How much does Local SEO cost?

You’ve got a small business and you’ve heard that local SEO is something that you should be doing but you don’t know a lot about it or how much it will cost. Here’s some information to help you make an informed decision about local SEO.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is how you improve the visibility of your local business on search engines such as Google. It helps position your products and services to local prospects and customers who search for them. Following local SEO best practices can improve organic web traffic for your business from searches done by customers in your area. The information that search engines use to provide their users with the most relevant local results comes from things such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations. Some ways of doing local SEO include adding posts to and optimizing for Google My Business, engaging on social media, making sure your name, address, and phone number are the same everywhere online, optimizing online directories and citations, performing a local SEO audit, improving your internal linking structure, optimizing URL, title tags, headers, meta description, and content, adding location pages to your website, creating local content, making your website mobile-friendly, and getting inbound links with relevance and authority. If you want the benefits of local SEO but aren’t prepared to do it all yourself you’ll need to hire someone and so you’ll want to know what professional local SEO costs.

How Much Does It Cost?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to local SEO. Your cost will vary based on your needs. Some of the factors that affect what you’ll pay for local SEO include the following.

• Citations - Citations help search engines connect your business name, address, and phone number, and is essential for local map optimization. While there is no hard and fast rule around how many citations you need, a general rule of thumb is 50 to 100. We provide an affordable way of keeping citations up to date, starting at just $12/month.
• Website Pages - You should have at least one local SEO page that’s dedicated to your geographic location and focuses on regional keywords tied to your products and services. Creating quality local SEO pages takes time, effort, and skills. Our local SEO service starts at just $25/month and includes up to 5 local SEO pages.
• Local Links - Local SEO includes building authoritative links from local organizations and other sources. Our link-building services start at $138/month.
• Content Marketing - You’ll need engaging content that answers online questions from your customers. Blog posts will also be used as Google My Business posts and optimized to rank for local search queries. Expect to pay anywhere from $100 to $300 for each blog post. 
• Google My Business(GMB) - Setting up your GMB listing and maintaining your local presence each month is a cornerstone of local SEO strategy. Our local SEO services include professionally written GMB posts, optimized images, and GMB listing maintenance starting at $138/month.
• SEO Reporting - Reporting lets you know what your local SEO campaigns produce for your business. While many agencies charge as much as $200/month for SEO reporting, we provide monthly SEO reports at no extra cost.
• Other Factors - Three other factors that play a part in the cost of local SEO are your competition, how many locations you have,  and how many products or services you want to promote.
  • Competition - SEO costs more if you’re in a more competitive industry.  You’ll have to create a more relevant webpage/better content and to build your domain authority/more links than in a less competitive industry. Review the websites that are ranking high for your target keywords. The higher the authority score and the more backlinks your competitors have, the more you’ll have to invest in SEO to outrank them. 
  • Locations - The number of locations you have will also affect how much local SEO will cost. Ranking local GMB listings, maintaining other directory listings, and building additional citations for each location requires more resources for each location. 
  • Products And Services - If you want to expand your reach by targeting more product or service keywords, then you’ll need to do more SEO, such as researching the competition that’s already ranking for each keyword. You’ll also want to build separate webpages for each of the products or services you’re promoting. 

In general, if you’re in a less competitive industry, have only one location, and a limited number of services, you’ll pay less and if you’re in a more competitive industry, have multiple locations, and more products or services, expect to pay more. It all depends on your unique situation.

If you’re ready to take the next step towards growing your business with strong local SEO, we can help with our Ellipsis SEO Program.

Tags: local SEO, cost