How much should my business be paying for local seo?
Introduction
It’s pretty easy to find a fair price on most items that a business needs. That’s because most items are rather generic.
This means that when your office needs to kitted out with new desks, well it’s pretty easy for the business owner to spot if they are getting a good deal or not.
Yet with seo things are different. The reason being is that a business may have recognised the need to start investing in digital marketing, yet when they start to ring around the local seo agencies, they may spot that prices vary massively.
So comparing quotes kind of becomes a game of comparing apples with pears. But do not fear, as our helpful agency is always on hand to offer advice.
Let’s have a look at some of the factors that most agencies consider, that’s before they offer a quote.
The level of competition
For those business owners in the know, they will understand that businesses are ranked according to how strong the websites “ranking signals” are.
In a nutshell there are over 200 ranking signal per website, and the search engines like Google are constantly checking how strong your businesses ranking signals are.
As you can imagine, the businesses that have invested in seo for a long time, well their ranking signals are likely to be very strong.
And this needs to be kept in mind, the reason being is in order to overtake the competition, your websites ranking signals need to be stronger.
Now, its also important to remember that your competitors may have invested in seo for many years. This means if any business expects instant results, well they are being unrealistic.
Yet time and time again business owners fall into the trap of choosing an agency that promises the earth for next to no money.
That’s to say they falsely believe that one agency is as good as the next. They may also believe that if a company offers to do the work cheaply, and states they can meet a companies marketing targets, well what can go wrong?
Well in matter of fact a lot can go wrong. If you invest in cheap seo then your business could be issued a penalty.
What happens is the search engines algorithm may detect rubbish seo, i.e spam, and then the website will be slapped with a penalty.
The penalty could be costly to recover from, the reason being is you may need to employ another agency to fix the rubbish seo the previous agency implemented.
What can therefore happen is a business may see its rankings fall, or sometimes if the seo is really poor in quality, the website may well get deindexed, which means removed altogether.
So in nutshell, don’t opt for the cheapest agency.
Why should we pay monthly?
One of the most frequent questions that most agencies get asked is this, why do we have to pay monthly?
Simply put when your business reaches the top, there will be loads of businesses that want to take that position from you.
So once your business reaches the top, your competitors seo companies will be working to see how your business has done this. Then as they add more seo strength to their websites, your website will move down.
This is why the process is a constant one.
What’s this term “white hat” mean?
When comparing quotes, you may find that some quotes are somewhat similar, yet some others are very low.
This could be because the cheap quotes are looking to spam the algorithm, which simply means to cut corners. This can result in a website incurring a penalty because low quality seo methods have been used.
On the other hand really good seo consultants, well they can often be thin on the ground in most cities.
So to attract talent, the agencies normally have to offer very good salaries, and this is reflected in the quotes that are often higher.
A respected agency should be using white hat methods. This means they will be using the very best methods, which can take a great deal of time to implement.
Does it matter which city my business is based?
The simple answer is yes it does. The reason being is that there are some cities, like London where the level of competition is much higher.
So as people are looking for say an emergency plumber, there will be hundreds, if not thousands of businesses that want to appear for that valuable term in London.
This means that some businesses will be paying substantial sums to an seo agency in order to optimise the businesses website to appear for the term “emergency plumbers London”.
So as you can imagine the prices for seo can vary massively depending on which city your business is based within.
If you would like a no obligation quote, then why not give us a ring?
