How much does SEO cost?
How can small businesses with limited cash reserves compete effectively for search traffic without paying exorbitant consulting fees?
If you’re convinced that your business needs SEO work, but aren’t sure where to start, we’ve published an article appropriately titled, ‘Where do I start?’ If you’re kinda-sorta familiar with the concept of SEO, but want to explore that field more thoroughly, check out ‘What exactly is SEO?’ But if you’ve researched and learned to the point that you know search engine optimization is a priority for your small-business, and you’re just trying to figure out what it will or should cost you, read on.
In May of 2018, GrowthRamp.io published a study, which we’ve linked here, detailing their investigation into the current levels of pricing for professionals offering business-to-business search engine optimization services. Click the link below to take a look, but we’ll cover the broad strokes here.
SEO pricing IS ugly, and I’ll tell you why:
The value that SEO professionals provide is enormous, but small businesses are — by definition — not fiscal giants with unlimited resources to throw at problems, and for many owners, founders and executives, marketing concerns are often the easiest to push back, not think about and definitely not spend money on.
“ SEO is one of the best opportunities to get repeatable and scale-able growth.”
That language is arguably too soft. Search engines fuel our modern world and shape the structure of our lives. Google (and to lesser extent, the combination of all other search engines as a group; check out the ‘Search Engine Market Share’ chart I’ve linked below) is woven into the fabric of our daily routines in an infinite, diverse variety of ways, and the simple truth is that if your business doesn’t ‘rank’ (show up prominently, near the top) for keyword searches related to your industry and locale, its opportunities to grow and serve a broader client base are limited.
SEO is unequivocally the best marketing tool in your business’ arsenal, in part because of the enormous ROI. Paid digital ads on platforms like Facebook (which can be very effective and often are; Facebook’s demographic targeting capabilities are unparalleled, though I’d be lying if I said I thought Facebook was a force for good or an ethical, responsible company) are an effective and vital lever, but if you’re seeking strong ROI from a digital marketing tactic or strategy, SEO comes first.
Why?
At least for our clients, the most sensible and cost-effective route to growth is through leveraging organic/free tools and optimizing their presence on local listings, social media, etc. Having an optimized, visible listing in search results will even boost the effectiveness of your paid ads, ultimately.
In a sense, a large fraction of the service we provide for our clients is helping them adopt and optimize free tools. All it costs is time and attention.
It’s also not ‘hard,’ in the sense that, say, Calculus is hard (I failed it in college twice, but in my defense, I was an English major with multiple part-time media jobs) or studying the Earth’s core is hard. SEO is so easy, anybody could do it… if they spent hours every day staring at a computer screen, listening to podcasts, talking shop with fellow SEOs, studying trends and putting all that knowledge constantly into practice on behalf of clients.
But that said, I truly believe SEO is not some ethereal higher-knowledge granted to the worthy and wise, to be parceled out as needed to businesses that can afford to throw huge stacks of cash at their problems. Those businesses are already doing fine. What about the businesses run out of homes (a very common occurrence here in Texas, which is very pro-business, and especially in Houston, which somehow has virtually no zoning restrictions), that are making decisions like how cheaply to eat in order to afford a cell phone bill for another month and keep the business afloat? Where do they go?
That’s why the subtitle of GrowthRamp’s article is ‘SEO pricing is ugly.’ They mean ugly for the business owners and marketing departments in need of SEO work. I would argue that it’s actually ugly for us SEOs, too.
Many people in SEO undervalue their services. If you are good at SEO, you should be able to command at least $150 per hour, if not more.
There are very few businesses with SEO profiles so flawless and well-constructed/maintained that I couldn’t radically improve them, to the point that $150/hr will seem like a trivial expense. On the other hand, the vast majority of businesses that need SEO help the worst, who would benefit from it the most, don’t have anywhere near that kind of cash earmarked for those expenses.
In the 12/10 episode of ‘Last Week in Local’ (from Mike Blumenthal, one of the leading authorities on SEO, and someone whose work I follow very closely), Mary Bowling outlined the current situation for businesses, with SEO cost and value rising significantly every year: you’re going to have to find a way to handle SEO in-house. I literally jumped up from where I was sitting and pointed at the speaker and made some sort of agitated, overexcited noise (‘BRAAHHHPPP!’ I think it was) because that’s my company’s whole business model.
