This is a question from the category of those on which one can talk for hours or dissect for many thousands of characters! This article is intended to explain not only how much SEO costs, but more importantly – why it costs so much. I know that if you’re asking yourself this question being the owner of a business that badly needs SEO, a factual answer will be more valuable than gold. Because in such a diverse market as the SEO industry, one can get lost in billing forms, prices, concepts.
You will probably quickly notice that the price of SEO on Google can vary greatly. Some agencies will offer you positioning for several thousand a month, while others will offer you positioning for 300 zlotys. On the one hand, it may seem that some companies make money by making a name for themselves; on the other hand, if an offer is too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. Today I’ll tell you why there are such large price differences. You will gain knowledge about what budget for SEO will be reasonable in your industry and why SEO is advertising that is not worth saving on.
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Positioning price list – search, time to start!
Terms related to SEO pricing are the most popular key phrases typed into Google by people looking for SEO cost estimates. Unfortunately, it is impossible to find results that give a definite answer, moreover – the offers most often can not be compared with each other, because they contain different elements. Therefore, it is difficult to quickly find and choose a good positioning. However, it may be for the better!
You need to remember that positioning, or SEO (from Search Engine Optimization), is a complex activity aimed at bringing a website to the highest possible positions in organic (natural) search results. This includes on-site and off-site work, SEO copywriting and professional link building. A lot of these English terms? You can read about the details of SEO and the most important concepts in this field in blog posts about SEO – such as this one: what is SEO.
The bottom line is that SEO is the cornerstone of effective online marketing, because it is to the search engine that customers go looking for products, services, information. Therefore, every business that acquires customers over the Internet strives to be as visible as possible in the highest possible positions on Google. Unfortunately, the number of sites here is limited, so the competition among SEO companies is huge, and with the effectiveness is sometimes different. The cost of SEO also comes from the experience of the SEO company and the methods it uses.
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I’ve been doing SEO myself for years, first working for a large SEO agency and now running my own, so I know what to consider when analyzing SEO costs. I will share this knowledge with you, and the answer to the question “how much does it cost to position a website?” – will no longer be a mystery.
Cost of SEO vs. scope of SEO activities
Is there a rigid range of activities that must go into SEO? If it is to be effective, SEO should cover several areas that coincide with Google’s requirements for websites rated as valuable to search engine users. SEO agencies call these activities differently and have different ways of pricing them. Below you will find the most important ones you should expect from a professional SEO, they are the ones that realistically affect the cost of SEO for your website.
SEO audit and selection of key phrases
There are companies that already charge a specific fee for these activities. In my case, the SEO audit and the process of selecting key phrases are free, but they affect the real cost of SEO. SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of a site’s potential – its structure, content, internal and external linking, current visibility in Google. It is this analysis that provides the basis for estimating the cost of positioning. For analysis, I use external tools – such as. Google Search Console. With an SEO audit, you can determine what investment we need to make to achieve satisfactory positions. It’s mainly about investing in the time of an SEO and copywriter, and in links in valuable directories.
How much can an SEO audit of a website cost? From a few hundred zlotys to even a few thousand (especially for online stores). It all depends on the level of development of the site and the time it takes to perform the audit – and that starts with a minimum of 2 hours of work for the positioner.
The selection of key phrases itself also requires an in-depth analysis of the website, an analysis of the industry and competitors that rank top in Google. In this way, we estimate how much you need to spend to have a chance to catch up with competitors who have been effectively investing in SEO perhaps for many years. When selecting key phrases, we also rely on external and reliable data from sources such as Senuto, SemStorm, Ahrefs and Google Search Console.
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We select keywords that best reflect the nature of the business, include key products and services, and are frequently searched and have valuable competitiveness. These elements increase the chance of achieving positions on key phrases that give you a chance to earn a satisfactory conversion.
SEO optimization
After the analysis and based on the conclusions drawn from it comes the time for planning and action. Listed below are activities that realistically affect the cost of SEO, as they generate the need for a time commitment on the part of at least one specialist positioner:
- Create an action plan and optimization work list
- Implement optimization recommendations (e.g., refine page load time, optimize html code, clean up and introduce titles and headings, use friendly URLs, describe graphics correctly, introduce structured data)
- organize and optimize internal linking
- Regular and cyclical analysis and optimization of subpages.
Construction of the link profile
This is one of the most costly parts of the positioning process. Building a link profile is a kind of building a website’s authority in a search engine, and on the web in general. We choose sites, i.e. websites and directories, that coincide with the business profile of the promoted company. The ability to set up a business card or publish an industry article in the most valuable places can cost up to several thousand. PLN. Link building includes:
- Analysis and (if necessary) removal of worthless or harmful incoming links
- search for valuable places to publish links – such as: valuable PBNs, public sites, dedicated backlinks
- publication of sponsored articles in popular sites.
