How much should you spend on Search Engine Optimisation?
When you are trying to scale and grow your business, it is hard to know what portion you should put towards marketing your business. We would recommend that you should put 5% of your turnover for marketing to retain your current position and spend 10% if your looking to grow!
Digital marketing has a large number of areas to grow your business. Search Engine Optimisation has the highest eCommerce conversion rate of any of the different digital marketing channels. If your looking to grow your monthly business by €10,000, then you should be spending 10% of that on marketing including SEO.
Marketing ROI is a way of measuring the return on investment from the amount a company spends on marketing, including SEO cost. Return On Advertising Spend, (ROAS), is a marketing metric that measures the efficacy of a digital advertising campaign (Google Ads or Social Media Ads).
How much does SEO cost?
It’s important to realise that the price isn’t necessarily the main factor, it’s the return on leads or sales that’s most important. If you had monthly sales of €100,000 each month (on average) from your website as a result of strong rankings, you’d see €5,000 SEO as a good investment.
For the majority of businesses, a spend like that wouldn’t be justified. It’s just worth understanding the fact SEO is an investment when done correctly. With the right keyword research prior to content creation, you will see an increase in organic traffic to your website.
SEO cost prices have a large range in charges per month (€300 – €10,000).GettingSEOcost prices can be frustrating because it is hard to tell what package is most suitable for your business.
It is sometimes easier to value the return in SEO for an eCommerce business as you see the return straight away in the increased sales that you achieve. In a services or off line business, sometimes the value of leads can be hard to determine.
How is SEO typically priced?
The three main ways SEO pricing is applied are hourly rates, per project pricing or monthly retainers. Different companies offer different strategies to manage their SEO clients.
Hourly Rates
Used by SEO agencies and SEO freelancers who serve smaller businesses which can’t afford to commit to a long-term SEO campaign. This allows the business to manage their SEO cost, however we find that this can be limiting in the results you get.
Project based Pricing
A price per portion of SEO work – i.e. Do on-page optimization for ecommerce website with 200 products. We can offer project based SEO pricing in line with the Trading Online Voucher scheme. This can be a great boost to companies, however, as SEO takes time, it is usually after the project is complete that people realise the benefit. This doesn’t help the company grow continuously, however can be a good starting point for many businesses where funds are limited.
Monthly retainers
Agile Digtial Strategy work with the monthly retainer option. We charge a fixed fee each month to constantly monitor and work on your SEO campaign. This is the most effictive model as it allows us to constantly grow your Google keyword rankings organically, where project-based SEO and hourly SEO doesn’t. Google likes websites that produce new content regularly.
SEO Costs by Consultants and Digital Marketing Agencies?
When comparing SEO companies in Dublin or the anywhere else for that matter you’re likely to encounter SEO consultants, small SEO agencies and medium-large sized SEO agencies.
Naturally, due to the size of each business, their offering and their case studies, you’re going to pay a wide range of prices for each service. Each business can have different pricing models.
SEO Consultants in Ireland
The consultant SEO’s I’ve spoken to in Dublin, business owners can expect to pay around €199 to €500 per month for an ongoing SEO retainer. Some of these can be very good but some also outsource this work with some dubious results using Freelance websites and this “cheap” SEO can have longer term impacts to your business.
Small-Medium SEO agencies in Ireland
The small SEO agencies in Ireland I’ve come across are charging between €500-€1,500 per month for SEO.
Medium-large SEO agencies in Ireland
Medium to large sized SEO agencies charge €500-€10,000 per month for an SEO management campaign.
All prices above are based on some online research we have conducted. Some only perform off page linking and I would be very wary of some of these “backlink farms”.
What impacts SEO prices?
Your Goals
What is your goal from your SEO campaign? Do you want to rank highly for “Cafe in Shannon” or do you want to rank highly “Marketing Agency” in Ireland? There is more competition for the second option as you’re attempting to rank Ireland-wide rather than just ranking in the local town.
The larger the region as well as the keywords in your goals, the more complicated your SEO campaign will be. Therefore it will have an impact on the price. It also depends on where your website is currently ranking for those search terms. If you are aren’t on the first 2 or 3 pages of Google, it will take time to get to the first page.
