When you pay for SEO services, you get what you pay for, and when you refrain from investing in the SEO module, you tend to lose market share to your competition. Many small business owners are very much focused on running their businesses. They do not treat SEO as a commodity. They work on it and make ramifications in their business model.
You should invest time to educate yourself on SEO. You should set an SEO budget that delivers a strong return on investment over time.
Following are the things you should keep in mind while setting a budget for a small business-
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Your goals need to be achievable
Your goals should be achievable, and you should analyse what you want and how much budget you have to attain it. Remembering that your high-level business goals will determine what tactics are needed for success would be best. You should start setting your business goals for creating a framework for developing an action plan with the necessary budget.
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SEO cost calculator
You should first calculate if the average cost of your SEO Company is worth it for your business. Many search engine journals have put together an SEO cost calculator to demonstrate how to measure the return on investment of SEO. Sometimes, the ROI needs to be more accurate when you fail to calculate the value of a new customer for your small business.
The proper method to calculate the ROI of SEO is to add the lifetime value of the customers to your SEO Cost calculator.
What is the cost of SEO and the pricing for small businesses?
The cost of SEO depends hugely on the SEO pricing model for small businesses.
The following are some factors affecting it-
- Pricing model.
All the SEO agencies and freelancers typically charge based on four pricing models: hourly rates, performance-based, monthly retainer and one-time SEO pricing project fees.
- Services.
Every project depends on your business goals, and you may be an enterprise company at the top of the industry. You can also be a local business which is just starting. Depending on your business goals, you will also require different SEO services.
- Scale.
A local business which serves a small city will cost less than a local business which serves an entire state as a whole. The costs will vary depending on the scale necessary for executing your campaign.
- Experience.
All the SEO agencies and freelancers that have been in business for 2+ years cost nearly double that of the SEO agencies and freelancers that have been in the business for less than two years. This means you are paying for the experience of 2+ years and delivering strong ROI for small businesses.
Many people avail of the services of SEO Brisbane, a digital marketing agency that provides people with different types of SEO services.
SEO pricing models for the small business
Whether you are hiring any kind of SEO company or any freelancer agency, there are different pricing models you can expect to encounter when searching to hire an SEO agency.
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Hourly pricing model
According to a survey conducted by some elite agencies, the average cost of SEO is $68/hour for freelancers. SEO providers can take longer to deliver the work, and the longer the work takes, the more money the SEO providers can make.
2. Performance-based
The average cost of all the performance-based projects varies based on the payout. All small businesses should go for performance-based pricing. However, you should not hire SEO agencies that work for free until they generate leads, new customers and traffic. SEO is a very long-term strategy where you could expect at least 6 to 8 months to begin seeing fantastic results in the leads, traffic and new customers. You should hire an SEO agency with performance-based deliverables. The best thing to do is to hire an agency with a money-back guarantee.
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Monthly retainer
According to a survey of 1200 business owners and over 350+ agencies and freelancers, the average monthly income for SEO is $500 to $800 a month. Monthly retainers are also great for working month-to-month with SEO agencies and freelancers. However, there is an issue with monthly retainers is that you may not be receiving the same volume of work every month. It tends to differ from month to month. Monthly retainers recur monthly.
You should be very careful of some agencies as if you ask questions about what is being delivered and the results, they might say that SEO takes time. Hence, it is very important to conduct proper research before signing up with any agency.
One more issue with monthly retainers is that since monthly retainers are based on monthly, you are expecting results every month. SEO services take at least 6 to 8 months on average for being able to witness fantastic results. This is what many small business owners will leave after three months of working with an agency as they have not received the results they were promised.
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One-time project fee
One-time projects are great for strategies and consulting to help your in-house team deliver more efficient results. The major issue with one-time project fees in when the expectations are not set correctly, you cannot have transparency in the business.
We all are no strangers to the fact that SEO is a long term strategy and one-time projects are the best for optimizing and improving your existing strategy. For gaining an outside perspective from an SEO consultant, you should chalk out a proper strategy for the business.
SEO audit is one such thing that could help you uncover conversions issues and SEO issues that your in-house team could not execute.
The key to not being taken advantage of is working with SEO agencies which provide transparent explanations of all the services they provide to their clients. These explanations should align well with your business goals and they should also demonstrate how they will help improve return on investment over time. Many freelancers will also tack on unnecessary services as they do not care about exceeding your business goals and increasing your return on investment, blogs.