SEO Costs: How much do SEO services cost?

If you have your Online Marketing-When you set your budget and search for an SEO company, you'll find that the prices for SEO vary greatly. It's difficult to answer the question, how much does SEO cost?

In 2021, SEO costs for local campaigns averaged around €1,000 per month, while costs for national SEO campaigns averaged between €2,500 and €7,500 per month. The cost of SEO varies depending on the complexity of the keywords and the services included.

So why do some SEO companies charge 500 euros per month and others more than 10,000 euros per month?
Let's take a look at the differences in pricing and why a SEO Agency demands more than another.

SEO Awards

When a company decides to hire an SEO agency, it is often to fill a gap in their own skills or expertise. It's an important decision because the growth of your business may depend on the success of the search engine marketing campaign.

So if you don't have in-house experts to help you evaluate potential companies and don't know the somewhat intimidating SEO terms, how is a company supposed to understand what SEO services they need?

And more importantly, how can you estimate the value and cost of these services to determine what budget you should allocate to SEO services?

Let's take a look at what we should pay attention to.

Important facts about SEO prices and costs include

• The average SEO costs for German SEO agencies are €80-€220 per hour

• SEO costs for Germans are often between €2,000 and €8,000 per month

• Beware of SEOs that guarantee results.

• Prepackaged SEO packages are becoming increasingly unpopular

• Individual SEO strategies are necessary for the best results

• Watch out for hidden costs for the Link building

• SEO prices are usually lower for local SEO campaigns

• Higher SEO costs for E-commerce-websites are common due to the higher competition

SEO Monthly Plan Prices

Many SEO companies offer monthly or annual contracts that are based on a monthly calendar. With WOLF OF SEO. we develop our strategies several months in advance and report on our work, results and progress at least once a month. Two-way communication between SEO agency and client is crucial to achieve the best possible results.

It is important to note that while we do offer monthly plans, we do not offer monthly SEO packages that are the same for everyone, as this type of SEO is not the most effective. Many monthly packages offered by other companies include a certain number and type of services, such as writing articles, gaining Backlinks and the optimization of pages. Such "turnkey" packages are often sold by low-quality SEO agencies that are more concerned with doing a certain amount of concrete work each month than achieving results.

Beware of companies that promise to deliver a certain number of Backlinks per month, especially since the quality and Relevance the Backlinksthat link to your website is far more important than quantity. While our scheduled tasks and SEO activities are planned on a monthly basis to organize and streamline the workflow, our strategies are not limited by these types of "blanket" monthly packages. Instead, our SEO services are customized so that we always work on what we know will bring the greatest ROI.

Price example for a basic SEO plan

Basic SEO plans can range from €500 - €2,000 per month and usually include:

• Local / regional focus
• Keyword-Research (50-100 keywords)
• Setup and configuration of analyses
• Monthly strategy meeting
• Creation of Title Tag and meta tag
• Internal Link building (Crosslinking)
• Content editing and optimization
• Basic on-site optimization
• Monthly individual report
• Monthly Review Call

Price example for the Enterprise SEO Plan:

SEO plans for businesses can range from €3,000 to €10,000+ per month and typically include:

• Competitive keywords / country-wide focus
• Keyword-Research (500+ keywords)
• Setup and configuration of analyses
• Monthly strategy meeting
• Title Tag & Meta Tag Creation
• Technical SEO - (Robots.txt, Sitemap, etc.)
• Speed optimization / Image optimization
• Internal Link building (Crosslinking)
• Content creation, optimization and editing
• Content strategies (planning, copywriting, implementation)
• Advanced on-site/code optimization
• Link Building
• PR placements
• Outreach
• Linkdetox
• Rich Snippet optimization
• FAQ creation and integration
• Monthly custom report
• Monthly personal meeting for review

How much does SEO cost per hour?

Hourly rates for SEO are usually between €50 and €250 per hour. If your business is only generating a few hundred euros a month in online revenue, you can't expect to get through €1,000 a month in SEO spend quickly. If you want to pay for SEO by the hour, it may make sense to hire a consultant or hire an agency to conduct an SEO audit and then pay an hourly rate for specific SEO services as needed.

If you need these kinds of immediate results with a website that you have little presence on, you're probably better off investing your SEO investment first through paid advertising, such as a Google Ads-campaign, was added.

SEO pricing tip - Work with an SEO agency that charges for its campaigns based on hours worked or has a clear, transparent cost structure.

How much do SEO services cost?

In the interests of transparency, I would like to give you a practical example. One Keyword-Research has shown that an average of 300 people enter the exact search query "What does SEO cost" into Google every month. That's one of the reasons why we decided to write this article! This question causes a lot of confusion, especially for those who are still at the beginning of their research. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer.

The short answer is that prices for SEO can range from €50 per hour to over €250 per hour, depending on the SEO agency you hire. No matter who you ultimately trust to provide SEO services for your business: How much SEO ultimately costs depends on many variables, including:

• The general technical suitability of your website and the CMS (Content Management System) for the content on the website. A technically sound website that has been created with SEO and eCommerce best practices in mind makes it much easier to optimize it effectively and efficiently. Good optimizable CMSs include WordPress, Shopify, Shopware & Typo3.

• Existing visibility in organic search. If you start with a brand new website without any domain authority and no rankings to speak of, you can expect to pay more or wait longer for tangible results.

• Existing brand awareness and presence. See the previous point.

• The expertise of the company providing the SEO services. This applies in particular to your industry and your niche within that industry.

