How much does SEO really cost?

It's one of those “how long is a piece of string?” questions, and, as such, there's never a one size fits all answer! The nearest thing to a simple answer that can possibly be given is as much or as little as you want it to - with a few caveats.

SEO expenditure is an investment, in your business, your brand, and your future income. You won’t get any more out of your SEO expenditure than you put into it in the first place, but if you ensure that whatever your price point, your outlay is used in the right way, you can maximise the results from whatever your set expenditure is.

If you’re looking for more of a firm answer in terms of finding out how much you will need to spend on SEO to generate the type of return you are looking for, I will outline this in more detail below.

When it comes to your SEO, you should look for an adviser or expert who will help you to break down in detail how much you will realistically need to spend to get a good return on your investment, which will of course vary depending on a variety of factors, such as the size of your company, your budget, and how competitive the market is for the goods or services that you are offering.

You should view your SEO expenditure in terms of payment for time spent, rather than a set fee charged according to each individual element of the job - SEO needs a holistic, inclusive approach, and not to be limited in terms of the tools used to achieve it,which makes hourly billing much more transparent and appropriate for an SEO expert/business relationship.

This means that how much you spend should be directly proportional to the amount of time that your SEO expert spends boosting your SEO for you, going from just a couple of hours per month if that is what you need, right up to an almost limitless ceiling.

So, how much does an hour of SEO cost? This can vary considerably from expert to expert. Obviously there is little point in paying over the odds for something that another company can provide for less, but on the other hand, if a company is promising you the world for a rate much lower than that charged by others, it is wise to consider what the catch is!

A competent, experienced and results-proven SEO expert service will on average cost around £40-£60 per hour (plus vat), with a good example of this being the services offered by WildShark, at £40 to £50 (plus VAT) per hour for their complete bespoke SEO service.

As a contrast, SiteWizard offers set-fee SEO packages from £150 per month plus a setup fee, covering a mixture of predetermined elements; this may well prove to be a good fit for many projects, but will not necessarily fit everyone's needs equally well.

So in order to get going, you will first need to decide upon your budget (a good SEO specialist should be able to advise you on this in terms of how realistic this is when it comes to generating a return on your investment)and then spend it on generating highly targeted leads that are likely to convert into real business and money in the till, not just volume rankings that won’t, ultimately, actually make you any money.

Put simply, the amount you spend on your SEO, when done correctly, will not only pay for itself, but pay for itself many times over, and so it is a false economy to think that minimising your SEO expenditure, taking shortcuts with black hat techniques that may well get you penalised, or even ignoring SEO altogether will be good for your bottom line in the long term.