Our Blog

Businesses, at least the successful ones, understand the importance of developing and maintaining a strong presence on the Internet.  Most of them opt to utilize an independent third party search engine optimization (“SEO”) firm to get this done.  While they know that they must write a check each month to cover the SEO bill, many businesses don’t quite understand how it is that the bill becomes what it is.  If this describes your situation, here is more information why your SEO provider charges what it does, and what goes into arriving at that number.

SEO Is More Complicated Than It Used To Be

A major factor in SEO costs is what an SEO firm has to do in order to keep your business on the front page of search results.  At one point in time there were numerous shortcuts that an SEO firm could take advantage of to get ranking results.

Unfortunately, search engines have become much more sophisticated as time has passed.  Search engines seek to bring in those results that will be most helpful to users.  This means they work hard to identify and eliminate shortcuts in order to be sure they are providing truly helpful results.  While these efforts are great for users, they make the job of an SEO firm much more challenging than it was at one time.

Today, SEO firms have a number of added areas they must address that have not traditionally been a necessary part of SEO.  These areas include, but certainly are not limited to:

• Finding ways to make your website run faster and more efficiently
• Improving the experience of users who actually visit your site, as opposed to focusing on getting users to the site without considering what happens afterwards
• Researching the content that is posted on your site
• Creating text and video content to be uploaded to your site
• Finding ways to add links to your site — the more places that link to you, the more relevant search engines will consider you to be
• Engaging in marketing of various content pieces for your site

These responsibilities used to fall upon the shoulders of the website owner — if they were done at all.  All SEO firms had to do was get people to the site, while it was the responsibility of the site owner to make the user experience useful.  Now — because at one time search engines did not give as much weight to user experience as they do today — these activities are the province of the SEO firms.

SEO Is A Bargain Compared To The Cost Of Advertising
With Other Media

If you consider the cost of advertising on radio or television, engaging in an aggressive SEO campaign just makes sense.  A basic radio ad in a 250,000-member listening area starts at around $5,000 per month.  An SEO campaign, on the other hand, is continuously garnering views — as opposed to a radio ad that is only played for 15-60 seconds at a time.  Yet, in spite of this, a good SEO campaign is still less than the entry-level radio ad for a comparable sized audience.

Using An SEO Company Is More Efficient Than Going In-House

If you were to hire an employee to conduct your SEO campaign in the same manner as your SEO company, you would have to pay him or her around $65,000 per year.  That comes out to almost $5,500 per month. 

In addition, you would have to pay employer withholding taxes, Medicare taxes, and other assorted costs, taking your expenditure up to nearly $6,500 per month.  Then you would have to provide vacation, insurance, and other benefits, on top of paying him or her for the time it takes to learn how to adequately engage in the SEO strategies your SEO company already knows about.  Viewed in this light, a monthly SEO bill of $2,500 is an absolute steal, and you don’t have to deal with the headache of managing another employee. 

SEO Has A Higher Return On Investment Than Radio, Television, Or Direct Mailing

The return on investment (“ROI”) of an advertising campaign is what it’s all about.  This number tells you how much money you can expect to bring in for every dollar you spend.  Among all forms of advertising, no other form even comes close to the ROI of an effective SEO campaign.

Arguably, if you only have $3,000 per month to spend on marketing, that money is best spent on your SEO campaign.  While it’s true that a multi-tiered campaign will bring in more customers than one that only utilizes one venue, if you are limited in your marketing dollars those dollars should be going to an SEO campaign.

Your SEO Company Does More Than Paste In Some Keywords

Perhaps because of unscrupulous SEO companies, or perhaps because of ignorance, some people think that all an SEO company will do is throw up some blogs that link to the webpage, thus driving up its ranking.  Nothing could be more untrue.  An SEO company will take the following steps in the SEO campaign:

• Researching content in order to determine ways your website can become more relevant (remember, higher relevancy means a higher Google search ranking)
• Creating content in order to bolster your site’s relevancy in the deficient areas identified in the first step
• Reviewing links to remove old and dead ones (these will hurt your rankings) and identify opportunities to increase the links to your site
• Building links that strengthen your relevancy

Of course, this is not an all-exhaustive list, and there may very well be other things your SEO company needs to do. 

A Lot Goes Into A Good SEO Campaign

With all these things in mind, it’s easy to see why you cannot reasonably expect to get good SEO results without paying for them.  Even then, you still reap more benefit per dollar spent than for other forms of advertising and marketing.  So the next time you get your SEO bill, you should pay it with a smile, knowing that you’re getting a great deal!

If you would like to have an open and honest discussion about the ways organic search engine marketing may help your company achieve higher keyword rankings, please contact Net-Craft.com today for a free consultation.