• Corporate goals and objectives. Do you have realistic goals or do you want to conquer the world and rank for the most competitive terms in your industry? If you want to conquer the world, of course you have more work (costs) ahead of you.

• Competition. The general competitive situation depends on your industry and the search terms you want to rank for. The more competitive, the more complex (more expensive).

• Urgency. SEO takes time to be effective, so faster results require more time and resources.

• Target audience and demographics. Do you want to run a national or global SEO campaign or are you a local business operating in a limited geographical area? This may or may not affect the overall price of your SEO campaign.

Facts about the prices for eCommerce SEO:

• E-commerce-SEO services are usually more expensive
• On average €150 - €300 per hour for SEO companies
• Calculate with 1500 € - 10.000 € + per month
• Beware of SEO agencies without experience in eCommerce
• Plans that include content creation are more expensive
• Expect additional fees for link building services

What influences the cost of SEO?

SEO skills and expertise

Those who have real expertise and in-depth skills usually have proven results and can therefore charge higher prices. Because they deliver proven results time and time again, they are busier, more online businesses ask for their SEO services and their services are worth more because of the results they produce.

Competence in the language of your target audience

Even if it sounds like a good idea at first to hire a cheap SEO company based in India, you should make sure that the company you choose is proficient in German if you want to optimize your website for the German-speaking market. This applies to any language. Also consider time zones, communication and other external factors.

Level of marketing expertise in your niche

For example, our specialty at WOLF OF SEO is eCommerce SEO and Lead Generation SEO for B2B websites. Look for a company that has experience in your industry, but be prepared to pay more for that experience. Your results will be worth it.

Prices for SEO services and general costs

If you want to hire an SEO company or even just an SEO consultant for specific SEO services, some SEO companies offer á la carte services or are at least willing to tailor their monthly plans to your needs. At WOLF OF SEO, we offer monthly packages specifically tailored to the client's needs and industry. Our strategy and recommended financial investments are based on what we believe will lead to success the fastest - but we also take into account any specific client needs and requests within these monthly strategies.

Once we've recommended a customized strategy and monthly SEO costs, we'll make your money work as hard as you planned.

If we determine that certain customer requests have a lower "SEO priority" than our recommended SEO strategies and planned tasks, we will communicate this openly. We will still fulfill the client's requests, but additional costs may be incurred. In this way, we ensure that we deliver the results the client expects and still fulfill any special requests.

This complete transparency goes far beyond pricing and is one of the lesser-known benefits of working with WOLF OF SEO.

How can you tell if SEO costs are worth it?

When it comes to driving traffic to your website, SEO can be one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. But you also have other options, such as paid Search engine marketing about Google Ads.

If you're thinking about your SEO investment and wondering if it's worth it, consider how much the same amount of Traffic via paid search. If the amount is higher, then your SEOTraffic and your spend valuable. If the answer is that you could buy every visit for less money, it might be worth questioning the SEO company you're working with.

Another good way to determine the ROI of SEO is the number of sales and leads you generate through organic search. Traffic achieve. If you spend €5,000 per month on SEO, generate €250,000 per month in online sales and have a profit margin of 20 %, you're well into the green at €45,000 per month. If you apply some of this basic math and look at your SEO investment in this way, you can really feel comfortable paying your bill each month.

Choose an SEO company that offers you added value

Generally, with SEO, you get what you pay for, but there is a certain amount of vetting you need to do before choosing an SEO company. Here are some tips on how to do this:

• Look for proven results. Look for case studies and ask the companies you're considering for real examples of their success. If they struggle or hesitate to provide you with success stories, they probably haven't had much success.

• Listen to previous customers. Read reviews both on the company's website and on third-party websites. Remember that even the best companies (whether SEO or not) will always have a few negative reviews, so take these mostly with a grain of salt. Instead, look for overarching trends, and if you spot any red flags, you should probably move on.

• Talk directly to the team. Ask for a phone call with the people who manage your SEO account, or ask to speak to the head of the SEO department. It's not unreasonable to want to know a bit more about the people you're paying to work on your website and what strategies they're using to improve your search results. Especially if you're using a reputable agency.

• Learn to recognize a dubious strategy. Find out about "black-hat SEO" and make sure that the strategies the vendors discuss with you do not violate Google guidelines.

• Try a few and compare. Consider buying individual SEO audits from several companies and then compare the results of these audits. You may pay a little more initially, but you'll have a better chance of choosing the best company. After you've decided on an SEO company, be sure to share the results with your new SEO company to ensure that all the valuable insights you paid for are utilized accordingly.

Caution. Unfortunately, assuming that the companies that charge the most money also have the most expertise or the "best SEO services" is rarely a practical approach. When choosing an SEO company for your business, regardless of price, you should go with the company that gives you the most confidence in their ability to deliver ROI for the budget your business allocates to SEO services.

Why is SEO important?

With more than 5 billion Google searches per day, it's important that your customers are in front of you when they search for your products or services. Potential customers searching on Google or other search engines are "active", meaning they are looking for YOU. If you are at the top of the search, your chances of attracting this Traffic to get a significant boost. Did you know that over 25 % of people click on the first organic search result on Google? That means if a search term is searched 10,000 times per month, you could be getting over 2,500 free visits per month if you rank #1 on Google. If you don't have a big budget for paid search (and don't mind spending it), an organic Ranking is crucial to the success of your integrated digital marketing strategy.

Do you have any questions about the prices for SEO?

We hope that this article has helped to clear up some confusion and that we have enabled you to make an informed decision about the most suitable SEO company for your business. If you still have questions or would like to discuss your website with an SEO expert, sign up for a free initial consultation here.