How Much Should I Spend on SEO?
Almost every
entrepreneur is going to invest in search engine optimization (SEO). You have
no choice because anyone who seeks services or products does this via Google
search engine. Online marketing is essential to survive in a web-driven world.
The question to ask
is: how much should you spend on SEO?
What are the affordable prices? SEO prices vary widely. It is mostly
difficult to decide. Then how do we determine the price?
It depends on your
goal, how the website is running and where to invest into.
Search engine
optimization (SEO) is a highly broad field. It is a discipline that that cut
across design, markup languages, conversion, usability (ease of use),
Copywriting (web texts), Public Relations, Social Media, and promotion.
A SEO'er is often a generalist in these disciplines and has
reasonable intelligence and specialized in one of these fields. It's your
responsibility as an entrepreneur to seek an SEO'er which is both a generalist
and specialized in a subject that your website gets the most. Maybe it's better
first to conduct a site analysis or ask a SEO'er, for a small fee, to see what
the biggest problems are on your website. This can save an enormous amount of
time and cost.
But what SEO costs now average?
Three pricing models use SEO agencies. The three prices are
based on research from Moz.com.
Per month on average 250 to $ 2,500
Per project on average 1,000 to $ 7,500
Per hour on average 75 to $ 175
Search engine optimization costs
The price is mainly determined by the difficulty of the
project, the complexity of the project, the knowledge and experience of the
SEO'er or SEO agency and the size of the project. To get the SEO cost, you
should know how a SEO process runs. Such SEO process consists of several stages
• Website analysis
• Keyword analysis
• Competitive
analysis
• SEO strategy
• Technical
optimization work
• Content
optimization
• Content creation
• Promotion (link
building)
• Site analysis
A search engine
optimization process always starts with a website analysis. It lies on the
route of the job they are looking for exactly. Thus SEO'er often begins with
analyzing the technical aspects of the site. How well is the site technically
constructed? Has the web designer delivered a clean code and index the site
properly (read) by the search engine? Is there duplicate content (duplicate
content)? A good index website is essential to achieve good rankings. Then the
SEO'er looks often to navigation (information structure), how much content
(text and illustration) is available on the website, how texts are constructed
(from SEO perspective), how many websites there point to your website and which
websites to do that.
The SEO'er has the process knowledge in usability (ease of
use), copywriting (writing texts), navigational structures, markup languages,
programming languages, and techniques employed by the search engine to index a
website needed. If problems are found, also SEO'er often deepens the cause of
the problem and looking for solutions.
How experienced is the SEO’er
How experienced is the SEO'er, how effective can he do his
job. How complex your site is, the longer the site analysis. The improvements
should then be documented. Such an analysis can take an hour (at very small sites),
but also, for example, 40 hours (at complex sites). Usually, such an analysis
will take 2-8 hours.
Keyword Analysis
The next step is to translate your goals into specific
keywords or keyword themes which you want, need. The SEO'er uses various tools
to find related keywords and to see how many visitors (and indirect
conversions) such keyword can produce. The size of the keyword analysis depends
on the complexity of your site and your goals.
SEO costs and SEO agencies
On the Web to find there are thousands of companies that
offer search engine optimization. It can be tough for webmasters and
entrepreneurs to offer to find a good match with an organization that offers
excellent quality. You have to watch quality, price, and reliability of the
organization. It’s hard to measure the quality and reliability of an
organization when you're not very familiar with search engine optimization.
Separating the wheat from the chaff
Search engine optimization can be quite complex for
entrepreneurs who just delve into internet marketing. Because it is relatively
complex, many people cannot see at a glance whether the company offering search
engine optimization delivers quality work.
Beware of 'scammers.'
Some companies abuse the lack of knowledge about search engine
optimization among entrepreneurs. They offer standard search engine
optimization processes and link building packages and make big promises.
Promises they cannot keep. If you deal with such people, you stand the chance
of losing a lot of money. Because you will have no new visitors and the
promises won’t be delivered. So be very skeptical if you encounter packs of
10-100 dollars per month. When someone is manipulating the search engine to get
higher in Google, this can lead to a significant drop in the results or even a
ban.
Calculate prices SEO
The position of a web page is determined by the search engine
based on hundreds of factors. It is partly determined by the usability,
relevance, and quality of the web. You get to deal with the timeliness of the
website and the appreciation and presence of your website on the web.
Broad knowledge and time consuming
The agency or person offering SEO need to have the knowledge
of the technology behind the site, usability, copywriting, marketing (promotion
of web pages/services) and social media. This helps create a kind of synergy
between them all. The result of this synergy is a higher position. Because the
systematic improvement of many aspects takes time, a complete search engine
optimization strategy can cost a lot. It is common that you can see rates from
$50 to 150 per hour.
How can you reduce costs?
The question is: how
do you reduce cost without sacrificing quality?
You can cut costs by doing some self (collaborate) to hire a
smaller agency or freelancer or to specialize on (for your website) most
important aspects. If your site has some post already. This takes less time and therefore costs
less.
What can you do?
Do everything yourself. Takes time (save time by buying an
e-book/book or an opinion) Try and Network with top guys in the field.
Conclusion
Most entrepreneurs today want marketing with a good ROI
(Return on investments). SEO offers many more advantages than other marketing
such as direct mail, advertisements in magazines advertising, online ads, etc. Every
business will get enough customers by using SEO services. The question is how
much do you spend there and what do you get for it. Choose a quality SEO based
on what you will need to achieve.
