The cost of an SEO company in Singapore charges is like a puzzle box. You never know how much they will charge you. You can get a professional SEO company quoting you a $400/month, while there’s asking for $4,000/month.
In reality, most of the search engine optimization companies in Singapore search for overseas suppliers and resell SEO services to you. The vast price difference is mostly down to the SEO company’s operational costs and the cost of their backlink building effort.
So why not go direct and save the middleman fee?
Here’s a list of where a Singapore SEO company would find suppliers. Packages start from just US$30/month:
Go ahead and try a few vendors.
After 5-10 tries, you’d realize most of these deliver poor results. And they’re the exact same vendors you pay $1,000 monthly for.
So why did you overpay 10 times for search engine optimization? That’s because it’s sold to you by an SEO company in Singapore with a nice office and an impressive list of clients. Let’s face it. We trust local companies a lot more.
To be able to judge whether your SEO service provider is worth it, you need to know 2 things:
The bulk of SEO power comes from off-page links (read my other article for proof). The money you pay for SEO services should be spent on link building instead of paying salaries, commissions and office rents.
This sounds difficult as no SEO company in Singapore will ever tell you their profit margin. However, there is a way to estimate the value of your links.
An easy way to track this is to monitor your backlinks on the free Google Webmaster tools. If you’re paying $2,000/mth for SEO, you should expect quality backlinks coming in. You want to see a good mix of links from interesting articles on websites related to your industry. If all you see are blog comments, forum posts, articles directories and business listings, the search engine optimization is not worth much.
Good links can be worth up to $thousands. Bad links can be worth less than 1cent or NEGATIVE.
For those that don’t believe me and still want to try low-quality backlinks, feel free to check out this giant army of link builders.
Aim to work with an SEO company in Singapore that’s made up of geeks instead of agencies with gorgeous offices in the CBD employing 100s of salespeople.
The more extra costs a company has, the bigger the profit margin they need to operate. This means your money goes less towards actual search engine optimization work.
After you’ve made the smart decision of working with a small SEO company filled with geeks, your risk changes from: “How do I know they’re using my money for SEO work rather than pocketing a huge profit?”…. to….“How do I know that they are really search engine optimization experts?”
One way is to track your rankings closely. It doesn’t get any more accurate than this.
*my tracking sheet of a recent client’s website rankings from the super-competitive medical industry
Getting from rank 1000 to 100 is much faster than getting from rank 10 to rank 1. So the easiest way to judge is earlier on when your keywords are around rank 80-100. See how long it takes for you to get to 20-30.
As always, the budget plays a part here. If you’re paying only $800 a month for SEO services, don’t expect to move as fast as if you’re paying $4,000 a month (assuming the SEO agency earns a similar profit margin in both cases)
This is because a good SEO services company will use the extra money you pay to buy, incentivize and create powerful backlinks. For example, you can get a temporary power link by simply buying an advertorial on TodayOnline or Straits Times for around $10,000. A good SEO company in Singapore will know the most cost-effective way to spend your SEO budget.
At the end of the day, this is still a realistic world. If both competitors have an equal skill level, then the one willing to pay more will win. Natural link building is tedious and expensive! But if there’s an unequal skill level, the better SEO company will always deliver better results even with a lower budget.
Are you in a super competitive industry such as MEDICAL, LAW, INTERIOR DESIGN, EDUCATION/CHILDCARE? Give me $4,000 and I can get you to the top 10 in a flash? With $1,500 monthly, you’d beat most of your competitors to the top 10 in 12-18 months. With a $400 budget, experts will honestly tell you it’s highly improbable or will take years.
So yes, cost matters. But if you follow the above guidelines, you can find a good SEO service that spends your budget more cost-effectively, takes a lower profit margin and gain an advantage on your competitors.
