Pro SEO: the cost

[Will]

Hi!

There may have been posts about this elsewhere on the forum but I can't seem to find them right now, so...

Pro SEO: how much does it cost?

"How long is a piece of string?", you say?

Let's say a 6 month campaign. What would be the price range to build a lead generating site from say the 30 visits per day level to the 150 visits per day level.

What about to build to the, say, 500 visits per day level?

Some of these questions may be naive but what I'm really asking for are some ballpark figures and a bit of an explanation of price structuring in the SEO industry.

Thanks!

[Brian Turner]

As you've noticed, SEO is indeed very individual in it's application.

As for cost - some people will claim that you could get absolutely everything you ever wanted from search engines for as little as $20. This is, of course, complete BS.

As for real costs for real link-building SEO (and it should absolutely involve link-building) - what SEO's will tend to do is work in terms of increasing your visibility for specific search terms. So, for example, if you sell "pink elephants", then an SEO will do some research on which are the most common search terms relating to "pink elephants".

The SEO might then draw up a list of search terms to recommend be used in the SEO campaign, which should be properly targeted to ensure you get decent traffic based on your product. The client will then decide which of these keywords they wish to focus on specifically.

The SEO *should* then offer a money-back guarantee of achieving agreed ranking targets over an agreed period. Usually this will be focussed on ranking for Google.

Typically, an SEO campaign should last around 6 months, not least because search engines can take up to 3 months to index any particular links built up.

I’m not sure what other SEO’s charge exactly, and it all depends on the actual competitiveness of the keywords being sought for – but I would personally recommend around £50 per month per keyword as a good general starter figure – though this will definitely have to increase according to the actual competitiveness of the search term.

SEO tends not to deal in traffic figures – and it’s wise not to do this. The point is to get targeted sales traffic, rather than simply general traffic – which can easily be spoofed anyway. Better to have lower traffic that converts very well than lots of traffic that does nothing.

Do note something important, though – some SEO’s will set up links that only last for the duration of your SEO campaign. You need to ask if this is the case, and ask whether you can pay a retainer or admin fee to keep those links maintained (rather than expanded upon).

At the end of the day it is also worth remembering that proper SEO work shouldn't be a cost, but a very lucrative investment.

Anyway – hope that helps.

[Will]

Thanks Brian,

That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying the traffic vs targeted traffic thingummy. I feel like I know 300% more about SEO than I did a few days ago....

Cheers,

Will

[Brian Turner]

Glad it helped. Feel free to ask any more questions.