How Much Does SEO Help Cost?
There is so much that factors into when & where you might invest in SEO services.
I recently got tagged in a Thread which 1000% inspired this episode! Investing in SEO is a big step. There are lots of questions that surface as you begin researching everything related to outsourcing SEO.
Today, I’m sharing my thoughts on who should outsource SEO support, which services you truly need, the 1 thing that absolutely angers me about SEO agencies, & how to choose the right SEO provider and offer to support your business growth. Get ready for a sassy one, friend!
With this episode you’ll be able to:
Uncover how much certain SEO offers & services cost.
Learn my bone to pick with SEO agencies & their services.
Discover the best time to invest in SEO & your options.
Links & Resources:
How to Blog w/ SEO (email course)
Related Episodes:
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Welcome back to The Basics with B! This week you heard from Dolly DeLong, we were talking all about my email course, How to Blog with SEO, and that was perfectly timed with this thread that I saw this week, which the question that was posed by the poster said, what should I expect to pay for SEO outsourcing? Sometimes I just have too many tasks on my plate.
So I really want to get into this with you. What does it look like to invest in SEO? How much should it cost? Really, I'm going to focus on the financial aspect, but there's a little bit more that I'm going to share too. So let's get into it, shall we? As many of the responses in this thread mentioned, it really depends on what support you're looking for. So I'm going to be sharing what those options could be. Now, of course, there's always going to be people creating ideas and creating different offers.
This is by no means like a finished list, but it's just some major things that you can think through. Before I get to that, I want to share a little bit about, you know, what businesses should be investing in SEO. Is your business one that should quote unquote have SEO as part of the organic marketing strategy, as part of the growth strategy? So investing in SEO is perfect for anyone who's, which this seems to be a really big sentiment right now.
Brittany (02:23.052) It's perfect for anyone who's looking to get away from social media and create lasting content that's actually gonna go and work for you. It's great for business owners who are wanting to really gain traction to get to that next level. It's wonderful for anyone who wants to bolster their visibility to be more visible, to be seen as more of a quote unquote expert in whatever field that you're in. So these are some things that SEO can really help you
Also, I mean, if you want more of that warm to hot traffic to come to your site, if you want to see conversions increase, this SEO is going to be a game changer for you. So when it comes to SEO services, which ones do you really need? I like thinking of SEO from this three -pronged approach. Thing one is finding and fixing errors, which you can get this from an SEO audit. Thing
is getting backlinks, which are things like when you're on a podcast and they link to you from that show note, that's a backlink. If you ever go and create a guest blog post and then you get a link back to your site, that's a backlink. So any time that you're getting those links back to you. And then the third thing is content, creating things like blogs or podcasts or YouTube videos. So all three of these pieces tie together so beautifully to give you that SEO strategy.
So you could think of what support you need or want to invest in by using those three categories, the finding and fixing errors, backlinks, and content creation. I also want to point out that if you want to understand things, if you want to do the doing, there's a lot of things you can do on your own. That's how I got into SEO. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, and you totally can. There's also stuff you can hand off to someone on your team, if you have a team, even if your team is a team of one, you can still hand stuff off to that person.
There's trainings that you can send them through. And then of course, there are things you can and sometimes should hire out, especially like this person. It sounds like she's really short on time. So if she's wanting to save time hiring it out or putting a team member through a training or something would be really great. If you go looking around online, which many of us do, you are for sure going to see a couple of different like really big offers. You're going to see SEO audits. And I like starting here to get a pulse on what's going well.
Brittany (04:49.07) as well as to find errors and opportunities on your website. And this, the SEO audit, is part of my SEO packet, which is $2 ,500. Then you have things like blog SEO. And this could be perfect for those times when you want to optimize older blogs or have someone do the writing for you. I have a variety of clients that have me do a range of those things. And usually you're gonna see this around $500 per blog post. We're gonna talk a little bit more about this in just a second.
because I want to share what you can expect to pay for SEO services. You're going to see a lot of agencies that are charging in the thousands, and I'm talking $5 ,000, $10 ,000 for SEO support. The packages sometimes have really confusing wording. Sometimes it's just inflated with terminology that business owners don't know. And it's a kind of cruel thing to do in my opinion because you're making it seem like SEO is this big complicated
totally not understandable thing that you must hire someone because there's no way you, dear sweet little friend, could understand this. And I just hate that. So that is a bone to pick. I'm going to get off my soapbox on that. But in this thread that I was mentioning, lots of people were saying $500 is a reasonable investment you can see to pay for a variety of SEO services. I want to break this down a little bit more to be a little bit more strategic and helpful with
pricing and the cost and the investment that we're talking through. So I mentioned SEO audits. Pricing for that I've seen anywhere from, and I'm talking US dollars. I should have said that at the beginning when I'm US dollars. I've seen SEO audits anywhere from $500 up to thousands, like $10 ,000. There could be more work that's going into an SEO audit that's $10 ,000. I would hope that there would be more work and more support and more of a done for you element. But also,
you don't need something that's $10 ,000, especially if you're a solopreneur, if you're a smaller business, if you're newer to SEO, you don't need to go throwing thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars at SEO. So I'm just going to say that. The next thing is buying backlinks is definitely a thing. And I found this online where it said in 2024, the cost of a single medium quality backlink averages around $300.
