What Influences the SEO Process Price? 10 Elements You Need to Take into Account
SEO is the cornerstone of modern online marketing activities. But how do you determine what the proper price for optimization services is? How do you analyze pricings of individual agencies to choose the most optimal offer? Keep reading today’s entry to discover 10 elements that influence the SEO process price and make an informed decision that will take your business to the next level!
Table of contents:
- 10 elements that influence the SEO process price
- The SEO process with Delante – what to expect?
- What influences the SEO process price? The takeaway
SEO is becoming more and more popular. No wonder you decided to invest in professional services. But how can you know whether a selected agency is trying to rip you off or whether the offered pricing is attractive? Let’s delve into details and discuss 10 factors that have an impact on the costs of SEO services!
10 elements that influence the SEO process price
1. Current website position
A quality SEO process starts with a website audit that allows the agency to evaluate current positions of your website and determine which elements need improvement. It’s one of the most important elements that make it possible to estimate the costs of the SEO process and the time required to achieve the intended results.
If a significant percentage of your subpages are ranked in distant positions in the search results, reaching the top 10 or top 50 will be a much more demanding and time-consuming process. That’s why your current website position and the goals you want to achieve are crucial factors that influence SEO process price.
2. Industry competitiveness
Imagine that you live in a small town and there are only two grocery stores to choose from. One of them is yours. Statistically speaking, 50% of people living in this town will decide to buy at your store and you can easily outdo your competitor by offering attractive prices, fresh produce, excellent customer service or discounts. On the other hand, the situation would look completely different if you lived in a huge city with thousands of stores. Then, you need to work hard to win the hearts of customers and attract them for longer.
Well, the same applies to the online world and SEO. If you operate in a niche industry where there are only a few companies that specialize in the same field, it’ll be much easier for the SEO agency to improve your website positions, visibility and conversions.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you offer popular products or services and compete with huge tycoons like Amazon or eBay, the SEO process will be much more expensive and elaborate.
3. The number of keywords selected for the SEO process
Nowadays, most agencies advise choosing long tail SEO and focusing on a large number of keywords that are natural and correspond to specific search intents of users. As you may guess, the number of keywords selected for the SEO process affects the price because the more keywords you select, the more time the SEO agency will need to devote to optimize your website for these phases, monitor the results, build a quality link profile and obtain backlinks.
Nevertheless, long tail SEO is extremely effective, especially when talking about highly competitive industries. By emphasizing unique qualities of your products or services, you can reach potential customers who are truly interested in making a purchase. This way, such an approach may be more effective than doing SEO for generic keywords.
Just imagine that a user enters the “winter shoes” phrase into the search engine. At this point, it’s impossible to determine for sure whether this user wants to buy winter shoes or whether s/he wants to find a guide that will make it easier to choose the right model. On the other hand, if someone enters the “waterproof Kinsley boots for women Timberland” phrase, it’s very likely that this person is ready to buy this specific model.
4. Phrase competitiveness
This is related to the point discussed above. If you do SEO for highly competitive, generic phrases like “boots” or “winter boots,” it’ll be much harder for you to reach satisfactory positions in the search results and the SEO agency will need to devote more of a specialists’ time to optimize your website and improve its authority.
On the other hand, if you decide to focus on niche, less competitive and long-tail phrases like “leather winter boots for women” or “waterproof fall boots for men,” the agency will be able to achieve the first visible increases in page visibility and phrase positions much quicker, which will be also reflected in the costs of the SEO services.
5. Selected SEO activities
Some people decide to optimize the entire website, whereas others prefer to focus on individual subpages. Some invest in comprehensive services, including web development and copywriting, others require specialist consultations and implement all the suggested changes individually.
All these elements have an enormous impact on the SEO process price. That’s why it’s impossible to provide one versatile pricing, as every website and client is different.
6. Domain history
Are you wondering what’s the difference between your domain history and your current website position? After all, to determine the most optimal strategy and expected costs, it should be full enough to check your page ranking and think what elements can improve the situation. Well, it’s far from the truth.
Imagine a situation when you bought a domain at an attractive price, you created unique content, attractive design and intuitive page navigation. Yet your positions don’t improve and following SEO tips found in various guidelines doesn’t help. What’s the reason for this state of affairs?
The problem probably lies in your domain history. In simple words, domain history helps the search engine robots to get an overall impression of your website. Google robots take into account the content and activities that have been performed on the domain since its very beginning, not only since you bought it. That’s why it’s crucial to check domain history before you decide to invest in a particular site. If a page was devoted to illegal activities in the past, it’ll be very hard to improve its position and repair its reputation.
