5 Reasons Why SEO Is So Expensive
The biggest complaint and objection I hear when speaking to lawyers who are considering SEO services is that “SEO is so expensive.” But, to some degree, I understand. When I am given a price tag on something that is significantly higher than expected, I have the same gut reaction.
Usually I have that reaction because I don’t understand part of the value or process happening that causes something to be that expensive. This is the case for a lot of our potential clients — they don’t know what goes into a full SEO program or strategy or what is required from SEOs in the first place. So it isn’t a surprise that they would get a bit of sticker shock at a $2,500 – $5,000 per month price tag.
I wanted to help solve some of that lack of understanding and get people a little more comfortable with what is a very reasonable price tag for SEO services and help them better understand what goes into SEO that drives the price up.
SEO Costs Explained
SEO costs a lot because of the time and expertise required to execute properly, producing compelling content regularly, technical problem solving, and knowing what to prioritize and when. There are very few SEO professionals who have these skills that are willing to sell them cheap, just like there are very few highly experienced lawyers charging less than $300/hr.
Reason 1: Expertise and Specialization
As legal experts, you’re no strangers to the fact that it’s the small details that carry the most weight. This rings especially true in the realm of SEO for legal firms. When crafting content that could potentially guide someone’s legal decisions, every single detail must be meticulously accurate and thoroughly vetted.
You’re not just looking for top-notch digital marketers; you need professionals who can prove dual expertise in both the intricacies of digital marketing and the complexities of the legal world.
Unfortunately, finding talent with those qualifications doesn’t come cheap.
SEO is also a multifaceted undertaking, involving everything from keyword strategy and content creation to technical know-how and analytics. By investing in an SEO team, you’re gaining access to a range of subject matter experts in their respective areas.
We hear a lot that your mother’s sister’s father’s grandson can do your SEO for super cheap, but if you look at this cousin’s technical ability I’d be willing to bet it isn’t worth the few hundred bucks you’d be throwing at him every couple of weeks. We even wrote an article about the perils of hiring family members for websites and SEO.
Instead, if you are serious about digital marketing, invest more and get an actual expert who will prove an actual ROI, unlike the wiz kid in your extended or twice removed family who writes some social media captions and uses Squarespace once in a while.
Reason 2: Research, Research, Research
In the world of marketing, particularly for legal firms, strategy isn’t just a piece of the puzzle; it’s the cornerstone. And the foundation of any strategy worth its weight is thorough, meticulous, and time consuming research.
It’s not just about scratching the surface and coming up with a few blog topics; it’s about digging deep into the nitty-gritty details about everything regarding your business that will set your firm apart.
First, you’ve got to get a lay of the land. This means diving into the deep end of local competition analysis. Who’s out there? What are they doing right? More importantly, what aren’t they doing at all?
If this sounds a bit like virtually stalking your competition, you’d be right. You need to creep all over their websites, social media profiles, LinkedIn discussions, advertisements — everything — if you are going to figure out what you are up against and have a fighting chance.
Then, there’s the quest for the perfect keywords, keyphrases, and topics. It’s not about picking words from a list you found online; it’s about understanding what your potential clients are actually typing into that search bar. Gathering this level of information takes time.
After that, you still have things like competitor research, content topic creation and approval, and questions about your specific legal niche that need to be developed, all requiring their own unique research. So, when we consider the raw number of hours that go into an SEO strategy, it should come as no surprise that research is a major part of the costs when considering SEO.
Reason 3: Content Production
Our largest single expense as an SEO agency is JD writers – We’re okay with that, and you should be too.
After all the planning, organizing, and research, you have to put in the time to actually create the content you are going to be putting out to your audiences… and that is actually the most time consuming part. 30% of social media creators spend at least 10 hours per week creating content. 5% spend more than 40 hours.
And this is only for social media content. That doesn’t include the time you’ll need to spend writing & editing blogs, practice pages, and updating older content. Unfortunately for your calendar, all of these are necessary components of a strong SEO and digital marketing program and requires significant investment.
Writing legal articles, practice pages, and the subsequent edits and changes can take several hours, and the writers employed to write for a law firm demand a premium for this work.
If we take it back again to the time equals money fact, you should expect the production aspect of your SEO costs to be pretty significant since this is where the most labor hours will take place — even when compared to the research phase. Since we only use writers who are attorneys, and writers with extensive experience writing for law firms this experience is worth a premium.
You can shortcut this by using AI without human oversight or creating subpar content the old fashioned way, but Google and its algorithms are smart, and often ChatGPT and AI content requires nearly as much editing as it would cost to hire someone to do it right the first place to get qualified traffic and leads.
And if you aren’t getting any meaningful traffic (and the resulting conversions) why bother with SEO at all?
Reason 4: Analytics and Reporting
I know I’ve said that most of the reasons behind the cost of SEO comes down to it simply taking a ton of time… and I am going to say it again because while analytics and report building are notoriously time consuming tasks, they are also a key factor in your ability to optimize your SEO program and understand what it happening behind the scenes.
This means getting weekly, monthly, or yearly reports detailing exactly what is happening to everything you put out to improve your SEO and digital positioning.
This process is usually always built into an agency structure because of how imperative (and expected) it is. You need to know how well the blogs you are writing are getting and holding attention by looking at metrics like Time on Page and organic users. You need to know how many people open your emails and then proceed to click links, how many users interacted with your social posts, how many people clicked your ad, or responded to your text message campaigns.
You simply need to know what is going on with all of your SEO and marketing efforts. Why? Because your SEO team should be making quick and nimble pivots based on the information that is provided by these reports and analytics. While this might seem like another huge time dump, ultimately, proper reporting saves you time in the long run by cutting out content and projects that don’t work toward your goals.
In the end, it will save you much more time, money, and sanity than it costs.
Reason 5: Ongoing Optimization
Once you have it figured out, your content process is ironed, your analytics reports and conversions are flowing in — its still not over. Because it is likely that within a few months of you finding your footing, Google will announce sweeping changes to some aspect of its business that might cause changes in your process
And that’s part of the job of an SEO: to know what those changes are and how best to maneuver your digital business and assets to best fit what Google prefers now. It sounds a little like an abusive relationship, and it is — SEO is expensive in part because the people who manage them are forced to deal with the unyielding battering of search engine algorithms and preferences.
Not to mention constantly updating stale content, correcting citations, repairing broken links, removing unhelpful content, improving on-page strategies, etc.
If this is the kind of SEO help you want (and you should if you want to be successful) you are going to have to understand that the simple labor of it is also going to run higher than you likely anticipated.
Contact Everest Legal Marketing
If you would like to schedule a call to discuss your SEO strategy, reach out to us at (909) 697-7484, or submit a contact form and we’ll get back in touch with you at a better time. We are local to Southern California and are happy to meet virtually or in-person.
President & Founder – Everest Legal Marketing, LLC
Doug Bradley is the Founder and CEO of Everest Legal Marketing. Doug has over a decade of experience specifically in legal marketing, and foremost with expertise in Search Engine Optimization for law firms. Doug has been quoted on numerous websites, co-hosted many MCLE sessions, and has advised law firms of all sizes on the topic of effective marketing and ethical SEO strategies.
