Why SEO Is Expensive and Why It Is Worth Investing In

Neadoo Digital
Team

Neadoo Digital is a dynamic, innovative marketing agency specializing above all in search engine optimization and in running effective Google Ads campaigns. We build SEO strategies that answer the particular needs of every client. Our goal is to help companies of any size succeed in the digital arena - growing their visibility and driving valuable traffic to their websites.

Published
2017-12-19
5 min read

One of the more popular methods of promoting a website on the internet is the SEO positioning process, which consists of on-page and off-page activities. A frequently discussed issue is the service price. Why are the offers on the market so divergent? Is it worth choosing cheap, one-off SEO for a few PLN, or investing significantly more?

What are we really paying for?

SEO is becoming increasingly popular in Poland, but many clients do not realize what processes take place after signing a contract, and how costly they actually are.

Website audit

What is an audit? It is a document gathering all detected errors or website problems that prevent achieving high positions for specific key phrases. It also contains recommended solutions aimed at fixing these errors. The price of an audit, depending on its complexity, ranges from 1,000 to even 7,000 PLN.

Website optimization

Depending on the type of collaboration - guidelines or implementation of changes by the agency - costs may vary. The average hourly rate for a developer ranges between 100 and 300 PLN. The optimization process is crucial and is not a one-time task due to frequent changes in search engine algorithms and the ongoing development of the site.

The link building process is one of the most time-consuming and expensive. The cost of link building itself is hard to define, as it depends on the quantity and quality of acquired backlinks. The most popular types of acquired links are:

  • web directories - from 0 to 20 PLN
  • comment links - from 2-10 PLN
  • forum thread links - from 2-20 PLN
  • sponsored publications - 50-2,000 PLN
  • dedicated PBNs (Private Blog Networks) - setup 500-2,000 PLN + monthly cost around 500 PLN.

To the prices above, you still need to add the cost of content creation, ranging from 6-30 PLN per 1,000 characters.

Copywriting

It is undeniable that Content Marketing has become an integral part of the SEO process. Unique product or category descriptions, regular blog posts - these are just a few content-related areas of activity. To show the algorithms that the site is "alive", anywhere from a few to tens of thousands of characters per month are needed. Prices per 1,000 characters range between 6-30 PLN, but most agencies employ full-time professional Copywriters.

Analytics and reporting

Various types of tools are often necessary to perform analysis. They are important in the context of reporting, continuous analytics, and monitoring the project status. Having such tools allows you to optimize SEO campaigns on an ongoing basis to achieve previously set goals. Examples and pricing of tools most commonly used by specialists:

  • SemRush - from 100 to 400 dollars per month
  • SEMstorm - from 34 PLN to 490 PLN per month
  • Ahrefs - from 99 to 999 dollars per month
  • MajesticSEO - from 75 to 379 dollars per month
  • Senuto - from 55 PLN to 479 PLN
  • Seostation - from 27 PLN to 127 PLN per month
  • ASPS.pl - from 7 PLN to 145 PLN per month
  • SearchMetrics - from 79 PLN per month (custom pricing)
  • Link Detox - from 149 to 2,499 euros per month

On top of all this comes the specialist's experience, who will be able to select the right phrases and choose a strategy that will yield long-term results in the form of high rankings and growing website traffic. Pricing a specialist's work is difficult to determine. The bracket in this industry starts from 1,500 PLN and sometimes even exceeds 7,000 PLN.

Why is it worth investing in SEO?

Surely anyone looking for information or an offer regarding SEO has come across "SEO for 200 PLN" offers with very short contract periods. Let's face it, such a one-time investment will certainly not pay off, because SEO is a long-term process that takes time. The days of blasting a domain with backlinks are long gone, and for 200 PLN we can only get a few dozen links, one piece of text, and an automatically generated audit. The first results of actions are usually visible after about 3 months, although this timeline heavily depends on the difficulty of the promoted phrases and the client's website. By choosing cheap SEO, you will certainly pay for automated actions of very low quality, and their impact on the SEO process may even harm your website. By choosing more expensive solutions, you will certainly receive:

  • properly selected phrases and, in most cases, the ability to swap them,
  • regular audits and re-optimizations,
  • high-quality link building from niche-relevant sites, based on unique content,
  • reports based on various tools.

What will a well-executed SEO service give you?

The first thing you should notice is increased brand visibility, which will also bring growing website traffic. The result of these actions will certainly be an increasing number of phone calls, emails, or transactions. What is more, the SEO process is so "flexible" that by increasing your budget, you are able to continually increase traffic (certainly not as fast as in the first months of the campaign) and reach an even wider audience. A website without proper promotion is like a car without an engine - it does not fulfill its primary purpose. When launching a website, we should answer key questions: why do we want to launch it, and how do we want to make money from it? The next step is selecting the right campaign for you. If you care about immediate results, SEO is not the best solution. However, if you are aiming for long-term growth, choosing SEO is definitely worth it.