subject: Search Engine Optimization Cost: What You Can Expect To Pay [print this page] Search engine optimization cost can be a confusing subject because there are so many ways to do it. There are thousands of SEO individuals and companies offering optimization services for websites and it may seem like each one has a different pricing structure. Some will price their services according to what they need to earn to cover their overheads etc. Others will charge what they think you might be willing to pay.
This means that search engine optimization cost often depends on where you are in the world and also, where your consultant is. If your company is based in California and you are looking for a consultant who will come to your offices and take some time to get to know your organizational aims and mission before starting to work on optimizing your website, you are probably going to have to pay quite a lot.
If you want to keep your search engine optimization cost low, you might want to consider hiring somebody in another country. If you are based in the USA or another developed country, in many cases, the cost of living elsewhere will be a lot lower. This means that an SEO expert based in India or the Philippines, for example, can afford to charge considerably less than somebody who lives and maintains an office in the USA.
However, having somebody come to your office has big advantages. In the first place, when you have met a person you are much more likely to trust them. You probably know more about somebody who is local to you and willing to meet. Somebody who is only accessible by email, that you never even see, is harder to trust.
Remember that you are giving this person access to your website which probably contains a lot of data. You need to be able to trust them both from the point of view of a security risk from deliberate fraud or hacking, and on the question of whether they will do the job right. They will actually alter your web pages to make them more search engine friendly, and if they are not skilled in all types of website coding they could really mess things up.
Of course, if somebody is in another country and cannot visit you, there are ways around this in order to keep your search engine optimization costs low. First, you would want to check up on recommendations from previous clients. Often, a good way to find a reputable SEO expert is to ask around when you are networking with other business people either online or in person.
Second, if you are not sure about trusting the SEO experts that you are considering hiring, you do not necessarily have to give them access to your website's code. In most cases they will want this because it will make their job quicker and easier, but you could just have them look at the site and then tell your web person what to do to optimize it.
This could be very simple things. For example, SEO techniques include changing words in the page headings to fit in with good keywords that people are likely to search for. But they also look at more complex questions like the layout of your site. They will want certain things to be read by the search engine bots before others, so they may suggest moving a column from the right to the left of your website, or vice versa.
In addition, they will work on off page SEO which involves building links to your site and increasing your web presence in other ways, such as submitting articles or press releases in your company's name. Off page SEO is almost endless in its potential. If you are in a business where there are many powerful competitors you could have somebody working permanently full time on things like blogging, social networking and link building to keep your site high in the search engine rankings.
So in the end, the best way to work out a budget for SEO is probably to ask some consultants for their rates, which might be hourly or might be a set amount for certain services. Then work out your budget and choose your consultant. Search engine optimization cost is really a question of what you want to spend.
