SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost?
The price of SEO services is dependent on many factors including quality of work, country where the SEO work is done, the breadth and depth of work completed, the experience of the SEO, and the competitiveness of the category in which an SEO shopper find himself. These, as well as other factors, determine the final pricing of an SEO campaign. It is important to note that much like most other things, you get what you pay for; however, high pricing is not always indicative of high quality service; but at the same time, low pricing is rarely coupled with results which will be deemed successful by SEO clients.
The above commentary is a general overview of what determines SEO pricing; however, it does not include specific number so that shoppers can properly evaluate an SEO proposal. So, let us expand upon the above introduction with specific examples, and numbers which can be used as an SEO pricing guide.
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Types of SEO Campaign Pricing
One-Time SEO
Price Range: $1,000.00 - $100,000+
One-time SEO, as the name suggests, is a one-off service which is comprised of an on-site optimization, and is generally accompanied by several hours of follow-up consulting to explain the work, and provide guidance for the client moving forward. The pricing for such a service is highly dependent on the size and complexity of the site. The competitiveness of the market for a business does not come into play, as the work is meant to address any deficiencies in regards to technical, organizational, and contextual nature.
Note: the difference between a one-time SEO service and an SEO audit is that the one-time SEO offering includes hands on work on the website; whereas an SEO site audit is basically a document which details the finding of the SEO professional, with directions about how implement changes and undertake fixes.
SEO Site audits
Price Range: $500 - $100,000+
An SEO audit is similar to one-time SEO; however, it does not include hands-on work on the client's website; instead, the audit document details the deficiencies of a website, identifies opportunities, and provides a roadmap of how to implement changes and exploit the uncovered opportunities.
Local SEO (Monthly)
Price Range: $250 - $5,000 per month
Local SEO services are for low competition small businesses which serve a limited geographic area with high population density, or a large area with low population density. The types of businesses which are best suited for local SEO include small print shops, car washes, or professional services. There are of course, high competition categories such as legal and medical services, which will have costs on the higher end of the price range.
National SEO (Monthly)
Price Range: $750 - $10,000+ per month
This robust SEO offering, as the name suggests is suitable for businesses which target a national audience, and would like high rankings without geographical limitations within a given country. Many of these businesses are ecommerce site which introduces another level of complication to the search engine optimization process. Like local SEO, the level of competition has a very wide scale, which is reflected in the price.
SEO by the Hour
Price Range: $50 - $700 per hour
SEO services which are billed hourly can either be monthly or on an as-needed basis. The charges are based on the number of hours spent during a given time-period (usually one month). The hourly price depends mostly on the experience level and technical sophistication of the search engine optimizer. The below price-range does not take into consideration overseas (outside of the United States) service providers.
SEO Elements Which Should Not Impact the Price
Above, we discussed the variety of situations and factors which impact SEO pricing; however, there are several elements which are often used to justify cost. The below list is comprised of the most common of those factors which should not impact pricing.
- Number of keywords to be worked on as part of the SEO campaign
- The volume of link acquisitions (a proper SEO campaign does not aim to generate a high volume of links)
- Number of pages to be optimized (an ongoing campaign would optimize a growing number of pages if and when the health and search engine friendliness of the site calls for it)