Affordable by What Measure: Judging an SEO Company on What the Month Buys

You have two or three quotes in front of you and the numbers do not agree. One looks reasonable, one looks high, and one is low enough that you are wondering what is wrong with it. The number on each quote tells you what it costs. It does not tell you what you get, and that second thing is the only one you can compare. This page is about the second thing. It also covers the case where the right answer is to buy nothing yet. For some readers that is the honest answer, and a page about affordability that cannot say so is a sales page.

Why there is no normal price for SEO

The first question on this search is what a normal price is, and the reason no straight answer exists is that the word covers three different purchases. One quote reserves a share of a person's time each month. Another sells a package of activities with a name on it. A third counts a set of changes made to your site and lists them. These are different things, they cost different amounts for good reasons, and a quote will not always say which one is on the table. So the number is the last thing to compare. The first thing is what, exactly, the money buys.

The measure that works: ask what last month bought

Before you compare two quotes by the number, ask each company for the list of what last month's fee bought for one of their clients, written at the time rather than assembled for you, with the client's details removed. Then ask what it changed for that client's business, in calls, bookings, inquiries, or sales. A company that has this list can send it in an afternoon. A company that says it could put a list together is telling you the list did not exist until you asked, and that is a finding, not an insult. This one request does more of the work in how to choose an SEO agency than any other, and it costs you one email.

Why a cheap fee can be the expensive one

There are two ways a low fee costs more than a high one, and you can spot both from the list above. The first is a fee that buys a document. If the month's list is a report, generated from a tool, and nothing on your site changed, you paid for a description of your site rather than for work on it. The second is a fee that is cheap because of the method. If a quote sits far below the others, ask what makes it that cheap. If the answer includes buying links, mass-produced pages or copy written to a keyword count, the price is low because the method is one Google's own spam rules name, and that work holds right up to the update that removes it, and then it takes the site down with it.

Cheap is not a virtue and expensive is not a guarantee

The doubt you have about the low quote is a reasonable doubt, and the doubt you should have about the high one is the same doubt. Neither number tells you anything by itself. A high fee with no written month is the one that quietly costs you more, because it looks like the safe choice. The list settles it either way.

What is the cheapest SEO?

Doing it yourself, and it is worth saying so plainly on a page like this. On a small site the basics are within reach of anyone who can edit a page: give each page one job and name that job in its title, write the short description a search engine shows under your link, link your pages to each other, and fix the links that go nowhere. On a site builder like Wix, the fields are there to fill in and the sitemap is generated for you. A beginner can do this. What you pay for, when you pay anyone, is not the capability. It is somebody still doing it in month four, and that is the part that stops when it is nobody's job. Among paid arrangements, the cheapest is the one you can check, because a fee you cannot check has no price you can compare.

Is it worth hiring an SEO company, or not yet?

For some readers the honest answer is not yet, and here is how to tell. If the fee is one you could not carry for several months without more customers coming in, do not pay it. The website side of search moves on a clock of months, and a fee you need paid back in the first month is a fee you should not pay. If your site is a handful of pages and nothing on it is broken, the do-it-yourself list above is the cheapest next step. And if your customers find you through the map results rather than through your website, the website work is not the part that will move your phone; which half of local a fee covers is its own question, and it gets its own page. None of those is a reason to feel behind. What the continuing work is, and why it does not end once the interesting part is finished, is set out in our guide to ongoing SEO, and it reads the same whether the hands on the site are yours or somebody else's.

What to check before you buy, on any company including us

Five things, and each one is checkable before a card comes out. The written month, as above. Who does the work, and whether that is the person you will speak to. What happens if you stop paying, and what stays on your site when you do. What is excluded, by name, because link building, new content and advertising are easy to assume and are the three to ask about by name. And what method, because the ethics of the work is part of its price. Four of the five are answered on our pricing page: one website, one flat price, no contract and no minimum term; the person who does the work is the person you speak to; if you cancel, the work already done stays on your pages, because nothing is rented; and what is not included, and which methods we refuse, are listed there by name. The first of the five, a past month's written list, is not on that page. Ask us for it the way you would ask anyone, and we will tell you plainly what we can show today. Better that you read it here than hear it on the call.

If you want a second opinion on the quotes in front of you

Bring them. A free SEO consultation is a conversation with the person who does the work, and reading somebody else's quote with you is a fair use of it. You will hear which of the three purchases each one is selling, what the written month should look like for each, and when the answer is none of them yet. That last answer is one we give, and we would rather give it before you pay anyone than after.

We sell one thing: a fixed number of things done to one website every week, for one flat price with no contract, and the only part that lands on you is reading what changed. What that costs is on our pricing page. It is one number, and the list of what it includes and what it leaves out sits beside it.

And if you would rather talk it through before deciding anything, book a free SEO consultation. You will speak to the person who does the work.

Written by Spencer Capron at Capron Media, in collaboration with our AI agents. The same way we do the work for clients. Spencer reviews everything published here.