As I was saying earlier this week, people often get confused and misinterpret costing around SEO services and PPC services. Most industry folks will tell you that SEO is more expensive up front, but cheaper over time, because with PPC you have to continue to pay for your traffic.

This is both true and not true. Find out why so you can be a savvy services shopper. (Hmm. That sounds like a great category name, no?)

How PPC Cost Is Constructed

If you’re looking for hard dollar amounts, I’m sorry to say, you won’t see those. Firms are so vastly different in their pricing strategies and package prices, there’s no way to say. But, here’s what I can tell you: what goes into PPC, and how MOST firms will break out charges.

PPC Cost always includes what you pay per click. This can be higher or lower, depending on things like your vertical, and how good your campaign is running – in Google, that’s your Quality Score, and it dramatically affects your bid costs. (You can read more about why you should seriously give a big crap-ola about quality scores here.)

Beyond your per-click cost, you’ll be paying a vendor to manage it. Most vendors charge you in one of two ways: a) a flat fee of what you spend total in a month on your clicks or b) a per keyword charge. You’ll likely have a setup fee, and then additional charges for campaign expansions, etc.

The other charges you may incur are incidental, depending on  whether you have an in-house designer or not. The cornerstone of most successful PPC campaigns are the landing pages, and someone’s gotta design ‘em.

How SEO Cost Is Constructed

I won’t lie, SEO can get expensive. Like I said, the search industry belief is that SEO is way less expensive over time, and I tend to agree. The hard part is swallowing the price tag, because it’s a LOT of manual work.

Usually the initial SEO of your site is a flat cost. Most proposals I see are custom-made because every site is so different, and different verticals means a whole set of challenges that are unique to each client. Why’s the price tag so big? Here’s what is usually includes:

- Keyword research and implementation. This means finding keywords that are viable and you stand a chance to rank for, and then going through your site extensively to implement them. This is everything from writing content, to re-naming your pages.

- Site architecture. This means making sure the coding aspects of your site support SEO efforts….so, no menus in images or javascript, proper 301 redirects in place, blah blah blah.

- Off page optimization. This means directory submissions and link building, and frequently there are other costs associated with that because there are a lot less freebies than there used to be.

All in all, you’re easily looking at a price tag of a few grand for a really good initial SEO foundation for your site.

The thing about SEO is that you don’t achieve a ranking and keep it forever. So you’ll likely wind up having ongoing maintenance charges, and that can vary widely. Perhaps your SEO firm has you implement a blog to keep keyword-rich content flowing. Are you going to maintain that, or pay them to? You’ll need ongoing link building and participation on blogs and in forums to get your site out there. Are you going to maintain that, or pay them to?

The best online marketing is going to have a combination of both. Normally a site will start out with SEO to get that going, and use PPC in the interim to drive traffic. Once they start ranking orgnically, they’ll dial back on the PPC budget.

I know, getting into spend a cool few grand starts feeling like serious business, and it is. It’s a lot of work, and it takes patience because good campaigns and good rankings take time. Don’t give up. Also, vet your people thoroughly, and be sure to come back for my advice on finding a good SEO and PPC vendor. I won’t let ‘em screw ya.