You’re getting ready to invest into SEO, but are uncertain as to how much you should spend, and more importantly what a fair price is for both you and your SEO agency. That’s why we’re going to answer the pivotal question: How much does SEO cost per month?
SEO Monthly Costs
“You get what you pay for” is the mantra of SEO. Great SEO agencies charge a lot for their services, not because they can, but because they have to. If you want an outstanding team of employees and consultants working on your campaign, then expect to pay for them. If you’re on a budget for SEO, you still can still have access to world-class talent, but you’re going to find that they cannot invest a substantial portion of their time into your campaign.
Broad-Reach SEO Costs
Most small websites who have a dozen or less landing pages and are running a small blog should expect to pay somewhere between $1500 and $2000 a month for SEO. Larger websites, especially ones focused on editorial content, can expect to pay anywhere from $5000 a month and up.
Local SEO Costs
If you’re running just a local SEO campaign you can bring your costs down substantially. Most businesses should expect to pay somewhere between $500 and $1000 a month. If you’re in a difficult and competitive market, this can drive rates up into the $1250 a month range, but this scenario should be considered the exception, not the rule.
How Is SEO Normally Sold?
SEO packages are normally offered as either monthly retainers, sprints, or on a per-project basis. Of these, monthly retainers are the most common. SEO is technically never “done”, as there are always opportunities to improve a site’s performance and ranking authority. Monthly retainers lend best to routine work that helps promote consistent campaign growth.
Hiring an SEO Agency Monthly
When choosing to hire an SEO agency monthly, be sure to:
- Imagine your team working alongside theirs, as in most cases monthly SEO becomes a long-term partnership.
- Vet the quality of the agency’s work.
- Find out what deliverables they expect to complete every month.
- Learn more about their processes and analytics reporting.
- See if there are any term agreements.
Hiring an SEO Agency Per Project
If you have an in-house SEO specialist, work with multiple agencies or consultants, or just need a one-off project to help boost your rankings, a per-project basis might be your best bet.
Project-based SEO helps to quickly finish laborious and time consuming tasks that otherwise would take a monthly SEO team much longer to complete. Oftentimes, a dedicated timeline helps move a project forward to ensure that work is delivered on time and at a high level.
It is not recommended to operate your entire SEO campaign on a per project basis however. SEO requires frequent maintenance to pursue new keywords, optimize for existing ones, and prevent issues from building up over time. Having someone knowledgeable in SEO take a look at your campaign at least once a month is a best practice to help promote the longevity of your investment.
How Much Does SEO Cost Per Hour?
Hourly billing is commonly used to complete one-off projects or to supplement projects that grow past the original agreed upon scope. Rates vary widely in the SEO industry, depending on experience, proven results, and reliability. Consultants and agencies tend to be in the $100-$250 an hour range, though large agencies with impressive client accounts tend to bid projects at a higher rate.
What Affects The Cost of SEO?
Labor
Labor is the number one factor in calculating the cost of SEO. Out of all of the digital marketing services available, SEO is easily one of the most time-consuming. Paying great talent for hours of deliverables quickly adds up and results in a higher price for the client.
Software
SEO software is also another substantial cost in delivering SEO. Most industry-standard platforms cost anywhere from $200-$1500+ a month, many of which are essential to performing a well-rounded campaign.
Business Expenses
Of course, normal business operating expenses are also factored into the cost of SEO, but labor and software make up for a grand majority of the expenses that SEO professionals incur.
Cost of Cheap SEO
You might’ve stumbled upon some great SEO offers—ones that seem too good to be true. It is possible to see ranking improvements for the first couple of months with cheap SEO services, but just know that the business you’re working with is bringing their costs down somehow. Normally, it’s through quality of work. Terrible work doesn’t take much time at all to complete. In the industry, black-hat SEO, that is SEO practices that tend to result in site penalties, falsified results, and unsustainable growth, are a common practice among cheap SEO service providers.
Whether they’re buying unreputable links (which is against the policies of the top search engines), outsourcing to the cheapest labor they can find, keyword stuffing, hiding text on pages, or contributing to link schemes, cheap SEO providers are not doing you any favors. Google and other search engines heavily penalize sites that use black-hat SEO, and the last thing you want is a penalty to set rankings back substantially. Not only will your rankings drop, but you’ll lose out on your investment and have to pay a more experienced SEO professional to fix the penalties against your website.
Cheap SEO is not worth the headache or cost.
What Kind of SEO Services Should You Pay For?
Most reputable SEO agencies have set packages that make it easy to choose a plan that makes sense for the size of your website, your budget, and marketing needs. Typically plans include a combination of on-page SEO, link building, keyword research, analytics and reporting, and technical SEO. Content production is also an important part of SEO, but depending on individual client needs this may or may not be included in an SEO package.
Keyword Research
Though one of the most straightforward aspects to SEO, choosing the right keyword for each page is vital to a successful campaign. Websites, especially smaller ones, can’t simply choose a keyword and hope for the best. User intent, domain authority, content topic, and already ranking keywords (if any), are all factors that are considered when performing keyword research. For local SEO campaigns, choosing long-tail, location-specific keywords is a strong bet. Whereas, for content heavy blogs or magazine sites, choosing broad-reach and informative keywords tends to be the right path to go. Keyword research is foundational to succeeding with SEO.
On-Page SEO
On-page optimizations are arguably the most essential and effective way to generate results from SEO. Most consultants and agencies start their campaigns off with on-page SEO, then cycle back to link building and technical SEO as the campaign progresses. Typically, on-page SEO recommendations include title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, internal linking, external linking, URL changes, heading structure, minor page copy edits, and schema markup.
Technical SEO
Having a fast, easy-to-use, and well-developed website is a huge ranking factor. Site speed is largely the priority with technical SEO, but agencies and consultants also check for indexing errors, robots.txt files, link quality, duplicate content, URL status codes like 404, 301, 302, and dozens of other errors and warnings that could hurt your performance in search.
Link Building
One of the most time consuming, yet important, aspects of SEO is building backlinks. A backlink is created when a different website links to your site. Rather than thinking of links as a way to navigate the internet, search engines see backlinks as “upvotes” towards your website that help validate your website’s trustworthiness and reputation. As a result, backlinks are vital to building domain authority, which is a general metric used to help gauge a website’s ability to rank over the competition.
Local SEO
Local campaigns are great for those looking to save on their marketing and have a set geographical target area that they operate in. Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yelp, and other local citations / listing websites help get your businesses name out to the local community.
Local SEO campaigns tend to be much less competitive than their broad-reach counterparts, driving down the cost of the campaign and oftentimes generating more substantial results.
SEO Copywriting
Producing consistent content is vital to succeeding with SEO. Besides just landing and sales pages, running a blog helps to consistently provide search engines additional pages to rank, increase the amount of backlinks towards your site, and establish authority within your niche. It’s recommended to post to a blog at least once, if not twice a week. Producing more quality posts each week increases the likelihood you have of ranking for more, increasingly competitive keywords.
Find The Right SEO Partner For You
Now with a better idea of how much SEO costs per month, you are ready to find an agency or consultant to help you start ranking on search. Remember, SEO is a long-run marketing strategy and results don’t happen overnight. Utilize a partner you can afford for the long-term to increase the likelihood of your campaign generating outsized returns.
