Often, you will find other elements added to rate cards including things like Google Penalty Protection and Optimising Customer reviews but frankly, these should not be part of your decision making process. If an SEO firm is doing the job correctly, you won’t ever get a penalty (none of our customers ever has from the work we have done over the last ten years) and when it comes to people leaving reviews, you can’t change them, only manage them, and that’s a separate element called Reputation Management.
In their regular study of Search Engine Ranking Factors, Moz identify that they key elements, in order of importance, are Links, Content and Technical set up; so in order they rank;
- Off Site SEO
- On Page SEO
- Technical SEO
So, when you are choosing which firm to use, get an understanding of the type of work they intend to do for you and in what quantity, as this will make a huge difference to the outcome for your business.
Should you believe guarantees that you will be #1?
Recently, we were directed to a very interesting article on another SEO website, suggesting that anyone offering a guarantee to get you to number one on Google would either not be telling the truth or breaking Google’s guidelines.
This binary assumption is a little disingenuous to say the least, as it precludes the possibility that they might actually be doing a good job well and achieving results. After all, someone has to be number one, right? In fact I can guarantee a number one position for any of our customers and meet that promise every time. It might not be a keyword that they are particularly interested in, nor one that drives any actual traffic, or business their way, but it would still be a number one position. In fact the more niche you get in terms of what you need to rank for, the easier it becomes.
Guarantees of success are, of course, simply advertising techniques and firms use them as headlines to get your attention. Some firms will tell you how many thousand number one keywords they have achieved for their customers, but a cursory glance will tell you that getting to number one for ‘blue widget manufacturers in Wimborne’ is not that hard.
Given that Search Engines update their algorithms daily, competitors can appear overnight and changes in the market can make your products more or less desirable, any promises of number one positions should be treated with caution. There is, of course, a way of getting to number one, but it takes time, particularly on the harder keywords, and it takes a clear plan, well executed using the very best in SEO techniques for it to be sustainable.
Conclusion
As we said at the start, with SEO, typically, you get what you pay for. Some firms are better than others but finding which they are can be a challenge. If you are searching for an SEO company to help your business then start by looking for someone who meets your current stage of business development. Do you need one person or a team? Do you need a lot of work or a little? Are you going to ask them to do everything or do you want to do some of it yourself? All of these questions, and more, are important when choosing.
Once you’ve decided on the type of firm you want to work with then we hope that the information and tables above give you an idea of the type of costs you are likely to be asked to pay for SEO on your website.

This article was written by Aqueous Digital MD, Jonathan Guy.
If you have any other questions about the cost of SEO then feel free to contact us and we will try our best to answer them.
Find out more about the SEO services we offer