So you’ve decided to make use of a professional service for your search engine optimization. Pricing on these various services would depend on what type of strategy is being used.
You may decide to go the results driven route, by using paid advertising schemes offered by search engines and various popular websites. Alternatively you may go the organic route and optimise your website to get search engine more traffic.
Paid or organic, it still costs money. Even if you do it yourself, there will always be a commitment of resources.
Search Engine Optimization Pricing Schemes for Paid Search
This will typically be paid to the actual landing pages and search engines that place the ad, with the SEO being focused on what keywords to bid on. Paid search improves conversions
Pay-Per-Click
This is the most common pricing scheme. You pay for each time someone clicks on your advertisement. This will lead to a landing page that directly seeks a conversion, rather than just the homepage.
It places the responsibility of an effective SEO conversion funnel on the company placing the ad. These models are open to click fraud but many search engine implement measures (such as IP address repetition) to fight this.
Cost-Per-Impression
You pay search engines each time your advertisement comes up in the search results or each time a banner advertisement is seen by a user.
This is a risky model as it places a lot of pressure on the content and copy of the ad. You may end up paying an exorbitant price for your advertisement without a single person having actually clicked through.
Cost-Per-Action
A pricing rate that charges you each time a successful conversion is achieved. This may not be necessarily tied to revenue but rather just someone submitting a query or a survey response.
This is the most desirable pricing model as payment is directly related to the success of the campaign. Which is why it can be difficult to find a search engine or advertiser who offer it.
Establishing Search Engine Optimization Cost
If you’ve decided to go organic and make use of SEO consulting for your search engine optimization, the cost of such an effort would depend on the depth and regularity of the optimisation. Organic SEO improves website traffic.
Once-Off
A lot of companies go for this option as it requires less of a commitment. They can make it a project rather than an on-going objective.
A once-off revamp of your SEO strategy will definitely improve your rank in the short term but with each successive crawl and algorithm update, your rank will slowly begin to drop again.
Content freshness is a ranking factor that’s growing. It essentially solidifies the idea that SEO is an on-going effort.
Regular
Regular SEO services are normally done on a cost per service basis. Once your website has been fully optimised, a regular review of the search engine optimisation every few months should be all that’s necessary.
For content freshness many SEO firms offer content writing services that provide unique and industry relevant copy that are keyword rich but still add-value to the visitor.