Hello bitches! I hope you're having a magnificent week. If you've found yourself on this blog, you're either a subscriber of mine (hello!) or a small business who's considering investing in SEO, but wants to understand a little bit about pricing first. So, I'm going to attempt to provide a useful answer to the question "How much does Google SEO cost for a small business?"
The short answer is that there is no set price, unfortunately. SEO is not a 'thing' that can be installed or a switch that is turned on - it's a set of guidelines that websites can follow. By following the guidelines, a website will see their ranking in search results improve.
What this means is that SEO is a people-powered service. An SEO consultant (sometimes just called an SEO like it's a noun, but I don't froth that), needs to have a deep understanding of the Google algorithm, then have the ability to write optimised content, and the ability to implement it.
On-Page SEO Requires Three Components
- SEO Knowledge
- Content writing ability
- Website management ability
SEO consultants or agencies will offer a combination of these three components to SEO, but some only offer one or the other. So, for example, you could hire a consultant with SEO knowledge to provide you with something like an SEO Audit, which will give you an insight into your website and provide the information on HOW it can be improved, and possibly give you a strategy.
This service will cost anywhere between £75 for mini audits, to a median price of £275 (which is what I charge for small businesses), up to over £1,500 (I have seen this price advertised by competitors, and do not think it is appropriate for a small business SEO charge - this is definitely more for big businesses with huge websites).
All consultants will provide different depths of information, so it's always important to check what the Audit will include.
This knowledge is fantastic, and will give you an idea of what to do, but more important than KNOWING what to do, is actually DOING it. There's no point investing in an SEO Audit if you're not going to take the time to implement the changes.
In my experience, the changes required for small businesses will be a combination of complicated strategy, content writing, and of very easy low hanging fruit that anyone can do (add SEO titles, Meta titles and alt texts), and ideally the consultant will guide you through how you can do this yourself (I do!).
Then comes the strategy (keyword strategy and innerlink strategy, and site structure potentially), which you'll need knowledge of website management systems to implement, and addition of optimised content, which you'll need to know how to write.
The More Work You Want, The More it Costs
As you can see, the more skills required, the more content writing and implementation you need, the more it is going to start to cost. There are lots of different ways that consultants price their optimisations, whether as a one-off or ongoing monthly fee.
When talking SEO for small creative businesses, I don't believe that you need a constant monthly person on call for consulting and optimisations. Definitely you need to have updates happening to your website on a constant basis, but in a lot of small businesses you can see this through adding new products, or simply having a blog post every now and then.
If you're interested in knowing more about blogging, check out The Ultimate Guide to Blogging for SEO, which is aimed directly at small businesses looking to improve their website SEO without having to invest in ongoing consultant fees.
So, back to the question of 'How much does Google SEO cost for a small business' - it really just depends on how much you're willing to do on your own, and how much you want to outsource to the experts. My website optimisation packages currently start at £750, which will do a full audit, then take a bunch of the information and strategy that I've recommended in the Audit and both do a lot of optimised content writing for you as well as implementing all of the fixes, recommendations and the newly-written content.
Other consultants charge thousands of pounds - and again, this depends on the amount of work that may actually be involved and how much they will do.
Watch Out for Scams
Small businesses can be a perfect target for SEO scams. Even my inbox is full of spam and cold emails from SEO companies offering me 'number one spot on Google' (an impossible promise, which I've ranted about in reels before), as well as consultants that will rely on the fact that you don't understand all of the jargon in the industry and not actually provid you anything of value.
As with any business investment decision, it's important to be informed about what you're buying. You can check out my SEO Dictionary to learn some of the most commonly used terminology, read some of the other blog posts, or even book in a free consultation call with me to talk about what is possible for your website.
You can also book a call or email me at bee@seo-bitch.com to discuss a proposal you received from another consultant, and I can advise you if they're giving you a good deal. My whole deal is breaking down barriers of gatekeeping in this industry so I'm always happy to answer questions!
So, How Much Does Google SEO Cost for a Small Business?
Yeah, look, sorry. I can't give you a definitive answer to the question "How much does Google SEO cost for a small business", but hopefully I've at least been able to give you an understanding of WHY I couldn't give you a definitive answer. If you have any questions, as always, feel free to contact me! I have lots of other great things to say, probably, much like how I'm always going on about Faire SEO and how it can help you with wholesale! Not relevant to this blog really but gotta get those innerlinks in for that sweet sweet linkjuice.
