You’re probably wondering why WhiteHat SEO comes with such a high price tag.. I’m sure you’ve seen other ‘ranking/SEO’ services for a fraction of the price at merely a few hundred dollars, if that.. Well, WhiteHat SEO is expensive because it uses expensive ‘ingredients’.
It’s perfectly feasible to create an online marketing campaign for under a few hundred dollars:
Auto-generate some content: $10 at most, free if you already have the software
Blast this auto-content through your software and make some link: $30 (cost to run software based on ‘proxies’ and ‘captcha solvers’)
At under $40 cost, you could be charged $100, netting the marketer a $60 profit.. not bad..
However this is ‘BlackHat’. It does have its purpose for those who want to benefit from cheap short term rankings, make some cash then repeat the process on another site. But again, if you want successful long-term online marketing for your real business, you’ll want to steer clear..
So let’s look at where your money goes with a WhiteHat campaign:
Content
A huge amount of the budget is spent on creating high quality engaging content. Remember a minute ago we discussed building ‘connections’ from high quality websites? Well placing your link in a body of high quality text, does wonders to establish that connection. High quality writers aren’t cheap ? you’re looking at anywhere between $7-$25+ per article.. so to take an average of $10 per article, $100 will only get you 10 articles (or 10 bodies of text to put your connecting link into).. starting to see why it’s so expensive?
Press Releases
WhiteHat SEO usually includes a press release of some sort or another, again the content for these press releases isn’t cheap, and combined with the cost of syndicating this content across big players in the online media world comes in at several hundred dollars a piece, and that’s only on certain networks.. Long term media partners are just one of the tools in a WhiteHat SEO company’s arsenal. You’re budget goes towards keeping those connections, and often submitting content to their networks and allowing your website a ‘soapbox’ to relay your brands message (and ultimately increase rankings).
HQ Partners
As mentioned in the press release section, quality partners and networks make up a good deal of WhiteHat SEO, finding placements for your business and ensuring maximum benefit from these connections takes time and effort. You are also paying for exclusivity, gaining access to authoritative websites that others are not able to make connections with.
Company Overheads
When dealing with a real marketing company there are substantial costs involved. The company has full time, qualified staff, researchers, web developers, programmers and many other overheads to consider. There is a huge difference between hiring a digital marketing firm who will go through your campaign in careful detail, offering advice and guidance through the years and hiring a one off freelancer, who’ll go in do the ‘job’ and leave.
