What is a reasonable price to pay for SEO?

[primarypositionseo]

Difficult Question. Many good, top SEO companies have their own ideas, techniques and systems which together make up their own technology - thus their own Intellectual Property. As such, the price they are charging you is also to cover this technology that they've developed. SEO is very new - it's not like buying a service from an electrician or Accountant or mechanic. These services are generally regulated, widely available and very tangible, very comparable. It's generally about paying an hourly rate for a particular service. SEO however isn't.

You need to approach a few companies and engage with them. This service is important. Time is money. If one company seems 50% cheaper than another but takes 4 times as long (or longer) to achieve high SERP's, then it's actually costing you more.

Your problem: Let's say SEO company A wants to charge a fixed rate of say $10k for your particular requirement, and company B wants $2k per month and company C wants $300 as a once off charge - the only way to compare them is to look at their capability and talk to their referrees. Becareful about the SERP's they give you. One company might have what seems like a great SERP but you have to validate this independently. Did they really do this? (talk to the owner). Is it a really a highly searched for phrase? (check with Google AdWords).

Talk to the companies, find out who seems to know more about what they do and how they'll measure it. For example, company A has a list of reports, perhaps some examples from previous projects where they can demonstrate:

1. Keyword Research (what are the best keywords to deliver traffic, not high SERPs! Be careful with high KEI / niche - they are niche for a reason!)

2. How do they check your SERP's? How will they monitor what they do? How do they measure improvement.

3. How will they track improvements to your site?

4. What do they know about Social Media, Blogs, Web 2.0, User Experience, Sales Conversions, Google Analytics etc.

Don't accept answers like "We're exper in Analytics" or "We will guarantee increase in traffic" or "we will turn your site into HTML because SE's like this more" etc!