SEO pricing for e-commerce websites

One of the great things about taking advantage of SEO for e-commerce sites is easy to draw a straight line between initial investment and return on investment (ROI) in terms of actual dollars.

In this post, we will explore some of the key drivers of SEO pricing as well as some actual numbers; I realize this is probably what you’re looking for if you land here.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to SEO costs for ecommerce websites:

• Site engineering
• Current ranking and search visibility
• number of products
• Duplicate content
• Ecommerce Platform – They all have challenges as they relate to SEO
• Contest
• Product Ownership – Are you a Producer or a Distributor/Distributor?

SEO Quotes You Should Ignore

To be honest, a New York SEO company that promises rankings, backlinks and massive increases in traffic is a really low investment, and it’s well worth skipping past right. I realize that there are hundreds of companies doing this, but the harsh reality is that SEO strategy and implementation takes real work.

At a minimum, e -Commerce SEO focused on revenue generation requires the following:

• F Return the content of the product
• A N – Page Optimization
• You elegant and detailed product description
• c onversion improvement
• W improve website speed

My advice? If you own or run an e-commerce site and are serious about it, don’t risk cheap SEO companies. It can do more harm than good.

r Realistic Cost Predictions for E-Commerce SEO

The truth is that the effort required and the costs involved can vary greatly based on the type of e-commerce company you’re running. However, we will talk about the following types of e-commerce business:

In order to give you a realistic pitch cost, we’ll also make some assumptions as they relate to an SEO company:

1. Real SEO, Content and Web Development professionals are used
2. The SEO company is located in the United States
3. The SEO company will implement their strategy and not just make tactical recommendations

SEO Pricing for M Ecommerce Website Owned by Manufacturer Q

As a direct-to-consumer manufacturer, you have the advantage of being able to create deep and unique content about your product. However, you tend to have high margins and a small competition pool. That is unless you are competing in a mass market with dozens of other manufacturers. The product groups in this scenario are usually less than 100.

In cases that fit this scenario, a reasonable SEO budget that includes all on-page SEO efforts including content, conversion optimization and on-page optimization would be $25,000 – $60,000 per year. This range allows room for the company’s size and scale as well as different levels of competition.

SEO Pricing for B2B Ecommerce Websites

B2B e-commerce sites tend to be large, powerful sites with relatively low competition. The motivation is that they are typically built to sell maintenance and service parts for manufactured equipment, or consumables that are compatible with particular industries. Of course, these are not absolute rules but these are the contexts in which we have seen a high degree of success for B2B companies taking advantage of e-commerce.

In such cases, due to the broad scope and technical nature of the products being sold, SEO requires true professionals to learn and understand the audience for which they will be writing. However, SEO strategies for these types of sites should fall in the $30,000-$80,000 range per year.

I realize that these numbers seem high for companies that have not taken advantage of SEO in the past. If so, I would simply urge you to consider the potential ROI. Most of the time, these are high dollar sales with decent profit margins. A search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that costs $50,000.00/year can bring that back in profits very easily.

SEO Pricing for B2C Ecommerce Sites

This category will have a very wide range in order to accommodate everything from small niche e-commerce sites to large sites with thousands of products.

I will not try to cover very large sites in this post. These numbers can spiral out of control just because of the enormous effort required and the opportunity they represent.

Generally speaking, we will talk about B2C e-commerce websites which have annual revenue of $500,000 to $10,000,000.

Small E-Commerce Sites

If ecommerce sites are on a really tight night, considering every business owner thinks they are, SEO rates could be as low as $15,000 – $30,000 a year.

The decision really becomes one about taking risks and committing to getting started. This should be partly driven by trading experience and partly influenced by data. A good SEO company will be able to help you assess the toughness of the competition and the size of the opportunity.

Medium to large e-commerce sites

Medium to large e-commerce sites generally require more funding because they run against many competitors and in most cases sell the exact same products as those competitors.

In these situations, differentiation can be difficult and SEO will require more product content to be written, preferably unique images and videos. All this combined with great educational content so that potential customers will have a reason to trust your brand.

All that said, SEO for medium to large business e-commerce websites will require a budget of $25,000 to $100,000 per year. This is a wide range, I know, but the truth is that the size and scale of these types of e-commerce sites can be very different.

If you are an enterprise, have a good website and good conversion rates, it is much easier to justify a big SEO budget because it is a reasonable assumption that larger amounts of targeted traffic (which SEO naturally brings you) will lead to more sales.

One last reminder

I don’t envy decision makers who have to delve into the SEO world without first-hand experience. If this is someone you are, I suggest that you base your investment on the expected return on investment and the stage of business your e-commerce site is in.

There are so many different approaches, opinions, and price points for SEO services that it can be overwhelming. Take the time to get to know the humans who will do your SEO work. At the end of the day, good SEO is all about connecting with people, not algorithms. Google won’t buy your products, people will buy them. You may well know and trust the people you hire to help you do this.

Ready to start your SEO strategy in high gear? Contact us to get started.