Most business owners know that they need to invest in SEO if they want to get real growth, drive traffic, and increase conversions.
Since SEO is such a complex process, it makes sense to turn to an expert who provides SEO services, at least to help you create a strategy. But let’s get down to it: why is SEO so expensive?
In this article, we’ll discuss SEO pricing and look at some of the top reasons why this form of marketing strategy is so expensive in 2020.
What Drives up SEO Costs?
Search engine optimisation is its own digital marketing effort. The process itself consists of many different lawyers, all working together to achieve a better performing website and higher rankings in the search engine result pages.
If you want to turn to an SEO professional for help, you’ll obviously consider the price for their services. Even if you know SEO is an investment, small businesses, in particular, can’t afford to spend whatever on their marketing strategies, even if it is for something so vital as SEO.
Let’s look at why SEO costs so much in 2020:
1. It’s a Process That Takes Time
Unfortunately, SEO won’t bring results overnight. It’s a long road to the top of the SERPs, and any decent SEO agency will tell you flat out that you’re looking at months before you see any results.
So it could boil down to simple maths. You pay someone to consciously work on your SEO strategy, test it, improve it, test it again. When you add up the months of this work, your SEO expert could be charging quite a lot.
2. It Takes Work. And Lots of It
SEO needs time, but it’s not like you plant a seed and wait to watch it grow. Your SEO strategy needs continuous nourishment, and that requires a lot of work you may not realise just yet.
Some SEO tasks could be marked off in just a few days, while others take months of constant attention in order to improve your website. Here are just some of the task SEO needs:
Website auditing
most SEO agencies won’t start working on your project until they run their own audit to identify the issues with your website. Depending on how developed it is, this process can take even a few days or weeks, because the agency will also start developing an action plan to address the problems;
Keyword research
using the right keywords is essential to SEO, and it can take time to find the right keywords and then integrate them to your pages. Additionally, the “right keywords” can change over time, so part of the SEO expert’s job is to also keep their ear to the ground and continuously adapt to keyword changes;
Optimising local SEO
local customers need different approaches to be reached, and getting your website ready for local SEO isn’t as easy as you’d think. You need to leverage local keywords, set up listings, building a local presence, etc.
Improving website quality
Good page speed, responsive design, mobile-friendly design, easy and intuitive navigation are all part of what makes a good website in 2020. If your website isn’t in top shape when it comes to its quality, then getting to the top ranks will be almost impossible;
Link building
social media links, plus internal and external links are essential to any good SEO strategy. While internal links are easy to set up, external ones, backlinks, in particular, take a lot more time. These are the links that are placed on other, preferable high-authority websites that redirect users to your platform. As for social media, well that requires a completely different strategy in itself.
3. It Really Takes an Expert
You can find a lot of people with knowledge on SEO and how search engines work, but it doesn’t mean they are an SEO expert.
Implementing such a complicated strategy requires someone with the right combination of skills, experience, and creativity to push your site in the right direction. When you hire an SEO expert, you are hiring someone who’s basically dedicated their career to understand the intricacies of SEO, who is constantly updating on search engine algorithm changes, and who is able to design and implement a strategy.
And considering just how complex such marketing strategies can be, that’s not a service that comes cheap.
What about Cheap SEO?
Some agencies may offer their marketing services for lower prices, but we’d recommend you don’t base your decision on SEO pricing alone.
The concept of cheap SEO is difficult to define, as being cheap is a subjective notion, but if you look at multiple SEO agencies and spot one that offers a drastically lower price, think about what that agency may be able to offer you.
Quality SEO requires expertise, and SEO experts often don’t work for free, so it’s likely that these marketing agencies won’t be putting their top employees to work on your strategy. You could be getting someone without experience or even lack of skills on your project. You’ll be paying less for that, but you’ll also be wasting money down the drain.
Since SEO is a long-term process, it makes much more sense to optimise your SEO spending than to opt for cheap SEO services. Start with a professional audit, identify missed opportunities, then gradually start to tackle them. This way, you don’t have to spend a lot of money at once, and still benefit from top quality SEO services.
Make Your First SEO Steps with Us
Book a free 30-minute SEO strategy session with Search Engine Optimisation Expert at Australian Internet Advertising now to get a first glimpse at what it takes to optimise your website for better rankings.