Content marketing
Content is of paramount importance for SEO, so content marketing is an indispensable element that must go into the price of SEO. Here’s what you should expect in this regard:
- analysis of the content on the website (in terms of users – customers and the requirements of Google search engine robots)
- eliminate duplicate content on the website
- Analysis of the content available on competitors’ sites that rank top in Google
- Optimization of content that is already on the site
- creation and publication of new content on the site (upon prior approval)
- Regular creation of articles for the company blog.
Analytics and reporting
In the course of SEO, analytics basically don’t stop – competition in Google doesn’t sleep, search engine requirements are constantly changing, your website or company’s offerings also often undergo updates or other changes – and an SEO must keep up with all this. Therefore, the price list of positioning in my company also includes:
- monthly visibility report
- telephone and e-mail consultations, teleconferences – as needed and in the most convenient way for you.
Positioning of websites – collective price list
Here’s what SEO costs look like, specifically SEO optimization costs
- An hour of work of a positioner – SEO specialist is approx. 150 PLN (the scale of time needed for optimization depends on the size of the website)
- Strategy building and analysis of activities – min. 2-3h a month, the work of a positioner 150zl/h (it is about analyzing the site using google tools and SEO plugins, but also analyzing the competition and creating strategies for expanding the site, content and finding places to publish valuable links)
- The cost of creating texts for the website – can be priced per number of characters written or per hour of copywriter’s work, let’s assume that the creation of texts for the blog itself, which should be published at least twice a month and count at least 5 thousand. characters with spaces is the cost from 50 to 250 PLN per article (depending on the level of specialization and the length of the text)
- Content optimization – refining the uniqueness of texts, correctness of headings, insertion of graphics and videos, internal linking – the cost of an hour of work is approx. 200 zł
- acquisition of external links – min. 30 links per month for a medium-sized website – searching directories, publishing entries is about 2 -10 hours of work of positioner per month and the cost is about 300 – 1500 PLN.
Additional costs affecting the positioning price list are generated by subscriptions and access to paid tools that support positioning activities, specifically, among others. Monitoring of phrases, monitoring of positions, competitive analysis, text effectiveness, search for linking sites, etc. It’s good if the SEO company officially talks about using tools like Senuto , SemStorm or Ahrefs. These are just examples, because the tools that SEOs and copywriters use are really quite a lot. Of course, not all of them are paid, as those from Google are not(Google Analytics or Google Search Console). However, the cost of using several tools is several hundred zlotys per month.
What does black hat SEO have to do with the price of SEO?
In my courses, I show that even if you don’t have a big budget at your disposal, you can get started with SEO. URL optimization or content expansion will help you increase visibility. However, if an SEO agency promises miracles for a few hundred a month, you’d better be careful.
In the past, Google has forgiven positioners a lot. I am talking here about the so-called. black hat SEO, or unethical and dangerous SEO methods. Agencies focused on quick and cheap results are rapidly acquiring a large number of low-quality links. They also often clog up the site with long, low-value SEO text, saturated with keywords. Such measures are effective, but in the short run. Nowadays, Google’s algorithms are sophisticated enough to quickly detect SPAMmer methods of increasing page visibility. Such a site may be subject to a penalty from Google (reduction in search engine position) or even a ban (removal of the site from Google’s index).
What if the cost of SEO is too high?
With a low budget (100-300 zlotys), it is more profitable to operate safely in-house than to count on an agency to provide long-term growth for you. Running costs, staff salaries – for such an offer to pay off for the agency, the contribution of SEO work for your site must be really small.
You can take advantage of my proposal – a free and no-obligation consultation. Watch the video and you’ll know what it’s all about:
You can also use my free SEO Guide:
SEO agencies’ offers differ!
Why, in a good agency, do you pay a subscription every month, instead of billing for the effect? Because positioning is a process. It is not enough to expand the content on the site once and publish a few sponsored articles – you need to work regularly. Billing agencies usually artificially pump up the results when the billing period is approaching, and the rest of the time they don’t take care of your site. Items are rising fast, but falling just as fast. In many large agencies, one positioner has several hundred clients under his care. You can answer for yourself how much time you can manage to devote to each of them.
Also beware of the long duration of the contract without the possibility of termination. Such a solution is often used by agencies that initially provide good results, but later stop working on the site and keep clients with high contractual penalties. A better option is an indefinite contract with a short notice period (e.g., one month).
Summary
How to choose the best price offer for SEO? Most importantly – going solely by price when choosing an SEO service provider is very disastrous! Make sure you talk to a reliable business partner, preferably one with experience. It is also a very correct step to check reviews and case studies – you will get an idea of what standard you can expect from a particular agency.
Looking for professional SEO at a good price? Feel free to contact me!
