Unfortunately it’s not that simple. It’s like asking your Accountant how much tax I will have to pay next year. He or she can give you an estimate but not an exact figure. Similarly I can give you a very accurate estimate but not an exact figure. Nothing is more important for a business owner to fully understand what SEO is before investing. SEO is not a cost. It is an investment. This isn’t some cheap sales tactic, it’s a fact. A cost is something that doesn’t provide a return, like buying a home (you pay your mortgage but it doesn’t put money back into your pocket). An investment is something that provides a return, like buying a positively geared investment property (each week you gain a return from the rent). SEO is the same, each week it puts money back into your pocket.

To understand the answer to this question you first need to understand how SEO works and what is required to reach page 1. Let’s say you are a brand new business, you just started today. There are 50 or so businesses all scrambling for the top positions on page one, many of them are actively investing in SEO. Some of them may have been doing SEO for months or years. So what does SEO cost? The cost is relative to the time it takes to reach your goal, page one or rank 1, 2 or 3. Let’s assume your main competition has been doing SEO for three years and has a $4,500 website. To rank higher than your competitor you need to either, hire someone better than they are using to catch up to them (x years of SEO), or get someone that isn’t better and wait until your SEO catches up (months or years). As you now understand to tell you how much SEO costs, I need to know what your goals are and who your competition is. I’ll then go analyse their website and give you an estimate of how long it will take to catch up. The advanced program might take 1-3 months, the standard might take 3-6 months for example. It’s all relative to the time invested and how good their SEO is. You get what you pay for. If your competitor goes cheap and outsources to a third world country, it won’t take me long to beat them.