Search Engine Optimization Pricing

Estimated Costs for Improved Search Engine Rankings in Atlanta and the Southeast US

Here's a brief survey of the costs generally involved with Search Engine Marketing and its cousin, Pay Per Click advertising. This information is based on discussion in SEO forums and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.

Search Engine Optimization Costs

Professional Search Engine Optimization for better organic search results can cost roughly $ 1500 to $ 7,000 in the Atlanta area, depending on your goals and size of your website. Local rankings for a city or region are easier to achieve than national rankings. The costs can go higher, depending on the complexity of your goals.

The by-the-page optimization cost can reach $1500 per page, as reported by a Massachussetts SEO firm, but this is not common. Larger SEO firms and older SEO firms in the northeast US will tend toward the higher rates. A large site of 20 web pages might easily exceed $ 7000 in the Atlanta market.

You cannot get top 10 rankings for $50, as some web sites claim. The old spam techniques of using thousands of low quality links from pages that are nothing but links doesn't work any more. There are only ten top listings on a search results page and they were achieved with either careful linking and careful keyword selection or with more than just $ 50. Search engines constantly change their algorithms for ranking sites in order to maintain quality results.

SEO Methods May Take 3 to 8 Weeks to Show Results

A single month of SEO work will often improve traffic significantly in the long run. The search engines may finish indexing your site about 3 to 8 weeks after the SEO campaign starts.

As the search engines change their ranking methods or if competitors mount their own optimization campaign, your search rank may change. Companies often retain SEO firms on a monthly basis for monitoring and maintenance. If much of your sales or sales leads come from the web, then continual maintenance can be helpful.

Pay Per Click Costs

If you choose your Ad Words in a Pay Per Click program properly, you might achieve good paid rankings for $300 to $500 per month - and you will receive prospective client inquiries. This price will go up as competing firms start bidding on key words and phrases. If there are numerous competing businesses in your field, the monthly costs can rapidly increase. Keyword phrases related to cable modem and dsl services, for example, are extremely expensive. PPC costs vary with demand and competition.

Pay Per Click programs require careful selection of search keyword phrases. YAHOO! 's Pay Per Click listing for some search phrases are more than $10 per click to link to your site. By choosing specialized search phrases used by fewer competitors, you can achieve better placement at a lower cost. Some keywords can be bought for under two dollars per click. But this advantage can be lost if competitors drive up your ad costs with fraudulent clicks on your ads.

The Real Value of Increased Website Traffic

Some firms will spend $ 20,000 annually on yellow page ads that list them among thousands of firms, but are slow to invest in a professional Search Engine Marketing program that lists them at the top among a few firms. If optimization is performed properly, after careful study of your customers, your industry segment and your keyword phrases, the increase in web traffic and sales will easily justify the initial cost.

Ed Hill PR Services for Business Web Sites

The Search Engine Optimization process often requires changing web pages, building links, building new content web pages and re submitting your site to the search engines. Then we wait to see if your traffic and your search engine rank increases. Sometimes this process will go through several cycles before we get the result you want.

If there are many competitors in your field, you may need 2 to 6 months of steady SEO work, promotion through Public Relations and link building, to achieve and to maintain your goals.

Services for Public Relations, SEO Firms

& Web Design Firms

I also work as a consulting SEO writer for public relations, advertising agencies, SEO firms and web design firms. This can be very helpful if your firm suddenly wins a large project that needs more helping hands.

My rates are competitive to other SEO specialists in Atlanta. Projects can be billed on a per project basis, or a per web page rate. Please call me to discuss the details.

Ed Hill is an Atlanta public relations writer with experience in Search Engine Marketing and website promotion using PR methods. He works mainly with businesses, PR firms and web design firms.