Every business owner keeps an account of every penny spent in business. For a small business, this calculation becomes even more important and tedious to ensure that the money is going in the right direction and is giving desired results. Small business owners become more conscious when it comes to investing in marketing strategies that can really yield a high return on investment. In such a scenario SEO or search engine optimisation proves to be the best marketing tool for growing small businesses with limited investment. Through SEO tactics once a company starts to get good organic traffic leads for business, it helps in cutting down on unnecessary expenditure that is otherwise used on marketing the brand, products and services. But now the main question is how much does SEO cost for a small business? If you are a small business owner then keep reading this article till the end.
There are various factors that are responsible for developing and executing robust marketing strategies for achieving a business goal. These factors basically decide the overall budget that one needs to allocate to pay the SEO cost for small businesses. In this article, you will learn everything about these factors.
Cost of SEO for small business
Firstly one should know that there is no standard rate for SEO. The pricing model for SEO depends on the marketing agencies as they fix the price that is fair for them to provide SEO services to their clients. Therefore, it all depends on the companies and how much they are keen to pay for hiring SEO services. Each SEO company’s pricing model is based on their expertise, company’s size, kinds of services they offer, and client base. For example, a big SEO company having a large client base, years of experience will charge more than the younger and smaller SEO companies. The younger and smaller SEO companies will charge a reasonable prices since they also want to fetch new clients in order to grow their businesses and achieve the desired ROI.
It is also important to note that majority of the SEO companies don’t disclose their pricing model over their website, instead they ask the potential clients to contact them to know the cost of SEO plans. This further makes it difficult for the small business owners to really know the rough cost of SEO to decide marketing budget. Well after doing a lot of research we found that most of the SEO companies provide one of these four pricing models as given below to charge for their SEO services.
1) Monthly plan: The very basic pricing model for SEO is the monthly plan. In this, the client pays a fixed monthly price for the ongoing SEO work. The monthly price for the SEO is variable as it depends on the kinds of SEO services rendered, business size, business requirements and SEO plan.
2) Contract model: This pricing model works best for clients who are not sure of spending monthly SEO fees. The basic difference between the monthly and contract pricing model is, the contract model comes with the start and end date and the SEO companies are liable to give the desired results in that stipulated time frame. The end date doesn’t change no matter what. In the monthly plan, the clients can continue to utilise the SEO services till the time they want to. In the contract model also the SEO cost for small businesses depends on the services that are hired for. For example, using SEO services to target local or international, social media users as the audience for the business.
3) Project-based cost model: Project-based costing is similar to contact but it focuses more on marketing goals like marketing a strong social media presence in a short time or posting regular guest/ onsite blogs and etc. The SEO cost again depends on the amount of work is required to be done in that SEO service.
4) Per hour charges: Some SEO companies in the USA do provide SEO services on an hourly basis. In this, the SEO cost depends on the company size and its marketing goals. For example, a small company targeting a local audience will pay a lesser amount of money as compared to a big company targeting global audiences.
Conclusion: The SEO cost for the small business depends on the marketing goals and SEO services used to achieve the same. The exact SEO cost can’t be displayed on a website since every business has its own unique requirements and one SEO solution can’t be used for all.