What should you expect to pay for an SEO campaign? There are tons of factors on what price you should be paying for an online marketing campaign and Search Engine Optimization.
#1 Factor your Market
Are you targeting a local market or a global market?
Local markets are easier to handle, less competition, and better keyword selections. If you are targeting a global market you are going to be paying much more since it takes more effort on your marketing team and it will take a lot longer to start to rank for your goals.
#2 Your niche/market
Do you have a niche service, a niche product? Or is your target market general consumers? This is a huge factor, if you have a niche or dominate your market from a unique product or services, you will get the best results and at an optimal amount of time. If you market is saturated or has lots of similar products or services. Its going to take longer and a bigger budget to hit those keywords.
Now lets talk about ROI. Your return on investment. Some people or companies look at things from the short term perspective. If you quote them a monthly online marketing campaign at lets say $1,200 all they see is the $1,200. They have no concept of what that $1,200 will do for the business in the long run. If landing you on the first page of Google will bring in about 15 hits a day, and you land 1 customer a day and your average customer yields $500 (your value of each customer) that’s not a bad return on investment. And that is for just one keyword.
Of course you without a good looking website your conversion rate won’t be that high.
In 2011, Onward Search did a study on the pay scale for the different types of SEO roles and positions out there and posted the results based on Cities and expected pay rate if you were working for a company as an SEO specialist. Now after you look at the chart, you will realize SEO isn’t just one giant role, there are many sub roles, and different types of things that get accounted for when running a full blown online marketing and SEO campaign.
Image courtesy of onwardsearch.com site.