Years ago, the biggest obstacle an SEO provider had to overcome was convincing a prospective client that they needed SEO in the first place. Fortunately, in 2010, few companies have that mentality. Most of them know that they need SEO and plenty of it.
However, as is the case with most things in life, overcoming one hurdle inevitably leads to a subsequent hurdle.
Nowadays, the main obstacle that providers have to overcome is the price of SEO. Typically, this lends itself to a pair of common objections. The first one is “for the annual price you’re offering, I can go out and hire a full-time SEO to work in-house.” The second one is “We’re talking to another provider that’s willing to do the same work for half the price you’re offering.”
Admittedly, both of these “price” objections are difficult to overcome, but I’ve found that if you take the time to explain the difference between “price” and “cost” the savvy prospects usually come around (those are the ones you want, by the way).
If my prospect is considering the in-house option, I draw upon my own in-house experiences at Fortune 500 companies and explain that it’s difficult if not impossible for one person to manage all of the tasks associated with SEO (site-level implementation, link-building outreach and social-media engagement, content development, analytics reporting and analysis, etc). Therefore, in order to achieve the same level of SEO implementation that my agency can deliver (we typically assign 3-4 employees to a single account) the prospect may have to hire more than one in-house expert and/or outsource certain aspects of the SEO process. And worse yet, what if that in-house resource doesn’t cut the mustard and fails to move the needle for the company? The opportunity cost associated with the passage of time as well as re-occurring employee hiring costs will run higher and higher.
If my prospect is considering a low-cost SEO provider, I’ll lean upon our client testimonials and references as well as the body of published work that my team and I have produced over the years. The reason we charge a premium is because of the quality of employees we bring into the fold, the depth of ongoing training and testing we engage in, and the technology platforms that help automate our efforts and improve efficiency so that our specialists can spend their time making sure that the needle is moving. 99 times out of a 100 the low-cost provider won’t have the same pedigree, which in the end, will erode their ability to deliver the same level of return on investment.
Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to handle SEO in-house. I’m also not saying that only high-priced SEO providers deliver positive ROI (nothing could be further from the truth because a lot of the big ticket SEO providers deliver little more than smoke and mirrors SEO).
What I am saying is that if you’re considering an SEO provider that has the case studies and testimonials while also displaying an obviously strong level of thought leadership and expertise, don’t let the price tag dissuade you from making the right decision for your business.
P.S. Special thanks to one of the few legitimate social media gurus, Tamar Weinberg, for mentioning Zeta in her Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 piece. It’s extremely humbling that she thought so highly of one of our specialist’s posts on SEO link building.
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Now day’s this is really important to know about price factor before hiring SEO, this post is really very useful to decide what to do.
Thanks for sharing such great information.