SEO Charges: How Much Does SEO Cost?(Comprehensive Guide)

Hourly SEO Cost

How much does SEO cost you hourly?

You might find an hourly rate charged by freelancers or independent contractors offering SEO services to smaller clients. But the per-hour SEO cost model is less likely preferred by agencies or online marketing companies. Also, this SEO cost pricing model is an excellent option for those with a tighter budget who want more control over their SEO campaign.

It is a model where SEO services cost you how many hours are needed to invest in a particular project. On average, with this per hr. Model SEO costs between $100 to $250 per hour. 

• Hourly rate for SEO agencies is $75–100/hour. 
• Hourly rate for SEO freelancers is around  $50-$150/hour.
• Hourly rate For SEO consultants is about $100–$150/hour.

Monthly Retainer Plan

How much does SEO cost you according to the monthly retainer plan?

More significant SEO and marketing agencies commonly prefer to charge a fixed price monthly as their service fee. They often come with different monthly SEO packages with specific sets of services, such as keyword research, competitor research, SEO content writing, technical audits, content marketing audits, link building, digital PR, and more. Some agencies offer custom SEO plans that allow you to choose SEO services with an agreed monthly price.

On average, SEO charges for a monthly retainer plan ranges from $1500 to $5000 per month. 

Project-based SEO Costs

How much does SEO cost you per project?

If we talk about per-project SEO cost, it is the pricing model where SEO companies/agencies charge a one-off fee for a particular SEO project. In this scenario, agencies discuss your project SEO needs and goals and then finalize a mutually agreed total cost. This per-project SEO cost model allows more customization in SEO services.

Regarding numbers, SEO service costs per project depend on the project, organization size, and requirements. So how much does SEO cost per month? For small companies, the average cost of SEO is $750 to $2000/ month or $5000 to $30,000 for one-time projects, whereas the range goes up for larger, enterprise-level companies. 

On average, SEO costs per project may range between $1,500 to $ 5,000/month and up.

Self-service SEO Costs

How much does SEO cost you according to Self-service?

As the name suggests, in Self-service SEO charges, you visit an SEO agency’s website, select the SEO work you need and pay for it within a few clicks.

Why do people use it?

Because it’s easy and straightforward and also, it doesn’t need to

• Contact an SEO agency
• Have a discovery call
• Get a proposal
• Wait for invoice

Note: - It doesn’t work for all types of SEO services. 

But having said that, Self-service SEO works well for SEO services such as link building. 

1. National SEO

This organic search marketing plan advertises your organization’s website to rank for a broad range of highly-searched keywords on a national or regional level. When anyone searches for any of these keywords on a search engine, the positive outcome is that your website ranks at the top of the search results. National SEO plans are best for businesses that wish to establish a national online presence. 

As never before, businesses need to concentrate on their digital presence in today’s technology-driven society. The no. of businesses using SEO services nationally is much greater than that of local businesses, fabricating a highly competing market. These SEO strategies will alter how your business competes in the market by expanding your reach across the country and gaining your target client base, leading to a positive ROI.

Clearly, a broad range of audiences and highly competitive keywords can bring greater benefits to your business. When creating a content strategy for national SEO services, it's necessary to know the changes it can bring once you complete the SEO tasks included in your strategy.  

How Much Does National SEO Cost?

How much does SEO cost per month? If you plan to evaluate a cost-effective national SEO service or compare SEO providers, do some research. Even though SEO has become part and parcel of most of the extensive marketing efforts and there’s a widespread set of best practice basics, its costs depend upon the keyword, competition, and the sector.

Let’s look at the factors that determine the pricing of national SEO services for your website:

• Keywords

The no. of keywords you wish your website to rank for will decide the average cost of national SEO services. If the no. of keywords is limited, you should not have a problem getting local SEO done with average pricing ranging from $500 to $1500/month. 

Note: Businesses may choose custom pricing at a premium rate if the keyword list is long. 

• Competition

Another vital element in deciding how much national SEO services will cost your company is - “competition for your targeted keywords.” 

If your targeted keywords have high competition, then it’ll be hard for an SEO agency to get your site to rank higher for them. Therefore, there could be chances that they might charge you for extra effort. 

• Industry

One more significant factor that can play an essential role in determining local SEO services pricing is - Industry competition.

Companies in highly competitive industries often face ranking difficulties as numerous sites try to position themselves higher on SERPs for the same keywords. 

The respective SEO agency will have to work hard to optimize everything and succeed in each task so that your website ranks higher in the respective category. 

2. eCommerce SEO

These SEO services help eCommerce businesses capture high-valued shoppers by accurately finding out what those customers are looking for and taking the necessary actions to convert them into buyers. 

It's the best of both worlds for companies as well as prospect shoppers! In order to succeed in the eCommerce sector, your business needs to have an eCommerce SEO strategy that’ll help your product to rank on the first page of the search engine result page. 

