How Much Does SEO Cost?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for businesses to get their names on the internet through digital marketing. SEO is the process of increasing your website's visibility when people search for products or services related to your business via a search engine. The more visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you will garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business. Creating an SEO strategy can be a cost-effective game changer to help your site rank higher in searches than ever before.

Look at your SEO and PPC budget.

Like any business expense, a proper SEO strategy must be worth a business owner's while. You want online visibility, but if you're a local business like a construction company, you want website traffic to come from your local market. As a full-service marketing agency, we recommend SEO first and foremost over other strategies like pay-per-click (PPC) and social media. A minimum of 3 percent of your company's revenue should go toward SEO, while 10 percent is a general recommendation for overall marketing efforts.

PPC is when you only pay for website traffic if your business's ad is clicked on. It's essentially "buying" visits via an auction to your site and driving them through paid advertisement. PPC isn't a wrong method for driving traffic, but it tends to produce less-quality visitors than organic search users. We recommend SEO first, and if you also choose PPC, you must match your budget to your SEO services. Many businesses tend to throw huge budgets to PPC and minimal to SEO. We have noticed better results for customers who have matched budgets, or more to SEO and less to PPC.

The truth is that SEO does produce better-quality leads. We suggest spending enough money that allows the SEO company to do the work needed, as well as an amount that does not also break your budget. In our opinion, there are no true SEO services that can be completed for under $500 per month, unless you are talking about local directory listings. As SEO contractors, we recommend spending a minimum of $1,500 per month, and with us, unlike most agencies, we do not lock you into any contracts.

Larger local-based companies will need to spend around $4,000 to $5,000, and national corporations from $15K to $25K plus, again depending on 3% of your revenue and desired target area. Business owners should also consider the internet presence of their competition. It's a great way to determine how much you want to invest in SEO services and pinpoint your target audience. The general idea is, that the more you spend, the more keywords and target areas you can cover because you can create more content on your site and off your site.

Your SEO will produce organic traffic for targeted keywords without an added monthly expense, whereas PPC will always require an additional expense to achieve more ROI. See the below charts that show the average idea of ROI to expense ratios for PPC and SEO. The original reference for these charts was pulled from agency partner site and was rebranded and adjusted to show the average ROI comparisons between monthly PPC and SEO services.

Look at the value of your competitor's organic search.

When advertising for local services, contractor SEO services are pertinent for standing out among the pack, contractor SEO is simply a local SEO campaign geared toward a specific sector of businesses. Although many SEO campaigns are similar, SEO for particular industries like roofers, plumbers, electricians, and similar market services is more effective if the person working on your marketing campaign understands your market and how customers search for your services.

When focusing on local SEO for contractors, four key steps can transform a marketing strategy for better organic search results. With search engine optimization, ranking in Google search results for any search term is possible. Local SEO allows your business to dominate your geographical area when people seek services in your town. Searching for a local contractor will typically return results that include:

• Paid ads at the top of the web page

• A map listing with business information

• Then Organic results with 10 listings per page

To better grasp SEO for contractors, local keywords are at the heart of optimization. Poor use of keywords could make any SEO strategy less effective. Companies with pages full of content and decent backlinks struggle to raise their website's rank solely based on the keywords they choose to implement. Keywords like "roofer in Dallas" might produce 500 monthly searches on average, whereas a term like "roof company in Dallas" might only bring in a fraction or none. If the content on your website doesn't correctly target the best-performing words, like a specific location, it could be the difference in where your website is found in search results.

Look at your marketing budget.

Maintaining a more significant online presence is now at the heart of a modern marketing strategy. As a contractor marketing agency, we understand that successful SEO campaigns are now among the top business goals for marketing services across regional viewers online. A full-service marketing agency can help even smaller businesses with branding. Brand recognition is crucial since marketing is more than just people seeing your logo. It needs to be a consistent image across your in-person and social media presence to draw customers' physical and virtual locations.

Small businesses and large companies alike want a competitive edge, and that edge starts with a budget to bring your services to the top of Google and other search engines. Businesses should utilize at most 10 percent of their revenue toward marketing efforts. Still, understanding how much to allocate to SEO is one thing, while knowing how much is enough is another. Typically, a small business may discern that it needs a monthly budget of $5000 to $50,000 to hire and maintain a digital marketing agency. Still, this range is too wide, so it is helpful to know your company's revenue and allocate 3 percent towards SEO.

The SEO Contractor can help develop the right strategy, launch print and online marketing campaigns, and understand when it is time to launch new products and services, all while monitoring analytics and making adjustments where needed. If you are the owner of a construction business, for example, you'll want a team of digital marketing experts on your side with a deep knowledge of the sector. This will help in creating a strategy for content creation and maintenance to keep you on the right track, making for the best investment that drives business growth and more promising consumer behavior to help a small business thrive.

The right keyword can be a game changer, and having SEO experts on your side can make a difference for any company. However, it's essential to find a marketing company that has insight into the key ranking factors for a business on a search engine and what can drive high-quality websites and searches that make for effective marketing and the best long-term investment.

Is your company ready to take a serious approach to SEO? If so, please click our link to request a quote and take a few minutes to tell us about your business.