SEO Agency NYC Editorial From the Owner:

For 17 years I have worked as an SEO professional. I simply must call out  what has recently been called “PRICEAGEDON” in the SEO community. It’s hurting

Working tirelessly to not only produce the best overall product while remaining price sensitive in a field where even a decade later, we still regularly have to educate clients on the ins and outs of SEO as part  steward and part provider. However, it is my goal to strip away the notion that any business owner can hope to find effective and cheap SEO.

NYC SEO: How cheap is cheap SEO?

Recently, Higher Visibility performed a much-needed study. They surveyed 500 people who help small businesses with their marketing efforts. This study was very revealing. A whopping 75 percent of respondents believe that SEO should cost under $500/mo. What’s even worse is that 38 percent believe SEO should cost under $100/month! So why is this so?

First you have to understand the goal. To be on page one means you are in the 1% of 1% of top publishers on Google and sometimes a bottom of the page 1 ranking can produce single digit click thru rates. To say the competition is fierce is an understatement even on most local or regional terms.

SEO Deliverables Matter

Well, aside from the fact that there are a million SEO service providers trying to take advantage of unsuspecting and inexperienced business owners, the most hilarious of which is GoDaddy which offers Search Engine “Visibility” for $7/month? The old saying “You get what you pay for” definitely applies here.

It’s frustrating when our team meets with established business owners who are now being asked to spend exponentially more and their first, second and third experience has gotten progressively more expensive with the same terrible or uneventful results. It’s no wonder there is so much pushback from new potential clients when a proper SEO budget is on the table.

But here is the first problem I see all the time when delving into past client experiences. Clearly there is a deliberate and willful deception taking place. In my estimation better than 80% of so called “seo providers” are not providing at all, and there are such easy ways to spot them it’s amazing these companies are still thriving. So here is what you should know about modern SEO practices in way that is easy to remember and understand.

NYC SEO Rule of 3:

Rule #1: CODE: Making sure your site goes way beyond its original “design phase” and has eloquent well thought out, organized structure and follows all the documented criteria for Google. This is the most basic concept of SEO and also the least important overall in as much as anyone can get their code correct and once it’s complete there is nothing more to do except monitor and maintain it. I’d say overall value here is about 10%. Anyone who tells you different is either deficient or probably bordering on willfully ignorant, or both.

Rule #2: Content: …Is King as the saying goes. So here is the analogy I like to use. Let’s say you finish your work in the aforementioned Rule #1 along with dozens of other websites that have beat you to market and/or happen to have your same goal of Page 1 ranking status. Now what you have is a 100% Google code ready “billboard’ that has say 10-20 pages for a small business.

Well, how is Google supposed to tell which site is more relevant than the next? Draw straws? Pistols at dawn? One huge factor is fresh and relevant content and for most sites that means blogging and relevant being the focus here. Even if you have the time to blog (95% of the owners I talk to- do not) you have to be sure it meets very specific math on the subject or you may very well be confusing Google and spinning your wheels. Use your keywords too much or too little and you don’t get the desired effect.

*Now of the hundreds of potential clients I speak to, how many of them do you think were even offered fresh blog content by a competent North American writer? And god help you if you think about cutting corners with AI Bots?

Answer: ZERO. Hmmm? So if content is King, to the point where it’s a catch phrase, where is the full time content staff to handle this need? If the answer is no blogging is included, this should be a non-starter- full stop.

Fundamentals of Pricing

How much does it cost for a well researched article/ blog at the journalistic writing level that has been edited so that you always make your weekly contribution to your blog on time with minimal editing?

On the high side hundreds and on the low about $50-100. You can go lower but trusting your brand to someone who doesn’t know their value all but guarantees you will be re-writing it yourself and minimally you will need one blog a week to get caught up to a top competitor who may have hundreds of articles already in place. So just for a basic but solidly written blog, expect to budget $300.

And god help you if you aren’t blogging and Google has an update in the third quarter like they did for Panda in 2018- your beautiful new billboard who somehow managed to beg borrow and steal to get near page 1 on link building alone is going to the back of the line which basically all but ruined 12 month of SEO investment. Overall Value of Rule #2 = 25% of the campaign but a critical long term error if missing.

Rule #3 Backlinks aka Link Building. So in case you are new, this is the ultimate decider. Link building is the single most important component to any SEO campaign and here is why. We’ve already established that your code is perfect, you’re writing staff is amazing and never misses a beat and you own a content rich billboard that is expanding to Congressional Library status. Is that enough?

Answer: Not even close. Link building is the art of getting other high quality sites to give you a vote by linking a piece of content on their site, to your own. Think of it as a digital vote and preferably one from a site that is much older and has better quality than you do.

*And in all of the conversations I have with previous clients, how many of them had their, so called SEO vendor provide them with a current list of links that their competition has in relation to their own number of links?

*Wouldn’t it make common sense to say if a site has a ten year head start, is it possible for me to catch up and how many links do we have to build to be in the same weight class?

*Wouldn’t that measurement be crucial in knowing what an SEO team was up against in order to deliver on expectations and cover their labor cost?

Are you starting to see why so many people are burned out on SEO? You can literally calculate exactly how long it will take once you measure how many links your competitor has by the number of links you are getting, assuming what you are getting is outpacing their own efforts currently.

So my advice is get someone aggressive, who knows their value and takes pride in your investment in their brand because those individuals will take care of you the way you take care of them- every time.