bannerad3 SEO Hourly Rates Doesnt Equal SEO Costs!

If you’re trying to figure out how SEO is charged, and how much it’s going to cost you -what you need to understand from the beginning, is there is not necessarily a direct correlation between how much you are paying for SEO, and how much it costs you….

Confused? You soon will be icon smile SEO Hourly Rates Doesnt Equal SEO Costs!

First of all lets discuss how much SEO consultants & SEO companies are likely to charge you & how they charge:

SEO is a service, it’s not a product – therefore it’s all based on man – or woman – hours.  So your SEO consultant / freelancer / contractor / company / agency,  should work out your SEO costs based on how much time needs to be put in, and what their hourly rate is.

SEO hourly rates can differ hugely. Very generally speaking SEO freelancers / contractors tend to charge in the region of £30 – £75  ($50 – $130) per hour, SEO companies tend to charge somewhere between £50 – £100 per hour. ($85 – $170) but the rates can go much, much higher than this.

In fact, there are SEO consultants & companies out there who charge way over £100 per hour, some over £200 per hour – in fact there are some who charge over £500 per hour for SEO consulting. SEOMoz for example, are well known SEO experts who offer SEO tools which many in the industry utilize, and they use their status within the SEO world to allow them to demand an incredible hourly rate of $1000 per hour!!

Is $1000 per hour a rip off? No, not at all. They’ve been around a long time and as far as I’m aware, their clients who pay this kind of money for their SEO services, keep on coming back to them because of the return they’re getting on that investment.

Which leads us to the next factor – we now have a rough idea of what SEO consultants will charge you – but this isn’t what SEO will cost you….

You see SEO, as with all marketing services, is all about return on investment. The price of SEO can only actually be determined by the return, not what you’re being charged. If you pay £1000 and get a return of £500 – then obviously your SEO has COST you £500 – and this is £500 wasted, because in marketing we’re investing in order to bring about a return.

You may think you’re getting a great deal because you are paying £10 per hour for SEO services, but if you spend £100 per month on SEO, and that £100 does not result in more than £100 back, then your SEO has cost you money – rather than being an investment which has brought you a return. On the other hand, if you invest £3,000 per month on SEO, and you’re seeing a return of £5,000 per month – then you have invested well & you’re seeing a return.

So – don’t just look at what you are paying for SEO, what the hourly rate is – you need to keep in mind that you’re not buying something, you’re investing with a view to gain a return, so how much you are paying isn’t what determines how much SEO will cost you – it’s the return which will determine that.

Your return on investment however, cannot be the sole responsibiliity of your SEO consultant / freelancer / contractor / agency / company – it is their job to generate targeted search engine traffic to your website – but then if your website is not working to convert this traffic into enquiries, sales, bookings – then you’re not going to get a good return on your investment regardless of how great the SEO is which is being carried out on your site.

Personally I offer a sperate service which I recommend my clients have me perform prior to starting SEO activities (if these are clients who’s websites I have not being involved in designing & developing – because if I was, these elements would all already be in place), to go through the website & make suggestions for increasing the ability of the website to convert visits into profits.  I look into the effectiveness of sales copy, the use & effectiveness of calls to action, the inclusion of a list building & marketing system to allow higher conversion rates to be achieved, the use of images, pricing points, product descriptions, ease of use, the ease of making an enquiry – and many other factors which can all have an impact on conversion rates.

So hopefully this gives you a bit of a clearer idea of what people charge for SEO services – and what SEO will cost you, and that basically SEO shouldn’t cost you anything – if your site is working to convert, and if the SEO services being carried out are effective, you should be seeing a return on your investment.

Marketing services which actually COST money – meaning that they have not brought a sufficient return to cover the cost & make a profit, are not helpful to your business.

I’ll just close this by making a suggestion based on what you’ve just read – that you review any marketing methods based on input & return, it can be difficult to know exactly – but try to get as good an idea as possible as to which marketing methods you’re employing are not bringing a return – and weed out ineffective marketing methods.

One marketing method that is in most cases inefficient – is PPC, pay per click, Google Adwords (or Yahoo & Bing, etc) sponsored results.

This maybe a slightly controversial thing to say – but the fact is that the majority of people  paying for PPC advertising, are spending too much per click based on their websites ability to convert traffic into profit. This is a fact which can easily be spotted by using PPC research tools which can tell us how long an advertiser has been investing – and the fact that most businesses after a while come to the conclusion that they’re actually losing money on PPC – and stop investing.

It’s also very easy to explain how this happens. Initially PPC advertising was a lot cheaper than it was today, and in many markets the average cost per click was very low, only pennies. When Google introduced minimum bids – that changed, and many keywords cost in excess of £0.50 per click – there are many search terms which cost £1 per click or more – (in fact I’ve regularly seen  cpc of over £20 – £30 per click!!) – so for most search terms, most websites can not convert at a high enough level to make that pay.

OK, lets even reduce the average & say you’re paying just £0.20 per click on average.

It’s difficult to give an average conversion rate across all industries, but this is thought to be around 0.25 – 1%. This means you need from 100 to 400 visits to make each sale.

So, if you’re achieving at the low end, a 0.25% conversion rate, your cost per sale with PPC advertising, is £80. If you’re achieving at the high end of the average, a 1% conversion, your cost per sale is £20.

So – lets say that you make a profit of £10 per sale – you can easily see how you might easily make a loss with PPC advertising….

Now if we get more realistic & say that average cost per click is £0.50,  based on the average conversion rates your cost per sale are between £50 – £200 – and this is the reason that most businesses are making a loss with PPC marketing.

The first thing many will argue when faced with the above (especially those selling PPC services) is that your conversion rates are much higher. Sometimes this is fair comment – but then your question should be, “exactly what conversion rate is my site getting for PPC traffic?” – you’ll know this if conversion tracking is being used  – so figure out what your conversion rate is exactly, look at the average CPC, and work out whether or not your PPC spend is, or ever can, be profitable. If it isn’t – work out what you can spend per click , maximum, based on your conversion rates & profit per sale, and only focus on search terms which you can sponsor for this cost per click – which will often mean sponsoring long tail terms, exact match only terms – which will mean you’ll get less traffic from PPC, but what is the point on buying traffic if you’re buying it at a loss?

Hope this helps – if you have any questions or you’re interested in my SEO Services then drop me an email

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