Simply put, you must optimize all the aspects of your product’s listing- from H! Tags, product descriptions, meta details, internal link structure, and site navigation- to offer excellent UX. 

How Much Does eCommerce SEO Service Cost?

Now that you know more about eCommerce SEO, you may plan to invest in that. But the critical question is: how much does SEO service cost?

Even though there’s no fixed answer to how much eCommerce SEO costs because it differs hugely. Also, there’s no fixed cost for SEO services. Therefore, marketing agencies can charge all they really want for these SEO services. And this could make it hard to find the right SEO company with excellent services at an economical price. 

But if you do research, determining what is suitable for your business will make it a less stressful task. 

Let’s look at the factors that determine the pricing of national SEO services for your website:

• No. Of Products

If you’ve got more products to sell, you’ll have more pages to optimize, and it’ll increase the pricing of eCommerce SEO services. Therefore, it’s always best to know how many product pages are ‘ready’ for SEO work. 

• Your Niche

Every eCommerce SEO agency charges a different cost for SEO services, and the cost structure might change based on your niche. An experienced SEO firm specializing in many eCommerce SEO projects in your industry might also possess expertise in that field and charge more for that specific service. 

3. Local SEO

This online search engine optimization strategy helps your company emerge as the most prominent business in Google’s local search results. These SEO strategies benefit businesses that have a physical presence or serve a specific geographic location. 

When someone searches for any specific keyword related to your business, a map with three listings, also referred to as the “3-pack”, appears below it. Local SEO strategies can help position your company in those 3-pack results. 

In earlier days, people mostly used desktop computers; therefore, even though local SEO had been around for a long time, its use was limited. But due to the recent growth in mobile network access, the number of mobile searches has been increasing.

It has become increasingly necessary for the success of any company providing local products or services, including local marketers. Local SEO is the best way to earn local leads through calls and messages from prospective customers. 

Based on your business objectives and budget, you can select any local SEO services to succeed in your digital marketing venture. 

How Much Does Local SEO Cost?

One of the best solutions to get maximum leads and conversions for your local company is using accurate Google map optimization. Ensure that your business information like name, address, and contact details are the same at all places. Because it helps develop customer trust in your business.

Let’s check how much you can expect to pay according to various tiers:

1. Basic Local SEO

Consistency in Name and address is essential.

Google local search algorithms accolade companies that maintain constant NAP on their Google My Business Profile listing. The more constant your company’s name and address are on Google, the better the opportunities to rank higher in local search results. Keeping the data consistent will help minimize the chances of mistakes made by search engines when they process the information.

Based on your chosen package, you might expect to pay around $100 – $150/per year for every location when making use of platforms such as Moz Local. Platforms such as Synup and Yext usually cost around $300 – $500/year for a single location, with volume discounts available to more prominent businesses.

• Local Citations
  Citations are an integral part of developing your company’s online presence. They help people find you and can affect your business’s local search engine rankings, so it’s essential that local citations must have the relevant keywords in them for local searches on search engines like Google or other platforms such as Yelp! Total high-quality citations will assure accurate data when ranking on the search engines with these websites.
• Small-Scale Local SEO Campaigns
  For these types of SEO campaigns you might need to pay anywhere between $500–$1000/month, based on the SEO agency you choose and their offerings.

Small-scale local SEO marketing tips could be suitable if you’re just beginning with local SEO services or your SEO agency operates in just one place. 

These SEO campaigns might lack a few added features of more comprehensive SEO strategies. However, they could still support your business ranking highest in search results, capturing more local customers and increasing revenue. 

2. Extensive Local SEO

An all-inclusive local SEO strategy like the one PageTraffic gives usually includes both internal website upkeep and external factors like links and citation optimization, mobile SEO, and online reviews management. 

Furthermore, they often contain customized reports, facilitating you to track your ROI quickly and understand precisely where your money is being spent.

For all-inclusive local SEO services, anticipate paying between $1000-$2000/month. Remember that these campaigns are costly; they’ll help you rank higher in SERPs and position your brand for lasting success.

It is no wonder the pricing of local SEO packages will increase when more extensive services are provided. Even though they’re time-consuming, extensive marketing campaigns can help significantly add more value and the best results. 

1. Size of the website

If your website has more pages, then no doubt the SEO service prices will be higher. Because certainly, optimizing a website with more pages needs much more time, and search engines like Google look for each page's metrics along with complete website metrics. And when a website is big, it’ll likely have more on-page and technical problems. 

Every web page requires at least fundamental optimization, or it can affect your page's ranking. 

Do you want to rank numerous pages for several keywords? Every target webpage requires to be technically precise with quality content. In addition, it's also essential to build the authority of every separate page, the means, developing valuable links, and redesigning the, in a few situations.

