How Much Should I Pay Someone For SEO?

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Table Of Contents

Free SEO Report Card

The $300/Month Plan

On-Page Optimization

UI/UX

Paid Search Pricing

Backlinking

Social Media Management

Content Marketing

Email Marketing

Wrapping It All Up

There’s quite a bit of mystery regarding SEO, especially as it pertains to what an agency actually does and how they do it. Well, roll up your sleeves folks, because if you want to know how much you should pay someone for SEO, we’re going to get down and dirty with it. 

The backstory: a self-employed friend and I were talking, and he asked about SEO for his business. He had recently received a quote of $300 per month from an SEO agency, and asked my opinion. As I ran through various tactics and associated costs, I realized that an overview like this might be helpful to others, so here we are.

However, let me start with a few caveats. First of all, there is NO such thing as a “one size fits all” solution for SEO – even for clients in the exact same business. Things are so dependent on multiple factors that replicated campaigns created without taking external factors into account are destined to fail, and deservedly so (but for some reason, probably laziness, people keep trying). So this post isn’t meant to be a “how-to”, but rather more of an accounting of a number of tactics at our disposal.

The $300 Per Month SEO Plan

Might as well start with that one, eh? For $300, my guess is that agency is planning to run a local citation/business directory campaign. It’s among the basic building blocks of SEO, and a good starting point. My buddy is getting his first site, so everything for him is starting from zero. That being said, we recommend this step even for well established sites, especially if they have never done it. In essence, what these campaigns do is make sure your business listings on directories (think Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Trustpilot, etc.) are in sync and all share the same info. Often, we will find that addresses are incorrect or inconsistent, some listings are missing altogether and other key info has never been updated. They will also find a myriad of other directories to add company info, which all bolsters your profile with Google. For hyper-local businesses, this step might be all they need to get rolling.

$300 per month is an average agency price for a service like this, depending on the number of citations they will get you/maintain, especially if they have agreements with aggregators, which can easily triple the number of directories that will accept your info. Yes, you could do a lot of this yourself, but most agencies have software to simplify the tedious work, and most aggregators will only work by agreements with software providers. So you literally won’t be able to get into some directories without paying for an agency or software (looking at you, Yellow Pages Network). It’s frustrating, but that’s the way the game is played.

On-Page Optimization

We have entire articles on this tactic, but to be succinct, here is Semrush’s definition:

On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing webpages and their content for search engines and users. This process helps pages rank higher on Google and drive more organic traffic.

Common on-page SEO tasks include optimizing for search intent, refining title tags, adding internal links, and improving URLs.

We ❤️ on-page optimization, and have been doing it for years. A lot of agencies look at it as a “one and done” tactic, and it’s something they do for a site at launch and don’t speak of it again. The fact is that just about every addition to your site should be optimized, and your entire site should be updated on a regular basis. Why? Well, simply put, the search phrases that people use evolve over time, and sometimes pretty drastically. Keyword research should be performed regularly, and the entire website should be updated on a regular basis with the new key phrases and other, newer SEO best practices.

Pricing for on-page optimization is hard to nail down, since it’s obviously very dependent on the size of the website. It also depends on how deep you go – once you start getting into technical SEO, you can go down a very large rabbit hole (too deep to include in this article; take a look at our post on technical SEO for more details). For basic, best practices optimization, you can plan on a half-hour to an hour per page. So for a 20 page website, costs can exceed $3,000. Pro tip: if you are having a new site built, much of this work can be done as part of the new site architecture and save most of this expense.

Unlike most SEO fees, on-page optimization is typically billed each time it’s performed, unless ongoing optimization/content marketing (more on that later) is part of a monthly campaign.

UI/UX (User Interface/User Experience)

Here’s another quick definition for you, courtesy of Figma:

Put another way, it’s making the site as pleasurable for actual humans as possible. It’s a very overlooked and under appreciated aspect of SEO, but one that usually has a profound effect. And with the advancements of AI, this speciality is going from recommended to crucial. You can learn more about the tactics involved by reading, “What Is The Difference Between UI and UX?”

For pricing, you can expect about the same as on-page optimization (half-hour to an hour per page), although it can cost more – and even become a monthly expense – if you have ongoing multi-variate (A/B testing), which is a great idea and highly recommended.

Paid Search

This is a fun one. If there is one thing I wish we could shout from the rooftops, it’s that Google and Meta that are getting rich from your ad spends; not the agencies. And no, we don’t get ANY kind of kickback from any platforms, and I say that as a Google Premier Partner (the top level of Google Paid Ads Partners). So if you have a $5,000 ad budget with Google, Google is getting 100% of that. What most agencies do (including us) is charge a management fee.

