6 SEO Pricing Factors You Should Never Ignore
SEO Pricing is a sensitive issue for both clients and SEOs, client wants to make sure he/she gets best services while remaining in a minimum budget. However, this won’t necessarily acquire the desired results. In this post we will look at top 6 SEO pricing factors you must not ignore.
Most of the customers want one thing from their purchases: how their expectations are met. It is also true for SEO services. There can be difference of expectations between SEO experts and their clients. It can complicate their relationships. But the actual expectations start way before clients and SEO experts start working together. It begins with the proposal process.
Cost vs. Expected Outcomes
Other than the actual services being offered by SEOs, clients usually give importance to two major aspects to the proposal. These aspects are cost being paid by the clients and their expected results. For some people cost is the main determinant while for others expected results are important. But regardless of their weightage, these two are important factors in selecting a digital marketing partner.
Online businesses that are focused on expected results are not bothered by the cost. Their main aim is to get the outcomes they want and they will make sure the SEO proposal should have what they need. Those who are price conscious will prefer a budget-savvy proposal and they mostly assume their expectations from SEOs. However, their assumptions are not essentially correct.
When you are targeting price, you will gain only one thing: The cheapest cost. But, you have to compromise on value as value comes with a costly price tag.
In order to keep their SEO pricing low, SEO service providers like any other service industry will offer minimum benefits to sell their service. But, these benefits will not be your expected results. Service providers who want to offer value to their customers rather than cheap price will make sure their proposals should include everything your site and business need.
Proposal’s Limitations
However, there is an inherent flaw: digital marketing proposal focused on cheap cost versus value mostly look similar. Actually, both can have same bullet points describing the services they are going to offer. The main difference between the two will be the extent to which all of those services are implemented.
Just take a quick example: page optimization is a typical service offered with every digital marketing proposal. But, there are many things which remain ambiguous. For example: how many pages? What keywords and how many of them?
All of these factors impact value and cost of the proposal but not always specifically noted. Same applies to link building. Service provide will give you a number but the proposal will not define the quality of these links. Proposal will only say high quality which has different meaning for every person.
These examples show that if a service is being mentioned in the proposal does not imply that it will offer you the details.
Hence, when you are analyzing proposals from SEO or online marketing providers, you have to understand that how they are assessing your site for determining services and cost. Knowing all these aspects will not only ensure a better understanding of the value being offered by the digital marketing package but also ensure the marketer is more interested in giving you the best value rather than just cheap price.
1. Number of Webpages
Small websites are easy for performing actual optimization as compared to large websites. Larger websites have architectural complexities. Less pages means less overall optimization work. Optimization ensures website growth by making website more valuable for the users and expanding website reach through keywords targeting.
Big sites need complex optimization. Ecommerce websites pose real challenges as CMS is being used. If we calculate this difference of optimization between large and small websites, it would be of thousands of dollars each month.
2. The Current Condition of Website
But, not always optimizing a small website is easy. Sometimes, small websites need complex re-development due to complex problems. Most digital marketing agencies only suggest complete re-development only when it is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, it is a big expense for the business owner.
A large website does not essentially means it is in a non-optimizable state, but it can increases odds. Worst of all, agency has to perform lots of work for achieving results. Marketer should perform a website audit before making the proposal. This way he is in better position to determine the cost.
3. Competition in Your Niche
SEOs not only need to know what you want from the digital marketing campaign but also they should know what your competitors are doing. It is essential for effectively pricing their campaign cost. They should determine how much your competitors are using social media, the routine of publishing content on their website or blog and if they are engaged in link building and to what extent.
They also have to look at the user-experience aspect. Is their website is easy to use? Is it worse or better than your website? Can they apply some of their design tweaks to make your website more user-friendly?
4. Aggressiveness Level
As mentioned earlier, every digital marketing campaign will offer same set of services. The only difference lies in levels. SEOs mostly ask their clients: How much are you aggressive with your marketing campaign and strategy? Some wants to take it slow like beating competition or boosting sales while others are in a full killer mode.
Their answers give SEOs a rough idea about the expected results. SEOs have to set realistic expectations based on the aggressiveness of the client. You should not compromise on essential services sue to cost factor or unrealistic SEO pricing.
5. Ongoing Services
Digital marketing services can be broadly categorized into two types: One which can be completed and the second which run for an indefinite period. Many factors related to solving website architecture problems fall under the first type. However, you have to check them at regular basis. The most part of SEO campaign is ongoing.
You need to optimize more keywords, publish more content, share on social media, do more link building, and analyze more data. This will also impact the cost of the campaign. You can cut the time spend on social media or page optimization but it will lead to choose cost over value.
6. Experience in SEO
Every digital marketer uses the same model to charge for their expertise in SEO: he/she places a value for their services. All of the digital marketing proposals are offered with an expectation of how much they have to invest time in that particular project. Their services are prices on the basis of worth per hour. Most website owners don’t like the idea but you should focus on the value you are going to receive.
You have to make your own research about the agency you are going to hire. The costly services should offer the best value for your business. When you compromise quality over cost, you will get less value. At the end, you have to pay more and your time will be wasted because of cheap SEO pricing.
Whether you are a website owner or running a digital marketing agency, the above mentioned SEO pricing factors are equally important. Website owners should give priority to value whereas marketers have to perform best in the offered budget. This is essential for both to achieve their goals.
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