Ever wondered how much does an SEO audit cost in 2022? Which is a fair price for an audit? From free to thousands of dollars SEO audits, the pricing is probably getting you dizzy. You’ll probably wonder if a free audit is the way to go, I mean there are so many platforms that provide these simple reports.
Should you spend hundreds of dollars on a detailed SEO audit? Thousands?
OMG! What’s the correct price for an SEO audit service anyway?
Well, there is no right answer.
Clearly free is not good. All these websites that provide free audits are just spitting out some basic data and that’s it. No proper SEO campaign can be built on this.
Extremely expensive SEO audits don’t mean you are getting the best service either, as many huge companies have a pretty hefty overhead. So, yeah, you’re paying for fancy offices and sports cars.
How Much Does an SEO Audit Cost for a Small / Medium Website?
The size of a website does have a huge importance.
It’s one thing to audit a 50 page website and another ball game to audit a 20K page website.
As you can imagine this makes the SEO audit costs go from $500 to $10K (based on our pricing thresholds). So, if your website has up to 100 pages, we now offer full website audits for just $500.
What Goes into the SEO Audit Pricing?
- Client’s company size
- SEO tools used by the SEO audit company
- SEO consultant’s salary
- Depth of SEO audit
- Company overhead (taxes, offices etc.)
Client’s Company Size
It’s pretty common in the SEO industry for professionals to gauge the client’s “size” and bill accordingly. You can call me socialist or plain stupid, but our SEO audit prices never take this into account.
We’ve worked with multi-million dollar companies and also very small clients, who made an effort to afford our SEO audit services, and both types of clients paid THE SAME PRICE.
If you want to work with an SEO audit agency that doesn’t bill you more just because you seem to make a truckload of money, SEO Audit Pros is the one to go to.
We have clear and honest pricing. Not the cheapest in the industry (no need to low-ball prices, as we are booked solid) not the most expensive one. Worth each cent, if we take our past clients’ word (READ TESTIMONIALS).
The SEO Tools Used by the SEO Audit Company
No SEO audit can be done completely manually, it’s impossible to scan a website properly on your own and write down all the information.
And it’s not even logical, when premium SEO tools can do the grunt work for you, fully scan a website and provide extremely detailed insights on how EACH page performs.
What’s the difference between premium SEO tools and free ones?
Well, let’s say that, if you want to become a doctor or a lawyer, just reading Wikipedia won’t help you.
Just as a super-niched specialist needs to pay hefty money on books, courses and very exclusive information, SEO consultants pay for premium tools.
Together with the information we get by using Google Analytics or Google Search Console, these expensive SEO tools provide us with a lot of vital information that makes up the basis of a proper SEO audit.
If a $500 SEO audit service seems too much, let’s just consider that, by paying for premium subscriptions to the tools we routinely use would cost you even more.
And, then, we get to the next pricing step: the SEO consultant’s expertise.
Granting you access to all our tools means nothing, unless you know what to look for.
What does CTR mean and what is a decent threshold for a 1-3 position result? What do impressions mean and how to we get “quick wins” based on these numbers?
What is a proper CTA hierarchy and why do we care about it?
This is why we always finish an SEO audit with a 1 hour video conference, usually via Zoom, which allows the client to get a clear presentation of their website’s performance and also ask any questions. Another advantage: clients are allowed (actually encouraged) to record the entire meeting and they can go over it at their own pace.
Does the meeting end abruptly after 60 minutes?
No, we’ve had audit presentation meetings that went up 2 or almost 3 hours with absolutely no additional charge to the client. Just make room in your schedule and that’s it.
During these video meetings, I usually go into detail about what the next steps are for their website to rank better, what to improve in order to get more leads and client calls (I mean that’s why we do have websites, right?) and share from my 20 year online experience what I studied / tested / proved to work.
What makes working with us special is that I don’t just give some technical SEO insights, I also share advice on usability, conversion rate optimization, even business advice.
I’ve been in the online business for 2 decades already and my expertise, as a business owner as well, matters a lot, especially if I deal with clients who are just starting out and have no idea how to effectively promote their startup.
SEO Consultant’s Salary
A very quick way to gauge a service pricing is to think about the number of hours a specialist needs to deliver your product/service and the hourly rate said specialist should earn.