How much is the management fee? Well, it depends on a number of factors; here’s a few:

• Amount of ad spend
• Number of campaigns
• Number of platforms (Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Ad creation
• Reporting needs

So the management fee can range from a percentage of the overall spend, which typically is somewhere between 10% – 20%. Expect to pay a little more for smaller campaigns, and larger campaigns can typically shave a few points off. But if you are running a multi-platform campaign with heavy creative and lots of hands-on assistance, you might pay a monthly rate in addition to a management fee. Even still, an agency fee of $2,500 for a $10k campaign isn’t unreasonable, especially for the amount of work and experience that goes into a high-performing outreach.

Backlinking

Backlinking is a key element of effective organic SEO, and sends strong signals to Google. It’s one of the absolute best ways to raise your site’s authority, but it can easily have the opposite effect if done incorrectly.

Put simply, backlinks are links to your website from other websites. The more “important” the website, the more valuable the backlink. So a link to your site from a friend’s wedding website isn’t worth much, but a link from a reputable site like the Wall Street Journal carries a TON of weight. But how to get these links?

Well, in a perfect world, it would happen naturally. Your company would gain notoriety for your products or services, a reporter writes an article about your firm, and boom; you have national attention and a link worth gold. Or you write an incredibly popular article that gets picked up by mainstream media, or the Linkedin or Reddit community, and word spreads. But the world is far from perfect, and the odds of those things happening are maddeningly slim.

Enter a good digital marketing agency, with access to content syndication. Links are gained in a number of ways; here are some popular options:

1. 1. Pay a website owner to post your article or add a link to their existing site
   2. Exchange links – you place a link on your site for them and vice versa
   3. Pay or incentivize an influencer to give your product or service a shout-out on their platform
   4. Pitch your idea to reporters and PR folk, and hope that they need a quote from you in exchange for a link

I’m sure some of you are questioning that first option, and wondering how search engines like Google feel about paying for backlinks. Well, the short answer is that it is a violation of Google’s spam policies. If Google discovers that you are paying for links, they will either ignore the link (waste of money) or levy a manual penalty on your site.

That being said, if you do decide to pay for links – and since the whole point of this article is to be transparent about pricing – here’s how much you can expect to pay:

• On average, paid links cost $83, according to Authority Hacker. You can find sources to purchase them for less, and even get packages of multiple links for less than a hundred bucks. But be forewarned – these links farms are generally ignored by Google and can also get your site penalized.
• On the high end, you can pay $1000 or more (I’ve seen rates as high as $4000, and I’m sure there are higher rates out there) for sites with high domain authority and millions of site visitors. Keep in mind that these are the costs that go to the hosting site, and don’t include agency fees or content creation fees. On average, you can get a backlink from a reputable site for $300-$500.
• Influencers are all over the board. A local person with around 10,000 followers might give you a mention simply by sending them free samples of your products, or charge a minimal fee of $10 to $100. The rates go up in sync with the number of followers, with influencers who have 500,000 followers commanding rates of $10,000 or more. It also depends on the platform. Generally speaking, Instagram influencers expect $100 per 10,000 followers, while YouTube influencers rates can easily be twice that.

Again, I reiterate that you also have to factor in agency fees (typically 15% – 30%) for any of these options, and that the bulk of the spend is simply a flow-through cost going to the host site or influencer. The outlier here is the PR option, but keep in mind that the agency has to spend a good amount of time to pitch your article, and you can expect fees for that type of service to range from $300 to $1,000. You will also need to be open-minded with this approach, as there is very little control over which media outlet opts to pick up your pitch – or if they even will. Generally, agencies don’t bill until the pitch is accepted, so be sure to look for that in your agreement.

Social Media Management

A lot of companies overlook the importance of a well-planned, professional social media outreach, since the ROI is so difficult to measure. This task generally gets pushed to an intern or overworked marketing coordinator, and the results are as lackluster as the effort. But a campaign with energy that works in conjunction with an overall SEO campaign can truly elevate your brand and drastically increase your visibility and relatability.

Pricing for these services are based on several factors:

• Number of platforms – your agency should suggest which platforms will perform best for your goals
• Frequency of posts –  2-3 quality posts per week, depending on industry
• Type of ads and creative needed – obviously, video and complex ads lead to higher fees

Given all those variables, rates can vary widely. Agency Analytics has a great article covering this, and they put the average agency rates at $1,000 to $10,000. That’s too wide of a range to be useful, but feel free to reach out to us with your needs and we can get you an exact rate.

