Link building and "off site" work aside, truly optimizing a site is not just a simple checklist. It typically requires a thorough analysis and careful planning by someone who really knows what they are doing - and understands the goals and needs of the site & business.
If you do the math... take the lowest monthly retainer you found. Say, $500. If the going rate for real SEO is no less than around $100 per hour, you will not be likely to get more than about 5 hours of work. That is just about enough time for someone to set up analytics & webmaster tools, get to know the site, and take care of the basics like making sure all the pages can be found, titles are not duplicated, and maybe start actually optimizing some content.
Where people get confused is that there are plenty of scammers offering "SEO" for about $100 per month and "free SEO analysis" tools that make it seem like it is a matter of pushing a button, or that you just need a bunch of underpaid offshore workers to make a bunch of spam links. If organic search traffic is important to your business, your choice of SEO providers is as critical as choosing your sales team, accountant, attorney or even CEO.
I would say those are correct ball park figures for genuine SEO. You can find much, much cheaper SEO services around but at best they are inneffective, often based in the far East so it is difficult to get your money back. At worst they practice Black Hat SEO which may show short term improvements but will ultimately get your website banned from search engines like Google.
My hourly based rates start at $100 and my clients include small businesses.
I don't think so that People who own a small business website can not pay such a huge amount even people who have big business websites will pay such a huge amount hourly.
Google has updated Panda 4.0, you can read more http://anstip.com/google-panda-4-0-incre...
Yes it is true as it is a long process.
They are very reasonable and typical costs. It depends ion the company and their past results. You want to find a company that over delivers and show past results.
Some smaller companies that only charge $100 per month, as they say you get what you pay for.
yes i agreed with trifid....seo is too extensive practices
Those seem like the sort of inflated numbers only million dollar sites would pay. Bear in mind a fair amount of the basic tasks may be performed by 3rd world outsource labor that costs the SEO firms very little.
For best WEB OPTIMIZATION results My partner and i highly recommend utilizing Google Search Bot: http://is.gd/gsbsoftware Applying this software We have placed my site to first page of Google on a very high competitive keyword.
Typical SEO Costs
So, what should you expect to pay? Here's a survey of the range of the costs according to the payment models described above.
Monthly retainer: $750-5,000 per month. Within this range, the amount that a client pays depends on the size of their business and the extent of services provided by the agency. On the lower end of this spectrum are small SEO agencies that offer a limited range of services. On the upper range are businesses with greater needs working with full-service SEO agencies. Most businesses pay between $2,500 and $5,000 for a monthly retainer.
Contract services at fixed prices: price variable. Businesses that are just testing the waters in SEO usually choose a contract service as an entry point. Typical contract services include things like SEO copywriting ($0.15-$0.50/word), site content audit ($500-$7,500), link profile audit ($500-$7,500), and social media site setup ($500-$3,000).
Project-based pricing: price variable. Since there are a variety of projects, there is a wide range of prices. Most projects cost from $1,000 to $30,000.
Hourly consulting rate: $100-300/hr. SEO consultants, whether individuals or agencies, usually charge between $100 and $300 per hour