7. Website condition
When conducting a page audit, an SEO agency will probably look at your website and briefly analyze its condition. If your page is filled with valuable, user-friendly content, has intuitive navigation, infographics, videos, CTAs (Call to Action), it’ll require only some minor SEO activities that will help to optimize the content, improve internal linking and adjust the website to Google’s guidelines.
On the other hand, if your website doesn’t include too much content, available product descriptions are duplicated or copied from manufacturers, there are no elements that engage users and navigation is complex, the SEO process will be much more complex and will involve lots of copywriting, development changes and optimization activities. This is what heavilyinfluences SEO process price.
8. The number of working hours
During the talks with an SEO agency, you should be able to present your expectations and say how much you’re willing to pay per month. This has a direct impact on your scoring, roughly meaning the number of working hours the agency will spend every month refining and optimizing your website.
If you’re ready to pay for more working hours, you can expect the results sooner. However, it’ll also mean that the SEO process price will be much higher, at least until your website is tailored to Google’s requirements, your link profile is developed, there is no internal or external duplicate content, and further activities are performed only to maintain high positions or reach the top 3, not to be ranked in the top 100 or 50.
9. Selected settlement model
In the SEO industry, there are two main settlement models: subscription-based SEO and performance-based SEO (also called pay-for-results SEO).
The subscription-based SEO means that you pay a specific amount every month throughout the duration of the contract and this amount stays the same, regardless of the results achieved by the agency.
On the other hand, performance-based SEO means that you pay when the agency achieves the results determined earlier, before the start of cooperation, or before the beginning of the settlement period. It’s worth keeping in mind that although this method may seem more lucrative to clients, agencies that advocate pay-for-results SEO frequently perform illegal activities (the so-called black hat SEO) that help to reach high positions very quickly. However, these activities are dishonest and Google quickly notices them. As a consequence, it may penalize your website or even remove it from the index.
Therefore, it isn’t worth the risk and it’s much better to invest in quality activities. Although the process will be more complex, the effects will stay with you for longer and algorithm updates won’t cause havoc in your page positions.
10. Page content
As mentioned above, doing SEO for a website with quality content is much easier than doing SEO for a website without any content or with content copied from other pages. In the latter case, Google will quickly determine that you steal texts from other companies and will penalize your website by decreasing its position.
Unique content is a ranking factor that becomes more and more popular. Therefore, it’s worth taking your time and creating texts that really help users and answer their needs. Apart from improving your positions in the search results, it’ll also position you as an expert in the field. Consequently, users may decide to visit your website in the future when they need further advice or recommend it to their friends and family.
Think about running a company blog. It’s a great way to attract more page visitors, increase the number of keywords your website is displayed for, improve users’ engagement and convince potential buyers that your products or services will solve their problems.
The SEO process with Delante – what to expect?
If you decide to do SEO with Delante, you may expect comprehensive services that include:
- Keyword research and selection – at this stage, we’ll help you select interesting phrases that correspond to users’ queries and match your business profile.
- SEO audit – as mentioned above, it helps to determine which elements of your website need improvement. This way, Delante experts devote time to activities that can bring you tangible profits.
- Technical optimization – we’ll optimize your website to help Google robots navigate it and understand the content. Moreover, optimization activities improve page visibility for specific keywords and long-tail phrases entered by users into the search engine.
- Copywriting – apart from writing unique, quality texts, we’ll also optimize them and implement them on the site.
- Link building – our team will continuously work to refine your link profile and create a base of quality backlinks from websites with high domain authority. This way, we’ll improve your Domain Authority and inform Google that your page is a quality source of information.
- Analysis and reports – every month we provide our clients with detailed reports that summarize achieved results and performed activities. We also present a schedule for the future and show specific improvements in website positions and visibility.
- Consultations – our specialists stay in touch with clients to resolve their doubts, discuss audits, reports, or current activities. We pay special attention to relationships and we communicate with clients directly, without agents.
Do you want to learn more about our SEO pricing? We’ve gathered all the necessary information for you.
What influences the SEO process price? The takeaway
The process of determining the SEO services pricing is complex and long. As you can see, it’s impossible to set one universal pricing, as every case is different and requires an individual approach.
When estimating the costs of the SEO process, we take into account a number of factors like page condition, domain history, the industry you operate in, selected keywords, or the amount you’re willing to invest.
Don’t wait – contact our specialists to choose a strategy tailored to your needs and see for yourself that quality SEO really makes a difference!