Simply put —- large websites need more work!

2. Business Goals

Do you want to crush big business goals? Then SEO will be a major part of making that happen. SEO goals can come down to 3 significant KPIs, i.e., 

• Improving online presence
• Increasing organic traffic,
• Increasing sales and conversions. 

You must rank for targeted keywords to accomplish each of these goals. But what if you’ve many keywords? 

Here’s the answer-

Your SEO campaign size required to fulfill your business goals will directly affect the charges you’ll need to pay for SEO.

• When you’re required to rank for more keywords, it’ll take a lot of time as well as effort
• If your SEO strategy also includes writing content constantly for targeting particular keywords, it’ll need several resources. 

Having the proper budget is more critical to assure you achieve the desired results. 

3. Your Niche

Is your company in a very competitive market? SEO could also be competitive. Although there are typically just a small amount of target keywords in a single industry or sector that help drive results. 

You’ll be up against some tough competition if your SEO competitors are

• Actively building quality links
• Regularly producing quality content
• Promoting online
• Are already popular brands

Because of this, it’s necessary for your SEO budget to match all of these so, you can compete with them. 

4. Services Required

As you know, most SEO companies do an initial website SEO audit before quoting the price. No doubt, they require an understanding of what services are needed to accomplish your goals before they can quote a price. 

For instance:

If your site requires to be redeveloped technically, it’ll take a lot of time, but if your website only requires performing on-page SEO, it shouldn’t take too much time.

The services can be categorized into two parts

1. The current condition of the website
2. What goals do you want to achieve?

The SEO agency can find out where you’re with your SEO and where you aspire to be. By the time they can figure out precisely what services are required to get you there.

5. Success Of The SEO Agency

SEO agencies that give desired outputs are expensive for a reason. The truth is that each SEO company and SEO professional values their work.  Each price depends on that “value.” And what’s important isn’t the cost you pay but the “Value” you get from the SEO agency. 

That’s why deciding on the budget first is essential before looking for a professional SEO company. 

At the same time, keep in mind that, - if the SEO firm has recognition for getting outstanding SEO results for their clients, they’ll cost you more, and it’s worth it!

6. Competitor & Market Research

To enter a competitive market and leverage the power of SEO, you must understand the market competitor and your competitors’ approach. This will also help you get to know your potential audiences and what could be the best way to reach them. In-depth research on market competitors can uncover potential opportunities you may not see otherwise.

Now coming to the incurring SEO cost on market/competitor study,  you may need to invest in some SEO marketing tools to get an in-depth market study. While some of this research can be done in-house, using some SEO tools to get an in-depth competitor analysis/market status, consulting SEO services would be the right choice, they can help you through other elements of SEO as well. 

7. Keyword research

SEO is all about keywords, keyword research is the very first and one of the most crucial steps in SEO practices. Keyword research is time-consuming and critical for your business's success. It involves identifying high-ranking keywords on which your competitors are driving traffic to their sites. And what are the keywords most often used by your potential customers?

Now come to the SEO cost for keyword research, although there are various tools out there for keyword research that are totally free. But as they are free, they deliver services with certain limitations, whereas only some other paid tools can also help you gain your competitor's keyword stock.

For example, Google’s Keyword Planner facilitates keyword research for free, but for more comprehensive research, a paid tool like Ahrefs is the right choice. Paying for tools can quickly mount up, so you can take services from an SEO agency to take care of everything in one package.

Here Are The Best keyword research tools

8. Content Creation And Optimization

Real fuel for SEO success is the high-quality, well-optimized content that adds value to your customer. For better organic ranking and improving SEO, a website needs high-quality, and as you might need more writing skills or time to invest, you again need to outsource a content writer to get the job done. 

9. Link Building Strategies

Link building is the practice of building “backlinks” to a website with the goal of improving domain authority and search engine visibility. It is one of the most important ranking factors for Google, other than SEO & tools for content optimization. Link building is an important part of SEO services because it helps search engines discover new web pages and improve SEO ranking.

Link building is a very activity of SEO that can be done well only by Offpage SEO experts. This also gets covered under the SEO package when you outsource service from any well-established digital agency.

10. Analytics & Reporting

Analytics plays an important role in SEO, helping to understand whether your website is performing optimally for search, what is generating traffic and what isn't and where to invest your time and money for best results.

Google Analytics is a free tool that you can use to track user behavior on your site. Keeping up with Google analytics best practices is also necessary to stay on top of your site’s performance and the competition, but you just need to have the required technical skills. You must know how to set up Google Analytics for your website. We also recommend you hire digital marketing services, where SEO professionals can help you with complete analytics and reporting to help get a better understanding of your site performance.

So, the above-listed factors would undoubtedly add an SEO cost you have to invest in, whether in required paid tools or hiring/outsourcing SEO services for any good Digital Marketing Agency.