What Do the Majority of Businesses Pay for their SEO Service?
To put in perspective, I found through Search Engine Journal’s SEO Report of 2022 that 31.5% of businesses are spending $1,000-$5,000 per month on SEO Services. With 22.4% spending between $500-$1,000. 13.7% were coming in at $5,000-$10,000. With a 10.9% spending less than $500 on their SEO budget per month. The rest of the percent were either over $10,000 or undetermined for the last total of 12%.
The journal also did share that the majority of business with under a $5,000/mo budget were more likely to disperse a higher percent of their spending to SEO services, more so than what they would spend on paid advertising such as Influencer Marketing, Radio, Paper Ads, Media, Social Media, Design, etc. The reason for this, is that organic SEO leads and search traffic are far more important both short and long-term. When customers see you ranking high on Google, without seeing “sponsored” or “ad” they tend to trust your services more.
What Are Determining Factors For How Much SEO Costs?
A few key factors that determine the average cost of SEO services would include:
- Link Building
- Managing Online Reviews
- Content Management
- Paid Search Management
- Agency or Consultant’s experience
- Tools, Software, Resources needed
- Reporting
- Social Media
- Analytics
- Website Health
- Competition
When you start to look at the cost of search engine optimization, just remember that this will be a return on investment. Quite frankly, it’s the best ROI for any size business. You’re setting up your website for the ultimate success by making yourself more visible on Google’s search engines. Which generates your business leads, traffic and most importantly more sales.
Even when your business is closed for the day and the sales people go home, your website is still working for you. People are still searching for services and products they need long after everyone is closed for the day.
So when you are revisiting the cost of SEO, please focus on teaming up with a qualified and experienced partner, rather than the cheapest SEO service available. These low-cost SEO services that promise you the world, will not benefit your business. They in fact, could actually harm your Google rankings and even worse get your site removed from the search results.
How much does SEO cost if I hired in-house?
Well, if you happened to hire a single person to work full time. You’ll first want to make sure you really find a good SEO specialist. This will cost you somewhere between $50,000 – $120,000 per year. Just depending upon how much of an SEO expert you really want on payroll full time.
So I see this happen all the time, where companies will have no problem hiring an in-house SEO guy for 80k or so. But sometimes business owners see a SEO agency that charges $1,000-$2,000 per month for quality SEO work as too expensive. That is actually a fraction of the cost, to hire a whole team of proven experts. $2,000 per month is only $24,000 per year compared to an $80k salary.
How does SEO cost per hour or per month?
There’s not going to be many SEO agencies or consultants that are pricing their services all the same way. The size of your business, your business model, type of services you offer and SEO needs will give a better direction for the scope of your custom SEO plan and what you will pay for it.
Hourly
SEO services or consultants that are not working for an agency, generally may charge you by the hour. This has a pretty broad range of anywhere from $25 to $500 per hour I’d say. The majority of companies would be paying somewhere between $70 to $200 per hour. The factors to this just depend whether you are hiring a small team or an individual. Also a matter of hiring a newer SEO guy or someone with 10 or 20 years of experience with proven results.
Monthly
Monthly sits at the more popular method for business owners that want a consistent SEO plan and to have more availability for a stronger reach. SEO is an ongoing piece of marketing that is highly important, and is also a never ending race. The point is to not finish in 1st place, but to maintain that first position with a consistent pace.
At the low end of scale, somewhere around $500 per month. An agency would perform basic SEO tasks such as basic on-page optimization, basic backlinks and keyword research. When you start getting to the higher ends $2,000-$5,000 per month. Most agencies will produce high quality content that is search engine optimized and outreach it to other sites in order to build high quality links with strong page authority.
But all in all, most companies fall between these two ranges. The majority of companies are paying anywhere between $500 – $2,500 per month, investing into a custom SEO strategy. A huge benefit to getting started, is that you are building a relationship with your SEO expert. Over time they will be able to build out strong SEO for your site and also have a better understanding of you and your services. Creating better and stronger content time after time.
