SEO pricing is determined by the overall scope of work provided. That’s another way of saying “you get what you pay for”. So to understand this better, it’s important to grasp the different types of pricing models and the deliverables offered by an SEO company.
SEO Pricing Models
There are different ways that SEO companies price their service, and we’re going to cover the most common ones here:
Monthly Retainer
This is where a company charges you every month for the ongoing work that they do. Most SEO companies deliver their services over time, because doing too much SEO all at once can actually hurt your visibility in search engines. For example, adding too many pages all at once can cause problems and should be done over time (which is why ongoing services are standard practice).
Package Pricing (Also Monthly)
Some monthly retainers are in the form of a package of deliverables. Instead of paying a company for a result/outcome, you’re paying them for a set of deliverables that may or may not produce the result/outcome you’re looking for.
Project-Based (One-Time Fee)
This is common when a company has a few SEO issues that need to be resolved, like technical SEO or launching a new website, but the intention isn’t to expand on SEO beyond those specific issues.
Hourly Rate
Hourly rate pricing models are common with individual SEO experts or SEO consultants. With this pricing model, you’re buying someone’s time.
Pay-for-Performance
Performance-based pricing is where the money you pay is based on the results produced by an SEO campaign. Usually, this model results in paying much more than you’d normally pay when an SEO campaign goes well. On the reverse, if things aren’t going well, you aren’t paying much (but you’re still paying).
Which Factors Make SEO Expensive?
As mentioned previously, the overall scope of the work is what tends to rack up a large SEO bill. This is most common when you’re buying a custom SEO strategy (rather than a pre-set package of deliverables).
When it comes to hourly rates, things get expensive depending on the level of expertise of the person you’re hiring and how much demand there is for that person. The “Michael Jordan of SEO” is going to cost a lot more per hour than the guy who learned SEO from watching YouTube videos.
As for performance-based SEO, again, this gets more expensive as your SEO agency starts to produce results. They’re essentially taking on more risk by starting you off at a lower price (usually working at cost), and they’re going to want to make up for all the work they did to get you results.
Which Factors Make SEO Cheap/Affordable?
Pre-packaged SEO deliverables can sometimes make SEO more affordable. However, the risk is that you’re paying for deliverables, and not an outcome. It’s like the difference between talking to a contractor who says they’ll build you a house, and talking to a contractor who says he’ll use his tools and build in the direction of making a house (which sounds far less assuring).
Of course, things like case studies and references may provide you with the assurance that you need.
In addition to pre-packaged SEO deliverables, SEO strategies that violate Google’s Guidelines also sometimes come at more affordable pricing. The reason being many of these practices are automated and do not cost much to do. The result can sometimes be catastrophic to a business.
Last, we have a lack of expertise being a point that keeps costs low. Sometimes, a person is new to SEO and wants to start building up a client base. Other times, someone with an SEO agency doesn’t really know what it’s going to take to deliver a campaign with results, so they do some of the work necessary, but not all of it.
Actual Examples of SEO Deliverables Driving Up Costs
Below, we’ll cover some real examples of things that are highly beneficial to an SEO campaign, but also take a lot of time and/or money to produce.
Backlinking
There are several vendors online who you can pay for backlinking services. For many of them, to get a great backlink, you might pay as much as $300 or more.
For many SEO companies, a full-time employee might be required to manage backlinking campaigns (sometimes multiple employees). This is only one piece of SEO that may require a full-time employee in order to deliver.
Research
Just about every SEO agency will do some level of research. Some will skim through a spreadsheet of keywords, while others will go into a much deeper level of research.
As an example, at BIG Marketing, we apply principles of semantic SEO. We look at search demand, analyze the co-occurrence of words appearing across the top-ranking pages, gain an understanding of your audience, anticipate the searches that a person is likely to make after their first search, etc.
For the SEO agency that doesn’t do much research, you probably won’t be paying much, but you also might not get great results. For the company that does a lot of research, you’ll typically pay more, but you’ll also get better results.
Level of Automation
Some SEO companies simply use software or AI to try to automate everything. Some of that software is helpful, but companies that rely entirely on software typically produce poor results. An example of this is when companies write all their articles with ChatGPT (a very poor SEO practice).
The reverse of this is to have everything manually done (like having Erick Racedo write this article without the help of AI).
Usually, the most cost-effective approach is a combination of some automation and some manual oversight.
In the end, “expensive” is a relative term that implies you’re paying a high price for what something is worth. Whether or not something is expensive would therefore depend on whether or not what you’re getting is valuable. $1,000 might sound like a lot, but in the context of buying a house, it sounds like very little.
Buying SEO That Produces a High ROI
The average ROI on an SEO campaign is about 700% – 2,200% ($7 – $22 return for every $1 spent). So when buying SEO, focus on the ROI as the end result that you’re paying for.
At BIG Marketing, we’ve produced ROI’s as high as 74,000% ($74 return on every $1 spent). It’s our focus to produce a return well in excess of what we’re paid.
If you’d like to get a quote for a custom SEO campaign, don’t hesitate to reach out!
