Different Types Of SEO Pricing Models.

2024-09-04 | 198 Print PDF

How Much is SEO Work Worth For You To Be Really Paying?

Search Engine Optimization has come a long way in being a part and parcel of online marketing and a source of reliable traffic to websites. I think it is a crime in this age for a business based online not to capitalize on the success of SEO, why? Because as of 2023 99firm made a publication that states and I quote “SEO stats reveal that leads that come as a result of search engine optimization have a 14.6% average conversion rate, when compared to local printing and traditional media advert outlet you can get a conversion rate of 1.7%”.

Conversion rates vary by industry and mediums used, but it’s a fact that SEO generally converts at a higher rate than social media, and the reason for this can not be more obvious than the stain you have on a white sheet. It is common sense; people search for a service and those you have to pitch to for conversion, which of these set of people do you think will convert more? You will know the value of purchase if you observe the power shift in purchase power if you go to your customers for sales versus them coming to your for purchase.

Recommended Read: Social Media Marketing vs Search Engine Marketing

Recommended Read: What is SEO in Marketing

seo web analyst blogger community

image courtesy: searchlogisitics.com

Now back on topic; if you truly understood how vital SEO is for your business then you will understand that you need to work out the right SEO work plan for your business. Please note not all SEO are the same, because when executing SEO by different individuals, you will not get the same results and performance that’s why we have search engine ranking positions.

Even if you are to consider SEO as a business investment as the results are not instant gratifying you might need to give it time to start generation traction for the business, which now beg the question; how long can your keywords rank for before they start loosing importance and ranking position. So, the type of SEO consultant or SEO specialist handling your SEO work is also crucial in terms of pedigree, proficiency, and experience all matters, so you do not end up wasting your money.

Recommended Read: How To Evaluate SEO Effectiveness

Hence the need for you to know the types of SEO pricing models we have currently and how you can negotiate the best offer for yourself and your website long term SEO results. Depending on the type of SEO strategies you want deploy you need this piece of information to help you leverage your SEO pricing with your SEO work.

The 4 Major Types of SEO Pricing Models

1.) Hourly SEO Pricing Model: This is a much more straightforward SEO pricing model that is best suited for minute SEO job like an SEO audit or and SEO analysis of a website. If you have a simple request for an SEO work on your website like ranking a very low profile keyword e.g your domain brand name, then this pricing model can be very suitable.

Mostly you will find this type of SEO pricing model being practiced by freelancers and SEO consultants, that will charge you a fixed fee per hour for their time and job execution on your website, so in this regards you need to know the clear things they will be doing, from which you can have a sense of negotiation with what you can afford. The pricing for an hourly SEO pricing model starts from as low as $15 per hour to $50 per hour, depending on the nature of the SEO work.

2.) Monthly SEO Pricing Model: Similar to the hourly SEO pricing model, this type of model is also fixed and contains more work outline than the hourly in terms of you are not bitty picky about what the SEO expert will do on your website, it is a total SEO package that comes with reporting and optimization of a website single page in most cases, and the major keyword optimization are best recommended to be 8 per single page, It is the most popular among the SEO pricing models.

Now when it comes to the monthly SEO pricing model you need to understand that it’s open to negotiation and the level of SEO expert you hire to execute your SEO work also matters. You can get a monthly SEO pricing model at a low priced of $300 per month from an entry SEO worker to $1000 from an intermediate or seasonal SEO worker, it all depends on your keyword choices and difficulty.

3.) Project -Base SEO Pricing Model: Arguably all SEO work to me are seen as projects but in some scenarios you do have some SEO work that are very cumbersome in nature and may require you optimizing an entire website with 100s of pages. Such SEO work are classified as enterprise SEO and are synonymous to e-commerce websites. They are truly breath taking and are managed by automated tools for easy performance tracking and reporting. Most project based SEO pricing models are very high priced and they range from $5000 per month to $50,000 per month depending on the amount of keywords difficulty and the web pages to rank for.

4.) Performance Based SEO Pricing Model: The performance based is quite a rare SEO pricing model practice, may be because it’s the most expensive in terms of the fact that the SEO expert do undergo risk of not earning their funds in full or maybe because the pricing doesn’t favor them, since they do not manage where your website will rank on the search engine.

But either way using this model can actually make SEO work more expensive as you will be paid with respect to how your SEO keyword performance are position on search engine. So if you work out a top 3 ranking position for a keyword and offer a Top 5, you will be paid in within the agreed terms of the contract after the contract duration, with this approach you as an SEO expert can actually square up for a bonus if you do hit your targets…like have said earlier SEO specialist do not control where the website will finally rank as there are many factors that may arise. Hence why this type of model pricing is the rarest and most expensive, because it also comes with a bit of urgency for the ranking position to perform better as your SEO work duration comes close to an end.

Now there are some factors that can also affect SEO pricing, these includes;

The type of agency, consultant or individual (Here you look at the experience, the size, the location, accolades, reviews etc) you don’t expert a 5 star agency to price the same way with a 3 star agency? Customers attestation and the quality of work performance should speak volume over anything else.
The status of any pre-exist SEO work executed on the website; most clients do not know that it is far easier to admit if you have given out your website for SEO before than to redo SEO again, because both approach are different, and depending on the outcome of the SEO expert findings (in depth audit) they can charge you fairly. Any experience SEO expert will eventually catch on if you don’t admit this, as they will request for your search engine console or set up another one for you from which they will see the impact of SEO done on your website.
The last will be the SEO goals which boils down to the type of keywords as well to target this goals, the required ranking position to target this goals and the local SEO procedures to apply to get your set of goals.

When you put all these factors into consideration you will be able to charge and prepare the right invoice for your clients and they will be able to price you likewise, NOTE: do not forget to include VAT separately to what your charging clients (Even as a consultant) you can use this as a discount offer later on during your total pricing sum.

comments powered by Disqus

Author

Olatunji Adetunji

I am a seo web analyst and have a love for anything online marketing. Have been able to perform researches using the built up internet marketing tool; seo web analyst as a case study and will be using the web marketing tool (platform).