It’s no secret that search engine optimization is important. SEO can turn your site into a traffic driving, lead generating, money-making machine.
If it’s done well.
And monthly SEO packages are a great way to make sure your SEO is done well.
Before you go sign up for a monthly SEO package with the first SEO agency you can find, there are some things you should know.
For starters, you probably want to know how much SEO costs. You might also be wondering if it’s worth it.
In this article, we’ll answer both of those questions as well as letting you know what to look for in a monthly SEO package and some key questions you need to ask before signing up for one.
Let’s get started.
How Much Does SEO Cost?
Signing up for a monthly SEO package essentially means that you’re hiring a team that will devote their time and expertise to promoting your SEO strategy for a certain number of hours every month.
Hourly rates vary quite a bit between agencies, with most in the United States billing between $85–$150 an hour for their services.
However, the cost of SEO services also varies based on what’s included in the monthly package. Depending on the scope of the project, you could be looking at a cost of $2,000–$5,000 per month.
If you’re considering a one-time project to get you started on the right path, your cost could range between $5,000–$30,000.
When you consider the cost of a single in-house SEO manager, monthly SEO packages might be the most cost-effective option for you. Especially when you consider the level of expertise you’re getting for your money.
Why SEO Is Important
So, are monthly SEO packages worth it?
Yes. Now let’s talk about why.
SEO is credited with an enormous share of the traffic for successful websites. It’s the largest drive of web traffic for most industries and vital to the revenue for many companies.
Not only that, but organic search is outpacing growth in other channels and organic and paid search traffic absolutely dominated traffic in 2019.
As organic search continues to increase, SEO is going to be more important than ever.
Let’s explore a few ways SEO impacts your business.
Visibility and Rankings
When it comes to searching for a product or service online, 75% of the clicks will go to the first three search engine results.
SEO helps you rank higher in search results, getting more visibility and making it more likely that searchers will click-through to your site where you can convert them to customers.
Web Traffic
Since SEO moves you higher in the rankings, getting your more clicks, you’ll also enjoy more website traffic.
That means that you’ll get more visitors to your page each day. And that means more people checking out your products and services.
Increases to your site’s traffic typically result in an increase in sales since more interested people are seeing your site and are exposed to your marketing.
Trust
SEO has a lot to do with how trusted your site is. The better your SEO score, the higher you’ll appear in the search results pages for Google, YouTube, Bing, and others.
So, not only will ranking higher increase your visibility, but it will also increase your trustworthiness with potential customers.
We have a tendency to trust the results from our favorite search engines, so when you rank higher for the keywords a potential customer is using to find products and services just like yours, they’re more likely to trust that your products and services are better than lower-ranked results.
User Experience
User experience now plays a large role in your ranking on search engines so it’s vital that you optimize your website structure and keep it easy to navigate.
Plus, a well-organized and well-optimized site makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and get the information they need to share with searchers.
Websites that are difficult for users to navigate are going to be a problem for search engines, too. But, that also means that offering a good user experience will help with your rankings (and traffic).
Growth
Everything we’ve talked about so far has led to this: SEO is important to the growth of your brand.
When you rank high on search engines for the high-volume keywords your potential customers are searching, the more organic (“free”) traffic your site will get.
If your site is easy to use and contains the information that visitors need, they’re going to spend more time on your site, maybe even sharing it with their networks.
What to Look for in Monthly SEO Packages
When looking for the best SEO agency for your site, you should stick with agencies that offer monthly SEO packages and that recommend a long-term approach to your brand’s SEO.
SEO agencies promising you guaranteed, fast results with a short-term plan aren’t going to give you what you need.
Here are some things to look for when choosing from monthly SEO packages.
Custom SEO Strategy
SEO takes planning, dedication, and time. It’s not a quick fix or a short-term solution.
It’s also highly personalized and dependent upon your brand’s business goals, target audience, budget, and the skills your team brings to the table.
Any monthly SEO package should be written after consultation with your business and should be personalized to your specific business needs, your industry, competition, and technical SEO.
