How Much Should SEO Cost?

When you start an online marketing campaign one of the most difficult decisions to make is deciding on how much you should spend on SEO. This is especially true when you might not see a return on investment for three, six or even twelve months in the future. However, it is a decision any serious business person looking to develop their company online and to start driving traffic to their website. This begs the question, What should SEO cost a company?

How Much Should SEO Cost

There are various aspects that require consideration when choosing how much you want to spend on SEO. The most important one might be how competitive your target market is.

For instance, if you want the keyword “home loans” you must be ready to pay much more than a less competitive keyword, such as “basket weaver” This is simply because there is more profit to be made in the keyword “home loans” which drives more competition and therefore more of an investment is required.

The cheapest way out is not never the best way to get SEO, and, in many cases,  cheap SEO is a more costly choice when you consider all the penalties you might incur from Google from poor link building techniques.

Getting results in today’s competitive market is a bit tricky and needs a great off-page SEO tactic utilizing several content-based strategies.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO includes any changes, optimizations or updates you directly make to your website. This includes improving your inner linking structure, optimizing your meta data and building a content strategy (blogging, social media) intended to add fresh and new content continually to your website.

Off-page SEO

This is where the big-time search engine results are attained. After your site is categorized for the keyword, you must build off-page SEO links to your page with keywords you wish to rank for. And because the process is a bit tedious, the integration of several strategies is essential to a link building strategy. They include:

• Link building
• Blogging
• Social bookmarking
• Video Marketing
• Press releases
• RSS feeds
• Article Marketing
• Blog commenting

Getting results using these tactics is not about knowing what you will do, but realizing how to do them properly. And when executed correctly, each of them work together as one system to attain optimum results and maximum leverage.

Take a Little Bit of Time to Understand SEO

Understanding how SEO functions and the effort needed to achieve a top ranking will help you have a better return on your investment. Successful SEO takes consistent, sustained and directly monitored efforts.

By equipping yourself with a little bit of basic knowledge you will be able to sort out the amateurs from the professionals. Below are a few things you can do to aid your decision making:

• Estimate Pay Per Click (PPC ) costs for your targeted keywords. This can be done with Adwords.
• Make use of Google Adwords Keyword Tool to get the top traffic keywords.
• Talk to other existing business owners who have experience in the SEO business and discover how SEO has assisted them to grow their companies.
• Last but not least, identify the revenue or traffic goals you wish to achieve every month.
• Knowing the difference between off-page and on-page SEO is also vital for those who want to succeed in online marketing. It is also vital for people who wonder how much SEO cost and its returns too.

How Much Are You Supposed To Pay?

You may be asking yourself, “How much should SEO cost?” The answer is, what you must pay is relative to what you want to earn every month. If you wish to make about $10,000 each month in earnings, don’t anticipate paying about $300 the same month to derive the result. The amount you should pay per month is a blend of hard work and expertise.

One way you can use to estimate how much you must use on SEO is to work out the equivalent PPC marketing cost. Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to display the anticipated cost-per-click of every keyword phrase and then pick “exact match” from your drop-down menu to see the approximated search volume every month for the same keyword phrase. As a rule, you must approximate that you will get about 10% search traffic in the number one spot without budget margins on the traffic you get.

Knowing all this, the question “How much does SEO cost?” will no longer linger in your mind. You will have all the calculations you need to know how much it costs and how much you expect in return.

A Word on Guarantees

Guarantees are only as good as the person or company that offers them. There have been cases of guarantees that sound good at first glance, but after you study the fine print they are nowhere close to what you want. This  makes doing your background research essential to the success of an online advertising campaign.

Don’t Hesitate to Ask Questions

Pay attention to the money you spend in the short term and in the long run instead of opting for the cheapest alternative at the time. Place your investment and trust in the companies that have:

• Clear answers to questions about their techniques and how they work
• Verified reports of existing customers
• Both off-page and on-page strategies
• Records of how they achieved goals for their customers in the most viable markets.
• The same methods primed on their sites
• Willingness to examine on why some of your targeted keywords have been chosen
• Regular coverage of rankings, conversions, activities and traffic

At the End of the Day, You Get What You Pay For

As you already know, SEO is a fast growing advertising strategy unlike any other medium. The only thing you need to do now is hot to apply it to your business, and the very first step is to employ the best organization that can assist you develop your company online. Some online advertising companies will make you think that it’s easy, but like anything else in life, SEO takes effort. The biggest worry here should be time lost and missed opportunities.

In business, if SEO was all that easy, everyone would be in it. So be sure to employ an agency with proven a track record, speak to their existing customers and use the tactics best suited to aid you develop your company online with the lowest risk.

How Much Should SEO Cost Infographic