Small Business SEO: Google My Business Or Pay For Performance SEO Pricing?

April 30, 2015 by  
Filed under Featured Articles

Small-Business-SEO

Small business SEO is the cornerstone of every small business marketing campaign. Organic traffic from Google can mean bank for your business. It can be a game changer.

Search engine optimization pays for itself. Think about traditional advertising — you pay for ad placement and hope to get results. If no new business rolls in, you’re back at square one.

The difference when it comes to small business SEO is that the investment you make continues to keep paying you back long afterwards. That’s the reality of ranking for a profitable keyword. When someone types in what they are looking for and finds you, what else can be better?

Used in tandem with on-page SEO, it’s a powerful strategy to add to your marketing arsenal.

Google My Business: Is It Good For SEO?

Google My Business is a free tool by Google aimed at helping small business owners manage their online presence easier. It combines Google Places and Google+ pages with Search and Maps to make updating your business information with Google a breeze.

Does it help your small business SEO campaign?

Sort of.

While it is important to optimize for your local market, Google My Business will not build links to your website or help you with on-page optimization. And those are the two areas to be concerned with the most.

What You Need To Know About SEO Services Pricing

Affordable SEO can fall into four different categories:

  • By the hour
  • By the project
  • By retainer
  • Pay for performance

SEO Services Pricing (Hourly):  

Hourly SEO pricing is typically the most expensive. This is usually reserved for SEO experts who work with an agency or are training a team or business owner over a set amount of hours. This is almost never a good option for small business owners because SEO takes time. A well optimized SEO campaign can still take around 3 – 6 months.

SEO Services Pricing (Project-based):

Project-based SEO pricing can be a good option for specific tasks. Say you need to train your in-house team or you want a consultant to lay out a strategy for you to tackle on your own. Projects typically fall into SEO audits, link building campaigns, or creating the actual strategy.

SEO Services Pricing (Monthly Retainer):

Monthly SEO packages are the norm. With this level of service clients are outsourcing strategy and execution. It’s very normal for monthly small business SEO services to require a contract of up to 6 months to a year.

SEO Services Pricing (Pay for Performance):

 Pay for performance SEO focuses on bringing results first.

 No money upfront. Here an SEO service provider will work to promote higher rankings for their client, and once that customer starts ranking for their keywords, they then would begin paying for the service.

Not too many companies offer this level of small business SEO service. Most SEO companies stay away from this pricing model because it makes them really live up to what they say. If a customer does not rank, they don’t pay. It’s for this reason that companies that offer pay for performance SEO truly must understand Google and how to rank websites because if they don’t, they don’t earn any money.

Which means they wouldn’t be in business for long.