A huge part of my professional background (take a look at my LinkedIn profile, if you care to) is education. I spent 3.5 years with The Princeton Review teaching SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT and MCAT Verbal (plus a ton of AP tests). I was fortunate enough to have very good instructors and trainers throughout my tenure, and made the most of my time with the company, eventually becoming one of the 16 or so North American SAT Trainers, responsible for training new-hire test-prep instructors and institutional contracts, wherein TPR was contracted to come into a school and teach their teachers how to teach TPR test prep. Pedagogy and effective classroom management are subjects I obsessed over for years. After leaving TPR, I spent a semester as the full-time substitute teacher and test-prep specialist for YesPrep Gulfton.
I love teaching. Just like no matter what I specifically did professionally, I always knew I was a writer, and I would take that with me everywhere I went, I’m a teacher, both by nature and by habit.
So when I made my business’ Facebook Page, Alignable profile and optimized my Google My Business listing, I emphasized education and professional training. I’d hate to injure my arm patting myself on the back too vigorously, but I think our model is pretty forward-thinking and conforms to the actual landscape of business marketing, and especially small-business digital marketing.
Over the course of the last six months or so, we’ve refined and honed how, exactly, education/teaching/training intersect with our Local SEO and Content Strategy services.
What we came up with is this: we’d rather teach you to fish than take a meeting with you and return a week or two later with a stack of trout and a bill (you stack trout, right? I didn’t major in fishing).
Essentially, search/local HTX sends out trainers and instructors to teach the fundamentals of SEO and digital marketing to the business’ existing staff. When I visit a company’s headquarters or marketing department, I come prepared with full Google Team Drives full of strategic tips tailored to their specific business, helpful links to content and tools they’ll be using and a basic roadmap for SEO improvements, and then I sit down and teach them how to do what I do. Often for hours at a time (until the client’s eyes glaze over, usually; that’s my sign to wrap it up).
“SEO is expensive because it involves a lot of channels, effort applied over time and a skillset honed over years of experience to really see results.” — John Doherty
What I have discovered as I’ve taken on more clients and begun to see a variety of different industries, niches, individuals and business models is that virtually anyone can do what I do, provided they have a good teacher.
Conclusion
So to recap:
- You can expect to pay ~$150/hr or ~$1,000/month for quality SEO services
- Finding a way to bring SEO in-house is going to be vital to most businesses, and is the most cost-effective solution to the problem of search rankings.
I’ll be frank: I’m excellent at what I do (especially the teaching part, which I also especially love), but I’m not a prodigy or a unicorn. Other SEO firms may not openly advertise the same educational/training model that I do, but as a client and business-owner, you can push for a similar arrangement from whatever SEO professional or agency you’re considering choosing.
My recommendation to SMBs pondering how to tackle SEO cost-effectively is to either identify a promising employee already on staff (or make hiring someone suitable a priority) — someone who always seems to have weird, specific knowledge about Google searches or the science of search engines, indicating an interest in the nuts-and-bolts and mechanisms of the system — and grow your own SEO team organically, starting with them.
You can contract a group like search/local HTX (or here in Houston, Chris Keissling is another top-shelf SEO guy) to come in and teach your staff, if they’ll do it, but here’s an insider tip: every SEO I know who is worth a damn is extremely self-motivated and largely self-taught.
Guide your designated-SEO-er to resources like the HubSpot Academy, SEMrush, Google Digital Garage and other free courses and training that offer training in digital marketing proficiency. Give that employee the responsibility of educating your company’s other employees on the basics of SEO; there is no better way to learn and refine something than by having to teach it to someone else (trust me).
Adopt an education mindset, and commit to it. Grow your own SEO pro from the soil you’re sitting in.
The value of understanding and leveraging digital marketing mechanisms is only going to continue to increase, so good SEO professional services aren’t likely to drop significantly in price anytime soon. Anticipate the market’s course, and get out in front of it by focusing on training an in-house SEO.