Keyword Research
After discussing your needs and creating a general strategy for your business, your SEO agency should work with you to identify the keywords you want to rank for.
The keyword research should include an analysis of the keywords your competitors are ranking for, as well as an understanding of how difficult it will be to rank for your chosen keywords.
After your keywords have been chosen, your SEO agency should create a more targeted SEO strategy.
Competitor Analysis
Yes, we mentioned competitor analysis in terms of keyword research, but it’s important enough that it needs to be addressed on its own.
Look for monthly SEO packages that include competitor analysis. This will help you understand where and how your competitors are ranking so you can work on outperforming them.
Content Development Plan
Content is at the heart of your SEO strategy.
People turn to search engines because they want to know something. The goal of your SEO strategy should be to provide content that answers those questions.
When your content is optimized and high-quality, users are going to get what they need from it and your content will continue to rank higher in searches.
Monthly SEO packages should include content marketing or, at the very least, on-page SEO. To get the most out of your SEO agency, though, we recommend choosing one that can offer content creation services, too.
You’ll want to make sure that you provide different types of content on your site, particularly blog posts, videos, ebooks, whitepapers, and infographics.
Each content format gives you another way of presenting information to your site’s visitors, increasing the likelihood that they’ll find what they need.
Your SEO agency should be able to help you produce the right content to draw in the right audience and get them to spend more time on your site.
The more time a visitor spends on your page, the more Google will see that your page is relevant to the keywords that the visitor searched to find you. In turn, Google will rank you higher for those keywords so more of its users can benefit from your content.
Website Optimization
Your SEO agency should be able to optimize your site using high-quality content, technical SEO, and local SEO when it’s necessary.
Authoritative Backlinks
High-quality backlinks help you build your credibility and authority online. Find an SEO agency that includes link building as part of your SEO strategy.
Reporting
Your SEO agency should be happy to share reports with you that show you how your site and content are performing. If the agency can provide a custom dashboard for your SEO strategy, even better.
Education
Just because you’ve hired an SEO agency to handle your SEO for you doesn’t mean that you don’t need to know about SEO.
Your SEO agency should be happy to educate you about the SEO metrics important to your business, what they’re doing to improve those metrics, and why what they’re doing makes sense.
Along the same lines, your agency should be open to questions and answer them quickly and honestly.
Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Agency
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into SEO. That’s why hiring an SEO agency and signing up for a monthly SEO package makes good business sense.
Once you’ve found an agency that includes everything you want and need in a monthly SEO package, you’re going to be tempted to sign up as quickly as possible.
Take a breath first.
Before you sign up for any monthly SEO packages, there are a few questions you’ll want to ask.
What Tactics Will You Use?
A good SEO firm will be able to tell you all about the tactics they’ll use to help your site rank. They should also be able to tell you why they chose those tactics for you and how their expertise makes them the best at each tactic.
How Long Does it Take to Rank?
SEO takes time. It just does.
But time isn’t sexy and there are many SEO agencies out there that will tell you they can get you ranked #1 on Google in just a few weeks.
Because that IS sexy.
It’s also not likely.
Pick an SEO agency that is realistic and honest with you about it. It’s possible to see some improvement in your rankings in a couple of months, but big improvements are going to be part of the long game.
How Will You Get Backlinks?
Not all backlinks are created equal. Your SEO agency should be eager to build links for you on high-quality websites.
When you have tons of backlinks from just a couple of domains, or from spammy domains, Google isn’t happy.
And when Google isn’t happy your rankings tank.
Stick with an agency that uses link building tactics that will get more backlinks from high-quality sites.
Will You Use Local SEO?
If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, you’re likely going to benefit from local SEO. For web-based business, though, local SEO is probably either not as important or not necessary at all.
Your SEO agency should be able to tell you whether or not local SEO will benefit you. If it will, that should be included in your monthly SEO package.
Get the Most From Your SEO Agency
It’s true that monthly SEO packages can be costly. But they can also be cost-effective and make tremendous business sense. In fact, the right digital marketing agency will pay for itself over time.