This is a very basic pricing system that most experienced professionals don’t take into account anymore, as an expert needs less time to deliver the work (compared to someone who still struggles to understand the work needed) and, in a business, you don’t only pay for the time.
There are taxes, office costs, insurance, tools, computers etc.
Anyway, for the sake of this equation, let’s say you need someone to do an SEO related job for you.
In this case we have the following:
No. of hours X Hourly Rate = The Price
It takes said professional 10 hours of work and you are not paying for anything else, but the time they are supposed to work. (Again, not a sustainable pricing option, as a business has a lot more expenses than just the hourly rate).
If you are looking for a 100 dollar service, which takes an expert 10 hours, you’d expect that person to work for 10 bucks an hour.
Now, let’s make an effort and try to estimate how experienced this “specialist” is, that he’s being paid less than New York’s minimum legal hourly rate.
Would you like your company’s website audit to be performed by someone who’s paid less than anyone legally employed in some of the US states?
An SEO audit for instance is not something you do in an hour. It would be really amazing, but it’s impossible, as a proper audit is not done only listing some excel reports, you need someone experienced to READ this data and translate it into a language you can easily understand.
What sets our audits apart from others is that we don’t blabber and write useless explanations. I’m a firm believer that an experienced client doesn’t need me to explain what CTR is and a client who is not online marketing savvy won’t learn SEO from my audit alone.
My main concern is to present the data in a “fail“, “needs work“, “perfect” way, with clear data and then explain IN PERSON, during our video call, so that I’m not just throwing numbers the client’s way, but my audits provide clear “to do” lists and guidance.
This is why I don’t write 100 page audits, which NO ONE in their right mind will bother read. I’ve worked with small business owners who barely have time to properly feed themselves, let alone read another “The SEO Book“. I’ve also worked with big company owners, doctors, lawyers, successful people. I doubt they want to start learning SEO, when they are already killing it in their own industry.
So, you get data, benchmarks, tips and then a video presentation that makes it easier to understand what to do next.
All these insights come after 20 years of running websites, auditing them, working with clients, getting them leads and growing their businesses.
I cannot work for 10 bucks an hour and you shouldn’t expect an expert to work for pennies.
The Depth of the SEO Audit
Here is another way SEO audit services are different from a company to another: some stick to SEO only, others (mine included) go the extra mile and provide insights on more than just search engine optimization.
A website is more than just canonicals, alt tags and keywords.
I’ve audited huge websites, that looked amazingly well-built, SEO wise, and yet got almost NO calls/leads. I’ve worked with websites that got 30K visitors/day and could barely afford the dedicated server they used.
What I want to do, with my SEO audits, is to share as much advice and knowledge as possible, so that I improve the client’s bottom line.
Long are the days, when I’d work solely for the passion of doing web design work. I have a family to support and need to earn money.
I look at my clients’ websites as “money making” projects, as they need to get something out of their online work.
This is why I try to understand their sales funnel and then advise on how to convert more visitors into paying customers. This is why I talk about web design mistakes they make and how simple UX improvements can double or triple their sales.
Can they easily explain what makes them different from the competition? Is this info’ visible. Do all pages have a main CTA (Call to Action) so that you’re not just wasting server space?
All of these and way more are included in my site audits.
Having someone to personally review your website, manually go through a tried and tested checklist and then explaining this for more than an hour takes time and expertise.
But the value our clients get and their raving reviews show us that a super-detailed audit is the way to go.
Company Overhead
When you are running a huge SEO agency, with hundreds of consultants on the pay roll and huge offices, a lot of this huge overhead will show in your actual pricing.
And it’s normal.
I run a small company, was always very frugal, when it comes to where we work from and what perks we want to “afford”, so this also shows in our pricing.
Right now you are paying for expertise, you are paying for some business overhead (am not running a charity, it’s understandable), but, by keeping our operational costs down, we can also allow you to save some money and put it back into your marketing or other business needs.
So, How Much Does an SEO Audit Cost?
The correct answer: it depends. Now you understand what goes into the pricing. Up until the end of the year, our SEO audits are priced from $500. Grab the deal, while it’s hot!