Sidenote: every social media platform also offers options for paid ads; that topic is covered in the Paid Search Pricing section.

Content Marketing

Ah yes, content marketing. The biggest thing that Google has emphasized, with their regular pleas to add quality, fresh, relevant content to your site. And shame on me for putting this topic way down here, especially given that success with AI-based searches depends greatly on site content!

Too often, websites are treated like brochures. Design the brochure, print it, start handing them out and don’t think about it again until the information gets outdated. Friends, if you take nothing away from this article, hear this: add and update content on your site EVERY month. You’ll see your domain authority rise, your organic rankings increase, and user engagement skyrocket. Google has been very vocal about this, but it still takes a backseat to other tactics. Why? Well, quality content is time-consuming to create, and it can be extremely difficult to come up with 4-6 new blog posts per month about limo services or kitchen renovations.

Yes, you could use AI to create your content. And yes, Google has softened its stance on AI-created content. But if you truly are attempting to attract human eyes and capture engagement, there is just no substitute for human-created content. And there isn’t an AI bot out there (yet) that can keep your site updated with fresh content that builds on your SEO strategy (you are updating your keyword and target market strategies regularly, right?) in the way that a practiced strategist can.

For small companies with only a handful of products or services, expect a quality content marketing campaign to run $1500 – $3,000 per month, more if your company is in a highly technical space. For larger companies, budgets of $10,000, $20,000 and more are not uncommon.

Email Marketing

Email remains an extremely efficient way to keep in front of your target market and stay top of mind. After all, sometimes getting that next client is a function of just being in the right place at the right time, and if your newsletter just happens to arrive on the day when someone is at wit’s end with their current solution, you could be in luck. The caveat here is to make sure that your messaging is valuable, as we’re all suffering from email overload. A good agency can help with creating a well-received email campaign that is appreciated and gets people engaged, not enraged.

The main expenses for email marketing include:

• Design – this is so important, as you’ll need a design that is easy to read and displays correctly on a wide variety of devices. Email is an odd bird in this regard, as it’s the last bastion of the “old way” of web coding. Thanks to the archaic design of email apps, email newsletters have to be programmed using tables, which haven’t been used to develop websites in a couple of decades. You’re also limited to 8 different fonts, unless you try some trickery that is prone to failure. All this is a long way of saying that a lot more goes into email template design than you may think – expect to pay between $400 – $1500 for each newsletter template you need.
• Email platform – you’ll need a service (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc.) to house your templates and your mailing list, and to do all the sending for you so your domain doesn’t get blacklisted. Costs vary based on the size of your list and how many times a month you send emails. Mailchimp rates are here and are as little as $45/month for 1500 contacts.
• Content creation and campaign management – this rate is dependent of the frequency of your mailings, but you can generally plan on $500 to $1500 per email. There’s lots of variables here, ranging from the amount of content to the complexity of your campaign (setting up drip campaigns or sequences).

Wrapping It All Up

It goes without saying that my friend with his $300 per month SEO plan isn’t likely to get very much for his money, especially since his goals include increasing his national presence. That being said, small businesses don’t necessarily need to have 5 digit SEO budgets to get results (the average digital marketing campaign is around $3,500). Sure, the higher the budget, the more tactics you can leverage and the greater the impact – in theory. In reality, I’ve seen companies waste many thousands of dollars on ineffective and poorly planned campaigns. Choose your agency wisely!

When we create digital marketing campaigns (we lovingly refer to our campaigns as “Success Plans), we strive for a reasonable budget that will produce appreciable results. That means that we won’t employ every single tactic at our disposal; we choose the ones that will have the biggest impact. And as we make progress, we may choose to substitute or add other tactics. Not to boast, but our campaigns typically have amazing ROI rates, and we often have clients ask us to increase their budgets without us even having to ask.

The thing you don’t want to do is to look at this list and try to implement every tactic with a minimal budget for each. That will only lead to frustration and watered down campaigns that have no hope of success. We see this with companies that look at their marketing spend with agencies and decide that their money would be better spent hiring an internal person, then task them with full campaigns. There are several problems with this approach, with the most obvious being the expectation to hire one person with expertise in every area. Here at ForeFront, we have 16 folks, and each one specializes in different disciplines. I’d never ask my paid search specialist to manage a client’s Google Business Profile or write a blog article on multi-process welders, yet firms regularly expect their marketing people to be experts in every tactic.

Still have questions about digital marketing budgets? Well, as I mentioned, every company is different, and the budget for your company can and should be based on a very bespoke plan. Give us a shout, and we’d be happy to get you an idea of what it would take for you.