SEO is not cheap if it’s done the right way. Put simply, if you pay next to nothing for your SEO, then this is exactly what your going to get nothing. Google has many ranking signals when it comes to SEO, if fact over 200 so you SEO agency has to be across a good percentage of these and this all costs money.
Let me breakdown these costs for you:
Small Business SEO
These are for businesses that are wanting to attract local clients and want to rank locally. You could be the local: dentist, medical practice, pharmacy, landscaper, tradie (plumbers, electricians, carpenters, brick layers) or even the local lawyer. The common thread here is that you really want business from your local area.
This means you want to rank on Google maps and also have a strong online digital presence when people search for your service in your suburb and a few surrounding suburbs.
An SEO cost to rank locally would be around the $1000 per month for a local SEO campaign.
Medium Sized Business SEO
An SEO campaign for medium sized businesses that want to target the whole Sydney area for their service would be $2000 – $10000 depending on the competitive nature of the keywords you are trying to target. The less competitive the niche the lesser the SEO budget. Conversely, as the niche becomes more competitive the harder it is to rank the website, therefore the costs will have to go up towards the $10,000 budget. This may seem like a lot of money for some businesses but budgets like this are very realistic considering how many other companies are all competing to be on page 1 of Google.
Competitive niches that require a large SEO budget for 2019 include: cosmetic surgeons, compensation lawyers, rubbish removal, travel websites, car hire, driving schools, builders, scaffolding, couriers, skip bins, health supplements….. the list goes on, but as you can see these industries are looking for customers outside the local area.
Multi National Companies SEO
These are the big well known businesses that are looking to target the whole of Australia and in 2019 it is not uncommon for these businesses to be paying anywhere between $10,000 and $50,000 for their SEO. This would include a full digital marketing campaign such as social media & content marketing and UX experience. Basically, you would have a team of SEO experts working full time on their campaign.
Pay Peanuts you get monkeys, especially with SEO
There are tons of SEO companies advertising online that they will get you to page 1 within 90 days or they will work for free or they are offering their SEO for crazy prices like $99 per month.
These are the kind of SEO prices & deals that so many people fall for. The issue is that they are essentially throwing their money out the window.
Think about it for a moment. Just say your in the skip bin hire business (which is an insanely competitive niche) and you go with an agency that’s offering you SEO for $500 per month.
Think about the amount of time they will spend on your SEO. Think about the number of back links they will be able to buy and the amount of content they will be able to write. The answer is next to nothing. With this $500 they will probably outsource everything, with worthless content and dodgy, low value back links that will amount to nothing. In fact, this will probably do more harm to your chances of ranking.
Related article: Pay Peanuts for SEO, your going to pay for it later!
If you think I’m exaggerating I’m not!
I have seen the bad results and helped so many businesses who have decided to pay next to nothing for their SEO. I’ve had to go in there and remove all the previous back links and do a complete SEO and website audit.
When it comes to spending money on your SEO you really have to weigh the importance of decent Google rankings for your business. If you value this, then you are going to have to pay for it, especially in 2020. Google is placing far too much value on:
– quality link building
– great copywriting
– the best user experience for a website
and a host of other factors.
All this add up to the fact that be prepared to pay a decent amount for your SEO.
