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Why is SEO so expensive?
For many businesses, SEO can seem too expensive — which isn’t the case. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies, especially compared to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

The reason why SEO seems expensive is that:
  1. SEO takes time to work: Your pay-per-click ads can start driving revenue as soon as you launch them. That’s not the case with SEO. With SEO, you need to optimize your site for four to six months before seeing a return on investment (ROI).
  2. SEO takes multiple skills: From producing SEO content to optimizing page speed, SEO requires multiple skill sets to work — that’s why many businesses outsource SEO. Full-service agencies (like Adlevel) fill these skill gaps so you don’t have to, which is why they have higher SEO prices.
  3. SEO takes experience: Search isn’t new. Companies of all sizes now invest in SEO. If your business wants to compete, you need a reputable SEO partner. Compare these providers (and their higher SEO costs) to other, less reputable SEOs, and SEO will seem expensive.
Look at the cost of SEO as an investment, and you’ll start seeing why SEO is cost-effective, like:
  1. SEO works 24/7: Pay-per-click ads stop working for you as soon as you stop paying. In comparison, search engine optimization drives continuous results, helping your business drive traffic, leads, and sales 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  2. SEO drives conversions: Search engines like Google use more than 200 ranking factors, including ones related to user experience, like page speed. Optimizing for these user-focused elements often leads to higher conversion rates because you reduce pain points in your conversion process.
  3. SEO targets the whole funnel: You can target top-, middle-, and bottom-of-the-funnel users with SEO. The advantage here is your business widens its reach, connecting with users throughout their journey and then nurturing them to conversion with SEO and other digital marketing strategies.
Is it worth paying for SEO?
Yes, it’s worth paying for SEO — when partnering with a reputable service provider. These service providers will work to deliver a return on investment, making paying for SEO worth it. Unfortunately, not all SEO providers are reputable and advertise cheap SEO prices to get clients.
How much should you pay for SEO?
How much you pay for SEO depends on several factors, from your SEO budget and your SEO goals to your industry and your SEO provider’s location. While SEO pricing varies, plan to pay at least $1500 per month, $100 per hour, or $5000 per project.

Keep in mind you will see lower SEO prices than those listed above. Finding freelancers, consultants, and agencies offering SEO plans for less than $1500 a month is easy. Cheap SEO comes at a cost to your team and business, though.

Some of the most common complaints about cheap SEO include poorer:
  1. Results
  2. Satisfaction
  3. Work quality
In some cases, businesses will even see search engines penalize their website — these penalties can include getting removed from the search engine’s index. This scenario can happen when cheap SEO providers use black-hat tactics to optimize a site, like using link farms to earn links.

So, when debating how much you should pay for SEO, focus your budget on quality vs. cheap services.

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Congrats! You know how much SEO costs, what determines SEO pricing, and how to evaluate SEO prices. If you’re looking to get pricing custom to your business and its unique SEO needs, request yours today and receive a custom strategy, flight plan, and pricing from the Adlevel team!

FAQs about SEO pricing

Get answers to FAQs about SEO pricing now:

On average, SEO costs $1500 to $7500 per month. How much your business pays for monthly SEO will depend on several factors, including your company’s size, your service provider’s location, and your SEO package’s deliverables. For the most accurate monthly SEO pricing, request a custom quote.

On average, SEO costs $100 to $150 per hour. How much your business pays for hourly SEO will depend on several factors, like your service provider’s experience, SEO plan deliverables, and resources. For the most accurate hourly SEO rates, request custom pricing.

On average, SEO costs $5000 to $35,000 per project. How much your business pays for project-based SEO will depend on several factors, like your project’s requirements, size, and deadlines. Your service provider’s experience, location, and resources can also influence your project-based SEO costs.

On average, in-house SEO costs $55,000 to $75,000 — the annual salary of an SEO specialist with benefits, like taxes and insurance. How much your business invests in doing SEO in-house will depend on your company’s location, candidate requirements, and SEO program size.

Yes! Adlevel provides pre-built SEO packages and custom SEO pricing starting at $3,000 per month.

SEO, also called search engine optimization, refers to strategies that help improve your website’s visibility in organic search results. These strategies include keyword research, content creation, and more.

Here’s a break down of some of the most important SEO factors to pay attention to if you want to increase your site’s rankings in search results.
  • Add keywords to your URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and site content: When search bots crawl your site, they look for keywords to identify the topic of your content. This helps them display your site in relevant search results. Ultimately, when your site ranks higher in search results, more people can find and contact your business.
  • Optimize alt attributes: You will also want to add alt tags to your multimedia. Since search engines can’t “read” multimedia elements, you need to include alt tags — text descriptions of your multimedia. This gives helps search engines better understand and index your multimedia content.
  • Update your content regularly: Site visitors and search engines alike love freshly updated, quality content. Keeping your site updated on a regular basis will keep visitors and search bots coming back for more. Regular site updates can also help you establish yourself as a leader in your industry.
  • Optimize technical site elements: You can also take some time to optimize technical elements of your site like your coding and page speed. Cleaning up your code and ensuring that your page loads at top speeds can boost your rankings in search results and encourage people to spend more time on your site This year, page speed will also become a major mobile search factor, so you need to ensure your site loads quickly across a number of devices.
  • Implement responsive design: In order to improve user-friendliness, you’ll want to implement responsive design. With responsive design, you can ensure that your site looks great and performs well, no matter the device a visitor uses to access it. In other words, responsive design allows smartphone, desktop, and tablet users to have the same great experience on your site.
  • Streamline navigation: Search engines want to reward sites that provide great experiences for visitors. To make sure people can find the information they need on your site, you’ll want to streamline your navigation. Instead of cluttering your navigation with links, only link to the most important pages. From there, you can link out to other pages deeper in your site.
  • Answer users’ questions: You’ll also want to make sure your site provides valuable answers to visitors’ questions. You can do this by creating custom content. Be sure to conduct keyword research to discover trending topics in your industry, and publish fresh content to answer questions and improve users’ experience on your site.


If you want to improve your rankings in search results for keywords related to your business, paying attention to and optimizing these SEO factors is a great place to start. However, keep in mind that SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. In other words, it takes some time to see results, but they’re well worth the wait!

Why do you want to rank at the top of search results? The answer is simple.

Since 75% of people don’t look past the first page of first results. This means that if you want more customers to find and contact your business, you need to rank in top search results for keywords and phrases related to your business.

Research shows that the first page of organic search results has a 71% click through rate (CTR), while pages two and three have a combined CTR of only 6% — a drastic decline.

Moral of the story? The higher you rank in search results, the more people will find and visit your site. This means that you can reach more customers and earn more revenue for your business.

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