Competition
How competitive is your market that you are aiming for? Are you a small business going up against established multinationals? How many businesses are trying to get to that top 3 spot on Google?
If you’re in the tourism industry your market can be highly competitive to attract new customers. Therefore, once again to rank your site it’ll take more work. Thus, the price is higher.
Local SEO is a good way to negate the impact of larger national competitors in the local market. You need to ensure your website and GMB are optimised for Local SEO.
Urgency
How quickly do you need to get to page 1 on Google? To rank top of Google within just a few months, this will require a lot more effort and focused SEO work than if you’re willing to consistently grow into higher rankings over a longer period. If you wish to get ranked quicker, you may wish to look at SEO combined with some PPC Managment with Google Ads spend.
The SEO provider
As mentioned above, you’ll pay a lot less for SEO from an SEO agency in Clare or Limerick compared to a large SEO agency in Dublin. As it is all online, it doesn’t actually matter where in Ireland your SEO provider is located.
The results their SEO services have proven with other clients, as well as the skills and experience of the SEO team is crucial.
Services Included
Services for each SEO project can vary. Some may include portions of social media marketing in their digital marketing. Link Building is a must from fully qualified related websites. Also on-page technical SEO is a starting point on all search engine optimization.
We would always recommend that you get an SEO audit done on the website. This can identify areas of improvement of your website.
Different SEO agency’s can have different SEO strategies. You can expect to pay more for Link Building or website management , eCommerce or Enterprise SEO, creating Infographics and videography. More that is, than paying for Social Media marketing or management, keyword research or writing simple blog articles, on page or off page SEO,Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), audits and guest posting.
Employees or Freelancers tend to focus on one or two SEO services, but a reputable SEO agency may be entrusted with providing everything that is required for your company.
Is SEO cost worth the money?
The short answer is that SEO is incredibly effective at generating traffic, leads, and sales.
Organic search, for example, receives almost 20 times the number of clicks as any paid Google ad. That seems like an excellent marketing point, doesn’t it? Essentially, SEO has a 20-fold increase in traffic potential. Furthermore, you will not be charged for each click for the rest of your life.
As a business owner, though, you are more concerned with your bottom line than with showy indicators. You won’t earn many purchases if all of your traffic comes from “how to unclog your own toilet” rather than “plumber in San Diego.”
It’s important to consider search intent and keyword relevancy.
When done correctly, SEO draws potential customers at advantageous times in the buying cycle – research, traffic, conversions and sales. The ROI from SEO takes a few months, but continues far longer than any advertising. Also the prices don’t vary on a month to month basis unlike Google Ads.
For B2B companies, SEO generates more revenue than all otherdigital marketingchannels combined. Across all industries, it averages 44% of all revenue.
What is the SEO cost with Agile Digital Strategy?
According to CSO website, 69% of internet users purchased goods/services in 2020. 73% of females made purchases online. 68% of people aged 45-59 and 52% of people aged 60-74 made purchases online, in 2020. Can you afford to miss out on the website traffic and sales?
The fixed retainer model the most effective for consistently ranking websites over time in our opinion. Our SEO Ireland packages start from €350 per month and are designed to be suitable for all Ireland businesses including Clare, Limerick, Galway and Mayo. Currently we are helping clients throughout Ireland, UK and USA with their SEO. We price each company separately depending on their current ranking, the competition and the goals of the company.
Check out our reviews to see how we are currently helping clients with their rankings and how happy they are with the service. Also, offer a number of different SEO Packages.
Find out what investment is required to begin your business’ SEO campaign? Get in touch to see if your website can benefit from SEO .
SEO Cost will only be discussed once we know your website current ranking and what your goals are. We don’t proceed with clients unless we can expect that they will get a return to their business. SEO should provide a return in increased sales and leads to your business. The SEO cost or should I say SEO Investment will be returned to you with increased sales over time.
Example – we worked on the eCommerce SEO of one client in 2020 and the had €140K of sales at the end of that year up 300% on previous year, and the following year they had over €450K of sales in 2021, another year on year 300% increase!
Enquire today if your website could benefit from SEO.
