What is the good pricing for one-time SEO packages?

In our days the level of competition that we can see in the online world is higher than ever before. It can be explained by the profitability of this sphere. Not only e-commerce businesses raise their fortune on the web, but also companies that provide optimization services to make these e-commerce businesses visible on Google SERP. The variety of optimization service providers is so high that online merchants do not know where to start their research campaign. Finding a good SEO company can be a nightmare, especially if you have no idea what quality optimization services cost. One company may look at your web source and give you one price, while another company will provide you with a price that is twice as much. You may start looking for something more affordable. However, then you may start wondering whether this company knows what to do with your site to get a good result, or they are using black-hat optimization techniques that are going to land you back at the search engine optimization agency in the nearest future. Hiring the right optimization company will determine the future success of your business. That is why you need to do your best to find a company that perfectly meets your business goals.

The common question website owners have how much to pay for SEO packages. The real thing is that SEO costs nothing. You should not be surprised about this statement. A good optimization campaign won’t cost anything as SEO is an investment that will bring you a high return on investment and therefore its cost is zero.

It is evident that the SEO cost depends on many factors. The price will primarily depend on what are you looking for. If you want a standard optimization campaign that includes keyword research and on-site optimization, it will cost you an average fee per month. Moreover, the level of SEO specialists proficiency also matters. The more experience they have, the higher you will need to pay for their services. And of course, time is money. The more hours a company will spend on your business improvement, the higher it will cost. 

So if you are an ecommerce businessman and your profit directly depends on your site visibility on search results page, you need to have significant budgeting for SEO needs.

Factors that affect SEO packages pricing

One-time project/ongoing relationships

On the initial stage of your optimization company research, you need to determine whether you have a one-time project or you are looking for the ongoing relationships with optimization agency. If you have some temporary needs that can be solved within a short period, then the pricing is going to be per-project. In this case, you need to hire an SEO consultant and determine him execution terms and cost. However, if your needs are indefinite and can’t be solved within a short period, you should cooperate with SEO firm on a regular basis paying them a monthly rate. This rate is usually high, but stable, and cover all the needed services. Monthly retainer services are popular among US optimization agencies as they can be really helpful for online business development.

The size of the company

You should attract big optimization companies as the good ones as the size does not always matter. Both large and small optimization companies have their place, and it is essential to know which type of optimization services will better fit your business needs and purposes. Moreover, you should not expect that the small optimization firms will provide you with more affordable prices. Sometimes they have even higher pricing for their services as they look for a special approach for their client’s businesses. Large optimization firms (those that have more than 100 employees) tend to provide one-size-fits-all services for an e-commerce business that have similar needs. They work as an optimization factories providing the same services for all companies. It can be an excellent fit for small businesses that have limited optimization needs. However, if you want to get high-quality customized services, you need to look for small optimization agencies.

Target market

A target market is what affects your optimization campaign final price. The audience you need to target influences heavily what you will pay for search engine optimization. If your target market is large and highly competitive, you will pay more for the same optimization services as it will take a lot of time to make your business stand out from the crowd. If you sell high demand products that have no geographic boundaries, you should expect to pay a fortune to get good results. And vice verse, if you want to expand your business power locally, SEO services price will be quite affordable.

What does SEO cost?

And finally, I am going to give you a response to this highly controversial question. But first, let us eliminate some outlines. If you have a big enterprise with million dollars monthly revenue like Apple, Dell or Lenovo, you will need to pay hundreds of thousands dollars on a broad swath of activities related to SEO and advertising. 

However, if you are a small local restaurant, then you need nothing more than a simple overhaul of your web source, and some light work is making sure your Google Maps and Yelp profiles are set up correctly. It will cost you not more than several hundred dollars per month. 

Let us say some words about the numbers. 

Monthly retainers services (starting with $250 for small businesses and finishing with $10,000 for national or international campaigns);

Project pricing (starting with $600 for the basic SEO audit and finishing with the complex and detailed optimization analysis that will cost up to $20,000);

Hourly (it will cost you from $76 to $200 per hour). High-end companies may charge as much as $500 per hour.