What Should You Pay for SEO Services?

Even though it doesn’t always seem to be the case, SEO is one of the most cost-effective methods for driving website traffic. Nevertheless, understanding how SEO is priced and how much you’re really paying can be a challenge, especially if you don’t have a good understanding of SEO and how it works.

In this post, we’ll discuss how SEO is most commonly priced, what SEO rates are common in the UK and how you can judge the value of the SEO services you choose.

If you have any questions after reading this post or would like some help with your SEO, please feel free to reach out to us. We have extensive experience helping companies improve their Google ranking and would love to see how we can best support your business too.

SEO pricing – the basics to consider

One of the most important things to understand is that there isn’t a single set price that SEO services should cost. There are a lot of variables to consider, and the dreaded answer of “it depends” is, unfortunately, the only accurate answer to the question of how much SEO services cost.

That being said, there are a few important differentiating factors that make up the price of SEO services. So, before diving into the most common prices, we thought it would be worth covering each factor in more detail.

Quality

The first thing to consider is, of course, the service’s quality. Where a jr. SEO expert may only charge £30-£50 per hour, experts can charge £150 or more for an hour of work. Even though it’s not always the case, in general, you get what you pay for.

An expert with 5 or 10 years of experience will generally be able to get better results than a jr. SEO with only a few years under his/her belt. That being said, if you’re just starting out, you may find that a less expensive service suits your business better.

Working with an agency can offer some advantages when it comes to quality since most agencies have a range of marketing, web development and SEO specialists. This can help improve the quality by allowing more people with different skills to work on your site.

Time

The time a company or freelancer spends working on your website is, of course, another important consideration. If you just need a few hours of consulting per month and plan to do the rest of the SEO work internally, you’re going to pay less than if you want to outsource the entire SEO process.

Size of your site

A large website can offer some SEO benefits. However, it also means more time needs to be spent optimizing the site. It’s for this reason that eCommerce SEO is generally so much more expensive than SEO for a regular (smaller) site.

The size of your site goes hand in hand with the time spent on it as well as the experience of those working on your site. Large sites are more complex and take more time to optimize.

Location & competition

The level of competition in an industry is another important factor to consider. A competitive industry means it is more difficult to rank. This, in turn, means more time needs to be spent optimizing your site to be able to rank well.

When it comes to local SEO, your location is another important factor. Local SEO for a business in central London is going to be more challenging than local SEO for businesses in smaller UK cities.

Common SEO rates in the UK

In general, expect to pay between £50 and £150 per hour for a high-quality SEO professional, be it as a freelancer or via an agency.

When it comes to SEO packages, it’s common for monthly retainers to be set between £500 at the low end and £2500 at the higher end for SMEs. Even though it wasn’t UK-specific, a recent study by AHREFs found that most SEOs have retainers between $500 and $1000.

For larger sites or businesses in particularly competitive markets, retainers can go from £2500 all the way to £10.000 per month or more, depending on the amount of work the site requires.

Here at Racer Marketing, our standard SEO packages start at £470, with the most expensive standard package costing £1187.

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Should I pay per hour or opt for an SEO package?

It’s common for people new to SEO to wonder whether they’re better off paying on a per-hour basis or if they should opt for a monthly SEO package. However, in general, there isn’t really much difference between the two.

We tend to recommend SEO packages since the monthly investment is clear from the start. Our packages are structured in a way that ensures we can get you results within a reasonable amount of time, while also offering you a clear monthly rate.

This ensures you know what amount you’re investing per month, and for how long.

How to judge the value of SEO services

Although rates may seem high initially, when you compare it to PPC advertising or other forms of online marketing, SEO is generally one of the most inexpensive ways of driving traffic. The reason for this is that you’re not paying on a per-click basis but paying for optimization work that can help you drive clicks organically.

As your site grows and starts driving traffic, the monthly retainer stays the same. This means that the traffic you get becomes increasingly less expensive the better your site does. Even if your monthly investment increases slightly as your site grows, the rate at which it increases is almost always significantly less than the speed at which your traffic increases.

With the average cost per click on Google AdWords being $2.69 and well-performing websites being able to generate thousands of visits per month organically if SEO is performed well, it’s easy to see just how cheap SEO becomes as your website grows.

Conclusion

Understanding what you should be paying for SEO and how the agency you work with has come up with this price is important, especially if this is your first time working with an SEO agency. Hopefully, this post has helped you gain a better understanding of how SEO services are priced, what you should be paying and what good SEO can offer your business.

Want to work with an SEO agency and drive more organic traffic to your website? Feel free to reach out to find out how we can help your business grow online!

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