Why is SEO expensive?

One question we hear all the time from clients is: “why is SEO so expensive?”

There really isn’t one simple answer to the question, but there are a couple of reasons that are key to the increased price. Firstly, Google has changed a tremendous amount in the last decade. There are a lot more details to care for, we need to spend a lot more time paying attention to sites, and they need a lot more content – and good content, which is expensive on its own.

The second reason is that sites are becoming massive creations, especially e-commerce sites, which take up much more time than a simple WordPress page. A larger site will naturally need more work done each month, which costs more money.

We recently pitched a job and were turned down; the client decided to go with a cheaper SEO firm. While that can save you money in the beginning, there’s a danger with very cheap SEO that can affect your site’s Google rankings. An increasing number of these cheap firms are putting in very formulaic links to Third World sites.

They use a third-party backlinking service, which has no idea about finding legitimate links for your company.

Instead, they link to sites that have absolutely nothing to do with your industry. They’ll shove a keyword into a random article and link back to it, just to pad the backlink numbers. These bad links do nothing for your rankings now, and will end up getting your site punished once Penguin comes on line.

If you’ve hired a cheap SEO company, it’s important that you check for these bad links. You can use a program like Majestic.com or the SEMrush tool, but one simple way is to check your Google Search Console. Under Search Traffic, click on Links to Your Site, and inspect all the links currently being used. Remove the bad ones to get your site in order.

For more information, visit the StewArt Media website.

Jim Stewart is a leading expert in search engine optimisation. His business StewArt Media has worked with clients including Mars, M2 and the City of Melbourne.