How Much Do SEO Services Cost?

By Colette Nichol, SEO & Story Strategist

"Ok, but exactly how MUCH do SEO services cost?"

If you're thinking about investing in SEO services so you can get more organic traffic to your website, cost is often going to be at the top of your mind.

What will it cost and will it be worth it?

First, let's address the issue of cost. SEO services can be priced in a variety of ways. While it's common to have ongoing monthly contracts for SEO work, you can also pay a one-off project fee for consulting or one-time campaign.

Typically SEO services cost US $1200 to $4000 per month for ongoing SEO projects. For enterprise SEO, it wouldn't be unusual to pay $10,000 to $20,000 per month for SEO based on the scope of the project. Like any service, the scope determines the cost.

Think of buying SEO like buying a car.

You can buy a 15-year old jalopy or you can buy a Rolls Royce. And, you can buy everything in between. It's really no different with SEO. You typically want to buy a car that will get you from A to B in a reliable and efficient manner. You don't want it to break down. And you probably also want a few extra features like air conditioning and a great stereo system.

With car buying you pay more to have a better, safer, more reliable car with better features.

Buy SEO isn't that much different from buying a car. Better quality will cost more.

With SEO, what you pay depends on how much content and the level of resources that will be deployed to provide you with the results that you want. The more you want your SEO team to do for you ( to save you time and speed up results) the more it will cost.

If you want to grow super fast, you'll need a lot of content.

But if you're in a niche with really low competition, and you don't need tons of content to grow, it will cost you less.

How do I know if the cost of SEO will be worth it?

The best way to figure out if the cost of SEO will be worth it to you is to ask the company who is giving you a proposal to estimate the potential ROI of doing SEO over the medium and long term and for the best and worst case scenario.

I typically do this anyway because I don't want to take on projects that won't provide ROI.

In fact, I don't want to take on projects that won't be successful within the confines of a client's budget. Meaning, if I don't think I can get results at a price point that your business can afford, this isn't a good project for me and my team. We like to win! And we want you to win!

Think of the top phrases your ideal clients type into Google. What would those be worth to you?

If you have some website content and are getting a little bit of organic traffic, but not much, then you're likely a great candidate for SEO. Think of the top things you think your ideal clients are typing into Google.

Type them into Google. And see who is ranking for those terms.

Now, what do you think would happen to your business if you could be in position 1, 2, or 3 for those search terms?

You can get granular by looking at the search volume for particular terms in your area. Then you can calculate potential ROI by taking the low, high and medium traffic opportunity number and multiplying it by an estimated value per visitor dollar number.

If you already know your website's visitors to leads conversion rate and your leads to sales conversion rate, then you can roughly calculate how much organic relevant traffic you need to increase revenue.

Find Out the Traffic Opportunity

Every niche has a traffic opportunity.

In some cases the traffic opportunity is massive. It can be exciting to see that you're sitting on a traffic goldmine. Sometimes, in the case of local SEO, the real traffic goldmine actually comes from being in the map pack. In other words, getting your Google Business Profile to show up on the map section of the Google search results page is where you're going to see massive traction. Your website is just the gravy.

But in other cases, the real traffic comes from being found in the regular search results.

You want your website to come up in position 1, 2 or 3. In still other cases, what you're aiming for is to have your product show up on Google images or in Google shopping.

We mostly work with clients who need to show up in the map pack or on the regular search results list. That's where service-driven businesses and experts will typically get the most relevant traffic.

By using a keyword tool like Ubersuggest or Ahrefs, you can figure out what the approximate volume of traffic is for your niche. From there, you can estimate how much a portion of that traffic would be worth to you. And you can also estimate how difficult it will be to obtain that traffic based on the competition for your top keywords.

Want to learn more about how SEO can help your business grow?

Schedule a 15-minute zoom call with an SEO expert.

Schedule an SEO Chat