TL/DR: You can’t afford NOT to do SEO.
If you’re running a business and you’re using a website as a tool (it’s 2023, we’re going to assume you have a website), it’s important that your website is optimized for search engines (as well as for users).
Sure, your website will function without SEO, but without optimization, you’re basically sending your website out to sea in a tiny little bottle, just hoping it’ll get found.
We live and breathe SEO, but we totally get it that adding another piece to the puzzle of things to learn for your website and business might just put you over the edge. If you’re in the business of selling custom decorated cookies or installing new flooring– you might be just as excited about learning and implementing SEO as you are about taxes or compliance! Although the consequences of avoiding taxes and other parts of your business are more extreme, there are consequences for the success of your online presence if you avoid doing SEO.
How Much Does SEO Cost?
The answer to this question can vary depending on who you talk to, what your goals are, and where you’re starting from. There’s a big difference between a site that’s a week old vs a site that has been up and running poorly for 5 + years. With an older site, there’s likely a significant amount of “undoing” that needs to happen before getting on track with SEO in a way that makes noticeable changes. If your website is brand new, we’re starting with a clean slate!
The way we break down the cost for SEO can go a couple ways.
Initial SEO By The Hour: We’ll give you an estimate and an hourly rate to fix what we find. We charge an hourly rate to fix what we find. Not only are we SEO experts, we have sophisticated auditing tools that can help us find exactly what needs to be changed.
- If you have a brand new site and you’ve done nothing as far as SEO work– this won’t be too many hours and will set you on the right foot for growth!
- If your site has been around for a while, with a bunch of pages, and you’ve neglected the SEO– it’ll take a bit more time to sort through and implement the necessary SEO on each page
- If your site has been around for a while, has a bunch of pages, and you’ve been doing SEO poorly– or worse! – you’ve been paying someone to do your SEO poorly, this is probably going to take us the most amount of time to clean up
- We charge $150/hour for this work. That may seem like a lot, but remember you’re not paying for an hour. You’re paying for an hour and 15 years’ worth of knowledge and experience, along with the best tools available.
Getting your SEO cleaned up over the course of a short period can do wonders for your small business website. We’ll fix the things we can fix, guide you through fixing the things you need to fix, and your site will be in the best shape it’s ever been!
Ongoing Monthly SEO: We dedicate an agreed upon amount of hours per month to ensuring the optimization of your website. This can be especially helpful if you’re a smaller local business.
- If you’re adding new pages or content to your website, we can make sure whatever you’ve added has been optimized
- We can keep track of how your website is performing amongst competitors and make suggestions as to where you can improve
- We can make sure that your website is continuously updated and optimized based on best practices and trends
- If you’re a local business, we can help you optimize local listings and profiles so there’s a higher chance that folks find you online
- We charge $750/month for this service
Having ongoing monthly SEO work can sometimes feel like you’re paying for nothing. Especially if you’ve had some initial SEO work done and your site is pretty clean and optimized. The thing about SEO is that it can be hard to notice changes month over month. Even when work is being done, there typically isn’t a drastic change in business. Assuming you’re running a good business and people like what you have to offer, the optimization of your website will help your online presence climb steadily over time. However, NOT doing SEO work will have its consequences much more quickly and will hit harder.
Think about the investment of website optimization as a long-game
If you consider the consequences of an un-optimized website (less visibility > less traffic > less business) SEO seems pretty affordable. Making sure your site is optimized for success each month will help your website rank better in the long run. And you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing you are taking a holistic approach (rather than a black-hat approach which will yield major consequences down the road).
When you work with us, there are different options so SEO is affordable AND does its job.
- Initial SEO clean up. Maybe you just want us to get in there, clean up and get out. Although we don’t necessarily recommend this approach, if this suits your needs and your budget for now, it’s all good!
- Initial SEO clean up + monthly service. This way you know for sure your website is starting out at its best and continues to do so for months to come. We recommend this one!
- Monthly SEO. It might be that you don’t want to commit to a bunch of hours up-front, or maybe you just like the idea of a monthly plan better. No worries! With a monthly plan, we will prioritize the most important aspects of your website’s optimization with our monthly allotment of time.
At SuCoWeb, we know that having yet another cost for a small business can be daunting.
We’re a small business too, so we get it. We’re passionate about helping people optimize their websites because no matter how beautifully built your website is, if it’s not optimized, people won’t be able to find you online. We encourage small business owners to consider investing in SEO work even if they think they can’t afford it right away. It will pay off in the long run in the form of more traffic and business coming from organic search.
If you’d like to learn more about what we can do for you and whether or not an SEO service is for you, please reach out. SEO is one of our favorite things to talk about and we’d be happy to point you in the right direction!
