SEO is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
If you want to grow your site traffic and drive qualified leads, your SEO strategy has to be aligned with your business goals and current phase of SEO.
And, the often asked SEO question before hiring any consultant or SEO agency is how much does SEO cost .
This guide will break down the SEO pricing and key factors that influence the overall cost.
Let’s dive right into the answer.
The SEO package for a website depends on many factors such as business goals, the current phase of the site, issues, and challenges.
However, based on our experience of delivering SEO success to over 600 clients, the SEO cost varies from $250 to $5,000+ per month.
2. SEO Pricing Factors
You’ll find SEO services from as low as $100 to as high as $5000+ per month.
In short, the SEO pricing model varies a lot. And, the key reason is the factors involved in the SEO tasks.
Here are key SEO factors that influence the pricing:
1/ Results And Experience Level
In the end, the results and ROI from the SEO effort are all that matters to a business.
When it comes to choosing the right SEO agency or freelancer, it’s important to check for the experience level.
You don’t want to hand over your website to someone who has never worked with clients from a similar industry.
For example, Ap Web World has been doing SEO projects for 9+ years and delivered results to over 600 clients across 23+ countries.
Why Does Seo Experience Matter In Driving Better Results?
Just like any other profession, SEO also requires high-level experience to build a solid strategy.
And, it is a plus point when the agency or the freelancer has generated results for companies similar to yours.
2/ Current Phase Of The Website
The current state of the website or SEO strategy plays an important role in deciding the pricing.
For example, the SEO strategy for a brand new website will be different than for a highly authoritative site.
Likewise, other factors are:
- Type of website: E-Commerce SEO needs to have a strategy around the product pages, category, and sub-category pages. On the other hand, a B2B service website needs to drive qualified traffic and turn them into leads.
In short, the type of website plays a crucial role in pricing.
- Technical issues: If the website is already penalized by Google or negatively affected by a major update, it’s most likely to resolve the issue first.
In this situation, the SEO agency will have to fix the technical issues.
Other issues are non-indexed pages, sitemap, Missing H1, Alt tag missing, thin content, and more.
- The number of pages: Large sites with thousands of pages need proper optimization of pages.
Also, with large sites, it is a little difficult to fix the technical issues on the site compared to small websites with a few hundred pages.
3/ Competitors and Industry
The industry of the website plays an important role in understanding the SEO competition. Also, any experienced agency/consultant will look for the competitors that your site is going to compete with.
You need different resources, strategies, and the SEO execution to compete with high authoritative sites rather than low-to-medium authoritative sites.
Some of the highly competitive industries in SEO are:
- Healthcare
- Marketing and advertising
- Finance & insurance
- Computers & Consumer Electronics
- Jobs & career
4/ Hiring An Agency Or Freelancer
The price of an SEO campaign depends on whether you hire an agency or an SEO freelancer.
In fact, agency owners normally charge more for SEO projects than freelancers, based on a survey participated by 1,200 business owners.
Here are some of the reasons why SEO agencies can be the ideal choice even the charge is higher than freelancers:
All Under One Roof: Experienced SEO agencies like Ap Web World will assist their clients with technical SEO, local SEO, content writing, keyword research, etc.
Whereas an individual can provide you a limited set of expertise but with more concentrated time.
5/ Types of SEO Services Offered
When it comes to SEO, there are so many areas to look out for. But every website needs a specific and personalized SEO strategy.
For example, for a brand new website, you need to work on fixing technical issues. But for large sites with technical issues can be a huge problem.
Therefore the type of SEO services offered to any business depends on:
- Business goals (e.g., What the business wants to achieve in the next 6 or 12 months)
- Current issues/challenges (e.g., Fixing site issues such as content gap, technical error, brand reputation are equally important to consider)
That being said, SEO services include a lot of tasks and processes. Let’s understand the different types of SEO services.
3. What Do SEO Services Include?
The number one reason why SEO pricing models vary from agency to agency is the difference between SEO services.
There’s no standardized way of doing SEO to drive traffic and get leads.
Here we’ve listed most of the services that your agency or SEO freelancer may consider →
1/ On-Page SEO services
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing the on-site content for search engines and the users.
It includes activities such as →
- Meta tag optimization
- Internal linking
- Keyword research
- Content audit
- Headings optimization
- Writing content
- Content optimization for CTR
- Optimizing content for UX signals
- Creating content briefs, etc.
2/ Off-Page SEO services
Off-page SEO is the process of improving your search visibility and rankings by doing activities outside of your website. To make your site authoritative and trustworthy in your niche, off-page SEO plays a crucial role.
It includes →
- Link building strategy
- Email outreaching
- Publishing guest articles
- Influencer outreach
- Creating brand profiles in directories
- Digital PR
- Competitor research, etc.
3/ Local SEO services
Local SEO is a strategy for improving the search visibility of your physical store. This is only beneficial to businesses with a local presence and that target a specific geographic area.
It includes →
- NAP citations
- Optimizing Google My Business profile
- Structured data for local business
- Business reviews
- Directory submissions, etc.
4/ Technical SEO services
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing the website for crawling, indexing, and other technical aspects to improve rankings and search visibility.
It includes activities such as →
- URL structure
- HTTPS
- Indexing and crawling
- Broken links
- Page speeds
- Canonical tags
- Site security, etc.
4. Is SEO Needed Monthly?
One question that our SEO experts often get asked is, ‘do we need to hire your agency on a monthly basis?’
The answer is a big YES. One mistake many founders
Many people have a big misconception that a one-time SEO execution will help the site grow for upcoming years.
It just doesn’t work like this.
Some Of The Reasons Why Monthly SEO Service Is Required For Better Results:
1/ Google Updates
Almost every day, Google makes changes to the algorithm. This may result in sudden traffic drop or rise.
In this situation, it’s important to analyze the update and make changes accordingly to benefit from the search engine.
2/ Content creation is an ongoing process
To drive more qualified traffic, you need to create content users are looking for in the search. That’s why having a solid strategy for SEO-optimized content is important.
3/ Off-page SEO
Google takes the authority and credibility of a website into the account that influences the search rankings. And, Google officially considers quality backlinks as a green signal for authority sites.
The monthly execution of the link-building strategy will significantly increase the site performance in the search.
5. Can I Do SEO On My Own?
Instead of asking, can I do SEO on my own?, ask for should I do SEO on my own?
It’s simple. Just because you can try SEO on your own, you should do it.
You may not have enough time and bandwidth to learn and execute the SEO tasks. Or, the entire SEO process may distract you from the core business.
Here’s a simple checklist to know whether should you do SEO on your own:
6. SEO Plans From Ap Web World
Our SEO team at Ap Web World, helps businesses of any size by improving their search visibility and driving qualified traffic.
In the case of SEO services, we don’t have any standardized prices. Because we believe every business is different as so their challenges and goals are.
However, our SEO package ranges from $250 to $5,000+ per month.
Types of SEO projects we’ve handled for our clients:
- eCommerce SEO
- Technical SEO
- Site audit
- SEO competitor analysis
- Local SEO
- SEO for SaaS and service businesses
- Off-page and On-Page analysis, and more.
Final Words
SEO isn’t easy or a one-time process to drive business goals.
But hiring an in-experienced SEO agency or freelancer who doesn’t have a proven track record can make it even worse.
Regarding the pricing of an SEO package, it’s important to understand what SEO services are required and delivered to grow your site.
If you still have any questions regarding SEO pricing and services, contact our SEO experts and get unbiased answers.