What Does SEO Cost in Los Angeles?
Marketing Services for SEO Companies in Los Angeles
Depending on the type of services you desire for your business, the cost of SEO marketing can vary. You may be a salon or dental surgery seeking to boost your local SEO, or an ecommerce business seeking a better conversion rate for your website. Implementation of long term SEO strategies can have different monthly costs to a one-off consultation and troubleshooting of your organization’s existing SEO approach.
Small scale local SEO - if you are simply trying to get your small business onto search engines, preferably on the first page for local services, there are many agencies that will have simple low-cost pricing models for you. These services include SEO PPC (pay-per-click) ads that target social media or search engine users based on their location and activity. The returns on this can be beneficial, but will have a limited effect on your business’ growth. Costs for agencies implementing automated local SEO campaigns of this type tend to be low. Expect to pay from $400 to $900 every month for this kind of service.
Local SEO - competing with other businesses in a small radius (for example, other hair salons in a 5-mile radius) will have a low cost typically between $1,000 and $1,500 monthly. This tier of investment will cover more elements than the basic SEO package.
Paid search management
Content management
Online review management
Link building
Social media
Reporting
Google My Business management
Regional SEO - if you are attempting to advertise your services to an area such as a large county, a city, or a collection of smaller counties, you are likely to pay more. A specialist service like an orthodontist or a furniture rental shop that was attempting to cast a broader net throughout LA County, for example, could pay anywhere between $2,500 and $6,000 a month to leverage the kind of concentrated SEO work that would have a sufficient effect on search results.
National/international SEO - launching a large scale SEO operation to improve your organization’s visibility nationally or internationally is a grand undertaking that can require significant investment of labor and resources. An SEO campaign of this kind can often require a monthly fee of $10,000 a month to have the desired effect.
Paying for SEO Services in Los Angeles
Which way do SEO agencies in Los Angeles prefer to be paid?
Monthly retainer: The most common way SEO specialists in LA County are compensated, a monthly retainer means that companies can budget for a recurring cost, and the agency can schedule an appropriate amount of time to devote to that company’s strategy every month. According to Ahrefs, the average monthly cost of SEO is $2,819.
Hourly rates: Many agencies will also consider working to an hourly rate. This can be beneficial for companies which don’t want to commit to an ongoing SEO campaign with an untried agency. They may want an SEO expert to perform a quick diagnostic on their website or social media and recommend strategies for improvement. In the US, costs for SEO agencies vary between $100 to $250 depending on factors such as services provided, expertise, location of the agency, and more. Expect to pay closer to the higher end of the bracket for most agencies in Los Angeles, owing to higher operational costs in LA County.
Project-based: A lot of digital marketing agencies will also negotiate project-based payment for certain services. Web design is one such discipline which lends itself to this pay structure: the project scope is limited and can be clearly assessed on the quality on its deliverables. Obviously, a project’s cost will vary depending on its scope.
Where Does The Money Go?
<$500/month: an SEO campaign with this budget will be best served by concentratingbe concentrating on Google Adwords: using PPC to direct interested parties to your website. The work of conversion optimization (that is to say, ensuring that once people arrive at your website, they are compelled to make a purchase, subscribe, or join your mailing list) will be on your shoulders. Depending on the industry, simply getting someone to click on your ad can cost $2.50 or more. As long as you are making sales on at least a small percentage of these clicks, though, you should enjoy a good return on your investment.
$1,000 - $1,500/month: a campaign that is focused on a small area such as a town, a neighborhood, or a particular suburb can usually manage on a budget of this size. These campaigns are typically for small businesses such as restaurants, bars, barber shops and salons, laundromats, dry cleaners etc. The smaller pool of competing businesses means that it is easier to distinguish your own from the crowd, particularly if your competitors don’t have websites or any kind of professional digital marketing strategy. An early investment in your business’ web presence can allow you to capture significant market share, especially in services which serve younger demographics more prone to use online searches and social media.
$2,500 - $6,000/month: a campaign budget of this size is typically targeting a region, such as Los Angeles County (an area of over 10 million people). If your product or service doesn’t have much in the way of competition, you’ll be paying towards the lower end of this spectrum. If, however, you are in a high-value field, or a field with significant competition (such as production trailer hire in Los Angeles) you will likely have to pay more, since your competition will be doing the same. In some industries, companies retain their own SEO marketing teams or specialists to work full-time on their strategies. In order to compete with these companies, you will need to make a similar effort to invest in your web presence. Related: How COVID-19 Hurt Offline Businesses
>$10,000/month: any SEO campaign that has this much money behind it is probably on a national scale, or at the very least, is targeting multiple markets around the country (such as a legal firm with branches in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Miami). Consider the cost of operating a competitive campaign in a single region, and then multiply that by the number of regions your company has a presence in. You should take into account, of course, the greater or lesser degree of competition in that field: an accountancy firm’s branch in Oklahoma City is likely to be paying less for competitive SEO than that company’s San Francisco branch.
