How Much Should SEO Cost

Question:

How much should SEO (Search Engine Optimization) cost? This is a question that I get all the time. That is because a lot of people have been burned by SEO companies. Truthfully, SEO runs the gamut. There is GoDaddy who charges $9 a month for SEO and then you’ve got some companies that charge $10,000 a month for SEO so how much should it actually cost?

There are some things in life that you don’t want to pay too little for. For example, if I came to you and I said “Hey, here’s a Lamborghini, brand new, $5000.” The first question you would ask me is, What’s wrong with it? Or maybe you would ask if it’s stolen. But, you would know there’s no way you are getting a brand new Lamborghini for $5000. There has to be a catch and that’s the same with search engine optimization.

If you have a search engine optimization company, that’s coming to you and saying. “Hey we are going to get you ranked in a competitive market for a personal injury or DUI or criminal defense or family law or estate planning or whatever it is even a mildly competitive market and we’re going to do it for $500 a month, it isn’t happening. It’s not going to happen. There’s a certain amount that you’re going to have to pay if they’re going to do it right.

I’ll give you an example. We’ve got a lot of clients and for most of our clients, we spend at least $1,000 maybe even $1,500 a month and up on behalf of our clients, doing their SEO. Because to do SEO you have to have good content. You have got to build backlinks. You’ve got any directories. You’ve got to do all this stuff that actually costs money.

Nothing is free, so a lot of times these companies they say like DexKnows and like all these others like Yodel and all these crappy companies. They will say “Okay we’re going to do SEO for you.” But, it’s never the owner of the company, it’s the salesperson. You got to understand the salesperson is getting 50% of whatever you pay upfront, right? So, if you pay them $500 per month, then the salesperson is getting $250 a month. Next, you have to know the company is going to make a profit and you better bet their profit is not $25. They’re taking the majority of that the remaining $250 a month so maybe they take $200 and now you’re left with $50 for your search engine optimization. That is not going to happen. A good SEO company that knows what they’re doing and actually can get results, needs to have enough money in their budget so they can get you those results.

We know what we are doing. If you said, “Look I can only spend $1,000” and you came to my company, I would tell you that I can’t help you. I don’t want to take your money, because I know that for $1,000 a month I cannot help you. I don’t have the resources that I need to help you.

Just think about how you compare any attorney that is on a retainer basis. Think of how a $3000 to $5000 attorney compares to those $99 paralegals that’ll do your divorce or your bankruptcy. It’s the same thing. They’re going to screw it up. They’re going to do a crappy job. It’s like hiring Legal Zoom to do your search engine optimization. Don’t do it. It’s a horrible idea.

How much should it cost?

A company that knows what they are doing is probably going to charge you $3000 (or more) per month to handle your SEO. That is just the reality. If they’re charging you less than that, it’s because they’re not doing as good of a job as they probably should be. Sometimes you have stuff in-house. We have a lot of stuff that we do in-house for our clients and we actually can get our prices below $3000 because we do so much work that’s actually in-house. Most companies don’t do that. Most companies don’t know how to do that. Our SEO team is one of the best in the world. It’s crazy. Our SEO guys, they’re actually reading the Google patents and all that stuff that bores me to tears. They love it. Because we have all that in-house and we have so much stuff like that we’re able to keep our prices lower. Most of our clients pay around $2,500 a month but they get results. That’s what counts. I’d rather pay more and get results than save a few bucks and get crap.