What does SEO cost?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a rapidly growing area of digital marketing and having an SEO strategy is becoming an increasingly important building block of your overall digital marketing strategy. Understanding how much SEO costs can help you determine what fits best for your business and your digital marketing strategy. 

There are a few different options for achieving and managing your SEO goals: 

• DIY (Hands-On) Approach
• Agency (Hands-Off) Approach 
• Combination of DIY and Agency Approach 

DIY (Hands-On) Approach 

In this approach, you, as the business owner, would be responsible for managing and achieving all of your SEO goals. This approach allows you to set your own budget and, depending on the tools or combination of tools you decide to use, can be approximately $0 to upwards of $1000 per month. Some of our favourite tools are: 

Free Tools: 

• Yoast – A free WordPress tool that allows you to optimize all of your posts 
• Google Analytics – A free Google tool that allows you to look at how much of your traffic is coming from organic sources. 
• Google Search Console – Another free Google tool that gives you a snapshot into what Google thinks of your site including clicks, impressions and average ranking positions. (Bing Webmaster Tools is a similar tool, but for Bing instead of Google.) 

Subscription Tools: 

• Ahrefs – Ahrefs has a variety of subscription options and highlights technical SEO fixes as well as including additional features like a backlink checker and keyword explorer. Pricing can vary from $99 to $999 per month depending on what your needs are.
• Screaming Frog – Screaming Frog allows you to run powerful audits on your site and highlights on-site SEO fixes. Depending on your needs, this tool typically runs at  £149.00 per license per year with discount options available for license bundles. 
• Semrush – This is an all-in-one tool option that includes features for keyword research, on-page SEO, local SEO and content optimization. Plans for Semrush typically start at $119.95 per month and can cost up to $449.95 per month depending on what level of plan you choose. 

If you’re interested in learning more about whether to choose a combined toolkit approach vs. an all-in-one tool like Semrush, read our analysis here. 

Agency (Hands-Off) Approach 

In this approach, you, as the business owner, would hire or contract an agency to complete SEO work on their behalf. The work completed by an agency can range from either just having an audit completed which would highlight work to be done or developing a complete SEO strategy and implementing the tactics needed to achieve your goals. While this approach will still allow you to set your own budget, your costs will be largely dependent on the agency you choose to hire and what work you wish to have completed. If you’re interested in hiring an agency to help you with your SEO goals, we strongly recommend taking a look at Clutch’s list of Top SEO Companies in Vancouver. This list provides you with client reviews as well as the minimum project amount and hourly rates. 

What should you do?

Overall, the cost of SEO largely depends on how much time you or your team can devote to managing SEO optimization on your own. Also, your knowledge and the volume of work you’d like to complete based on your business goals and overall digital marketing strategy should factor into your decision-making process.

Interested in Jelly’s SEO services? Get in touch with us today to provide you with a quote.