SEO stands for search engine optimisation and just as it sounds, it's about optimising activities on primarily your own website to get as high up in the search results as possible. The biggest search engine is Google and therefore it is often said that SEO is about getting high results on Google but SEO is about optimising for all search engines. Here is a whole blog post just about what SEO is: What is SEO
SEO is one of the most common services that Contitude provides, which is why we are often asked how much it costs. In this post we break down what the different building blocks of SEO are, what they cost and tips on what to consider.
What factors affect SEO?
To understand what SEO costs, we need to understand what influences search engine results. Search engines aim to always provide the absolute best answer to the question asked. Therefore, relevant content will always be rewarded in search engines. With the incredible volume of content published on the internet, it is almost inhuman for anyone to go through and assess its relevance. Instead, a complex algorithm ranks and screens all the content on the internet. For that reason, it takes more than just good and relevant content. However, algorithms, even if they include a certain amount of AI, need help interpreting the content of a website.
When an algorithm reads a website, it sees this:
While we watch:
Therefore, in addition to producing great content, SEO is also about helping search engines interpret and decipher the content that exists. This is known as technical SEO.
The last building block that affects your ranking is backlinks. Backlinks are, simply put, the links from external sites that "point" to your website. The reason why backlinks are important is because Google measures relevance to some extent through backlinks. That is, the more pages that link to another page, the better and more credible that page is.
In order to answer the question of what SEO costs, we need to know what content costs, what technical SEO costs and what backlinks cost.
What does text content cost?
Content can be text, images, audio, video, etc. But for SEO purposes, text tends to be the most important. Video and audio are becoming increasingly common, often in combination with text to meet visitors to your website in the way that is best suited to the visitor and their needs. Search engine algorithms have also become much better at interpreting and indexing video and audio.
The most common ways to optimize content for SEO are through blog posts, articles or landing pages. The pricing for getting a blog post written differs between different providers. Some charge by the word, some by the hour and some charge a fixed price without specifying the number of words or hours. If you hire a marketing agency or an SEO agency, the prices are usually somewhere between 2 000 - 10 000 SEK per article, which corresponds to 800-1 000 words.
What's worth mentioning is that it differs a lot depending on the type of content you want. SEO content tends not to be that complex and is cheaper than writing an opinion piece on a news site. However, the complexity of the business or the topic you want to write about may play into how much groundwork is required.
What does technical SEO cost?
Technical SEO is about more than the actual content that affects rankings. In short, it's about what happens behind the scenes on your website. By working with technical SEO, you help search engines such as Google find content on the site more easily. In technical SEO, you work with page titles, meta descriptions, URLs, internal linking, alt texts, etc. (Does that sound like a lot? Here you will find a word guide for SEO where we go through what all these words mean..)
Pricing varies between differentSEO operators and sometimes it can be difficult to understand what you are paying for and how the pricing works. Often technical SEO is billed as a lump sum or included in a monthly fee, so it is difficult to work out what each activity costs and give a good indication of what technical SEO costs.
If it is specified, you can often see how many hours have been spent on each activity and get an approximate hourly rate.Hourly rates for technical SEO are usually between 700 - 2 000 SEK per hour. Like content, there are hourly rates outside this range, but the majority are within this range.
How much do backlinks cost?
Backlinks are links from other websites that lead to your website. Important to mention when it comes to backlinks is so called black hat SEO where it is among other things about working with backlinks in a wrong way so search engines can penalize your content. Here you can read Google's rules about backlinks.#But there are several ways to work with backlinks in a good way eg guest blogging or writing articles for interest organizations, etc. Here are some tips on how you can work with backlinks
But there are several ways to work with backlinks in a good way e.g. guest blogging or writing articles for interest groups etc. Here are some tips on how you can work with backlinks in a good way. Another important factor to keep in mind is do-follow and no-follow links. It is also advantageous if the page that links back to you has a higher domain authority than your page has.
If you are buying a service to help you get backlinks, it is therefore important that you check that the work is done correctly and take these factors into account.
Pricing for backlinks is also variable and prices can range from 1 000 - 50 000 SEK per backlink.
What is your goal and ambition with SEO?
SEO is not a standardized product or service, although each individual activity is relatively standardized, working with SEO is about your circumstances and goals. The cost depends on a variety of factors where your business goals and starting point play a very important role.
The point here is that, as with many things, the cost of SEO is relative and will not be the same as for your neighbour's business.
As always with SEO, you should be aware that it is a long-term effort and therefore you should make sure that you work continuously whether you focus on content, technical SEO or backlinks.
Breakdown between content, technical SEO and backlinks
To find out what SEO will cost you, you need to understand the breakdown and relative impact of the different elements of SEO. The exact breakdown can be difficult to see as search engine algorithms are not public, but the basic idea, as mentioned earlier, is that a search engine should provide the most relevant answers possible to questions asked. Therefore, in our opinion at Contitude, content is the most important part of SEO. It is also the most logical starting point as it doesn't matter that you optimise your technical SEO or backlinks if there is no content to do it for.
The breakdown according to Contitude is 70% content, 30% technical SEO. Backlinks can come organically.
SEO doesn't have to cost anything
SEO, despite this long article, is not that complicated and something that everyone can manage to work with. Anyone can write or produce content and anyone can learn the basics of technical SEO and how backlinks work. However, it is time consuming and the cost of SEO in this case will be the time you put in. That's why many people use agencies or employ colleagues who actively work on SEO.
Summary
SEO consists of several elements; content, technical SEO and backlinks. The cost of these elements differs significantly between agencies and freelancers. To get an indication of what SEO costs, you can summarise as follows:
Content: article of 800-1000 words = 2 000 - 10 000
Technical SEO : Hourly rate = 800 - 2000 SEK / hour
Backlinks: per backlink: 1 000 - 50 000 kr
The split should be about 70% content and 30% technical SEO and backlinks.
At Contitude we have SEO packages where we clearly state our prices. The same goes for our content package.
When it comes to the scope of SEO work, it's all about your business goals and starting point. This means that how much it will cost to achieve the same results will always differ from business to business.Please book a meeting with us if you would like to discuss prices for each package or activity.
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