,000 but some people may think that it's not enough because they can pay $1 an article from a writer from India compared to my $15 or more articles.

I guess it really depends on the quality of the SEO and how automated the work is. I myself try not to automate much because that always ends in negative results for the client. I'll do as much white hat as I can before I begin to get grey hat and building a few thousand tier 3 links to help boost up some of my second tier links lol.

SEO is ever changing and the companies who stay on top of the trends will be the ones who get the good reviews and higher pay checks.

In the end, the price of SEO depends on geographical location and knowledge. If an amazing company in India produces top results for all of their clients, they will be much cheaper than a US company doing the same thing. The only difference is that the US clients might stick with a US SEO agency because we're more local than the company in India.

A lot of factors go into how much SEO costs. It's similar to asking how long a piece of rope is What is the true price of SEO?



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Corzhens
I am both surprised and encouraged by the amount that you quoted. Earning $550 a month is big money here that I can say can be my livelihood. However I know that freelancing is not a stable job and the income is not fixed so it is only right to earn so much sometimes to compensate for the lean times that there are no jobs. But with SEO I guess it is a growing industry that is why I am trying to learn the SEO methods.



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overcast
I think price of the SEO should be dependent on the client. Some clients just want exposure. One can't sell them 1000$ packages. And some clients want product sales. For them you can charge higher. So that's something you have to check out. I personally prefer low end packages and then increasing it slowly. It may not be easier to setup the right quality of service unless you have experience though. That also be a factor to price things higher.



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ajlancer
Hi there,
Thanks for your nice sharing. I read your all post and really you putted some excellent information on there. So, let try to answer your question. Though you know SEO depend on many things. I always try to say, you need to set good plan for getting your goal. If you have enough budget, than try to set time how and when you want to achieve goal. Than come to implement some SEO method. If you do not expert hire someone. I think price depend on client budget according to his wants. For example, I have several try of SEO service, some for quick impact and some of long. And backlink plan also different for price or budget basis. Most importance is many of client only come fro off-page SEO. But, on-page SEO also very much import for impact overall. So, if client come to buy SEO service for both on and off-page SEO budget should different. For example: I charged $100 for some off-page SEO as service and link basis but if he wants both from me, it must higher and over $200 for initial l campaign. And SEO not one time method or service and it is not only for few page or 1 or 2 pages. So, client need to purchase service continuously from expert and for long, cost depend on it. How long he will carry.

Regards by Ajlancer



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Tronia
You can ask ten different SEO people what they believe the true price of SEO is and I guarantee you that they will all provide different answers in term of numbers. It just depends on so many different factors. You listed the majority of them and it's clear why the ''true price'' varies.

The price will also depend on things like the market itself - the basic supply and demand, where you're offering your SEO services and more.



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PedroP
Then would
you say
that it is a good idea to invest money in SEO from the beginning or wait untill you business starts to grow and you get some income from it first?



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overcast
I think on page SEO is not big task. It can be done in few hours. So you can see that business can start in few hours. But the branding, social signals and the reputation building takes time. So one can get more results based on the amount of efforts being taken. I have found that some people can easily do the SEO work and for some people it takes lot of time.



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kgord
I think that it is probably important to work on SEO from the beginning so you can get started on the right foot and make sure you are doing what you need to do to increase your business from the very start. It is an important aspect of doing business online.



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hermessantos
Very interesting your post.

Unfortunately in my country people still do not value much the work of an SEO specialist. I've tried to work as an SEO consultant for other companies, but

definitely not had success, as they do not want to pay the appropriate price.

Anyway, I prefer to apply my knowledge to my own sites.



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vinaya
I have never done SEO for clients and I have never earned money for doing SEO. However, I know about SEO and I di SEO for my websites. I have 5 websites running and I optimized these websites myself. However, recently I received SEO offer, I was asked to do SEO for a new blog. Since the blog does not have enough contents, there is so little to work. I can do off page SEO, but there is no room for on page SEO. I am asking $500 per month.



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jpyy
The results equal a BingAds or AdWords campaign so perhaps the cost should be made in relation to those things. In fact, I cannot see any justification for doing it another way. Therefore, if a campaign is expected to give 5000 "web hosting" clicks, then it should be priced the same as for similar "web hosting" clicks on AdWords.

However, though, take note that an SEO company might want to charge less than pay-per-click to be competitive, well, of course.



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Corzhens
Pardon me for this comment but my take on the cost of SEO will depend on the need and capability of the website owner. An owner of a big website will be capable and willing to pay $500 for the SEO work on his website while a small website will prefer a lower cost of SEO work. In one discussion, it was suggested that a website owner can offer a percentage to the SEO specialist for the profits of the website. If the SEO doesn’t take effect then the SEO worker is not paid.



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