Brittany (07:11.118) So the range seems to be like 180 to 380 per link placement. And I don't do backlink placements like this. I find that I would much rather get like an organic backlink. So in other words, this could look like for my clients, I like writing case studies. I want to have a whole library of case studies on my website where I then link out to my clients. So if I'm going to link to Ashley or link to Justin,
I'm gonna have links from my website in the case study where I'm talking about them out to their website. So it's gonna be a backlink for them. That's organic, that's authentic. I just find that those land so much better and matter so much more. And then a third thing is blog creation. And I've seen prices anywhere from $100 per blog post to $500 per blog post. You're paying for a variety of things. That's going to be the quality of the keyword research, the quality
the actual SEO strategy that's being implemented. Some people could be using ChatGPT or other AI tools to actually write the blog, or you could work with someone like me who's actually going to talk to you, listen to what you're saying, do my own research, create the blog, and share that with you so that you can just copy and paste it, put on your site, and have that go to work for you. So these are all things to consider, and maybe certain elements matter more to you than other elements.
There are some things that I feel like are unnecessary when it comes to SEO support. And honestly, the number one spot I see business owners getting their chains yanked around when it comes to SEO experts and agencies is monthly maintenance. Really what's happening from what I'm seeing is that they're just checking the data and maybe doing like a tiny bit of work, making some tweaks. But in my brain, to me, it just does not justify
the somewhere around $10 ,000 monthly fee for this. If you're a bigger business and you have that money and you want to do it and you want to just like not touch it and not look at it, that's cool. What I really don't like is when SEO agencies are talking to small to medium sized businesses and they're like, you need this. doing that like filler language, like I was mentioning earlier and just making someone feel so pressured and like you must do this.
Brittany (09:37.09) That's not true. If you ever get that feeling, know that that's a red flag. It's not true. There's always another way. So I wouldn't even say that monthly maintenance is really needed. What I would rather have you do is focus on website SEO, focus on having an SEO strategy for your pages, cranking out at least one blog a month. If you can do more, that'd be even better and more helpful for your site. With that, how can I help you? Because yes, there are ways that I can help you.
and that can be an investment that you're gonna feel really good about. If you want to learn and do the doing, there are things like my email course, the How to Blog with SEO email course. I ran it periodically, so just keep an eye for that. There's also the bundle that's happening with Dolly, so if you purchase the bundle, you'll be able to get that course as well. And then I have things like the SEO Sprint, which is a month -long SEO guidance and support.
I'm still crafting it, but stay tuned because it's going to be coming out this fall. And then when you're ready to hire out SEO help, I have the SEO packet, which includes the SEO audit. It includes content ideas. It includes me giving you a copy and paste SEO strategy for your website. I'll link it. You can go and check it all out. Remember, there's the episode I did also about the client experience for these done for you offers. And then I have the blog optimization or copywriting offer. And so
is what it sounds like. That one is very much just like in the name. But if you have blogs you want to optimize with SEO, I can come in and do that. If you like writing, I can optimize for SEO after you're done writing. Or if you're like, I just want blogs, but I don't want to do any of that, I can also do that. So like I said, I've got a range of clients that were doing a variety of the blog stuff. And I typically book these out one to two months in advance. So do bear that in mind.
And just to reiterate, the SEO packet is $2 ,500 and then the blog copywriting is $500. You'll have all of those links below. Let me know if you have any questions or when you're ready to book. I'm so excited to see you come through my inquiry form. I'll talk to you soon. That was really something, wasn't it? What that really sink in and guide you toward being the answer to even more Google questions. Thanks so much for joining me this episode. You are the reason this show exists and that it keeps growing.
Brittany (11:59.404) You know, thanks to all those followers and reviews. If you know someone who could benefit from what was shared, send it to them. We don't do shy around here. If you thought of clarifying or follow up questions while listening, you know what to do. Say hi on Instagram. Check the show notes for all the things that were mentioned and I'll talk to you soon, friend.