Over the years, I have seen a plethora of pricing structures for SEO services that range from SEO PPC (if this even makes sense, which I’ll elaborate on), cost for placement of particular keywords, monthly retainers, etc. The variety of pricing structures often confuses SEO customers and this article will touch on my opinion for the best pricing structure.

Firstly, I will elaborate on the method of charging for placement of particular keywords. With this model, SEO customers are charged for placing keywords at the top of search engines and they’re limited to the amount of phrases that can be targeted. SEO companies utilizing this pricing model will allocate a certain amount of keywords for a set price. For example, 10 targeted keywords for X amount. Since 10, 20, or even 30 keywords is very limiting, this pricing structure has inherent flaws. The goal of SEO and marketing in general is to capture your entire target market and limiting yourself to a set of number of keywords goes against that notion. The way I look at it is the more keywords and phrases being targeted, the more traffic obtained, thus resulting in increased revenue and exposure. It’s a simple numbers game. For this reason, I strike this model down.

Secondly, pertaining to profit sharing SEO or what I would call SEO PPC (arggghhh!), some SEO companies charge for traffic generation on a per-click basis. If a website receives 1,000 clicks based on a targeted keyword campaign, the SEO company will receive a set amount. Other SEO firms base their rate on actual conversion, which can be hard to track. For example, if a customer is generated through efforts by the SEO company, profits on the sale are shared. This, in essence, goes against my perspective and belief in SEO, which is aimed at exponentially decreasing marketing expenditures over time by improving website rank and eliminating the need for marketing altogether.

Thirdly, regarding my pricing model of choice, monthly retainers provide a certain number of hours based on a flat rate per month. With this pricing structure, businesses can budget for marketing more precisely and will be able to adjust their SEO efforts where needed. As opposed to targeting a set number of keywords, focus can be changed based on current company trends and goals. The flexibility of a monthly retainer for SEO is endless. And the best part is, once high rankings are achieved, costs can be significantly reduced and the only expenditures incurred will be for monitoring of website/keyword placement. Over a span of 10 years, this will save businesses thousands if not millions of dollars.

I hope this article has been helpful and good luck!

Sincerely,
Aaron Schoenberger
The Brainchild Group

The Brainchild Group is a Top SEO Company that specializes in professional SEO for a variety of businesses including law firms, restaurants, green companies, automotive manufacturers, corporations and e-commerce websites among many other industries.