SEO Website Development
The cost of professional website development for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes has several components. For effective SEO a website should be built strictly for SEO purposes. That is, SEO should be built-in, not added-on. There are many design templates (pre-made designs) from which to choose. I use the StudioPress themes for WordPress because they’re intentionally designed for SEO. WordPress is the best tool for building websites for SEO and StudioPress themes are the best WordPress themes I’ve found for SEO purposes.
Static Website or Blog Style
There really is no such thing as a static website anymore. Why is that? Because Google very quickly forgets about a website that is always the same and never changes. By adding a blog or articles page you get the opportunity to regularly grow your website. The only constant you can count on, other than God, is change. So grow your knowledge, engagement and build your brand.
There are sites that may, like fashion, change constantly anyway and will not need to rely on a blog. But wouldn’t a blog still be a good way of engaging your audience? A great example of the importance of engaging your audience is social media and the 258 million active Facebook members in U.S. alone, half of which sign in everyday. Given the opportunity to engage, people often do.
So, engage your audience and you will succeed.
Organizing Your Content
Then also, you’ll need your content pages, which are the topics that organize your website into a clear presentation. Altogether, they represent who you are, the work you do and your particular approach, which is your brand.
Most websites need to be structured into categories, and the bigger the website the more it’s necessary. You’ll see on this sample site that there are at most 3 levels of structure. Clear site structure makes the organization of your material clear to your website visitors and shows the search engine how various pages are connected.
Price For Website Development Includes Design
Here is a website as an example for pricing of website development. For me to develop a website for you of about the same size and complexity will cost $2500. That price includes the initial SEO work that is the foundation of a successful website.
The home page may be more elaborate and the other pages more topical, but everything is attractive. Development starts with a StudioPress theme design and then is brought to life by text, images, and layout decisions completing the design.
We’ll create your content from the information/documents you give me and by me editing it for SEO and presentation quality before publishing. Every page or post needs graphics. What graphics will help represent your brand? Photos and graphics make the page more interesting, which keeps visitors on your site longer. Give me your ideas or what pictures you have then we’ll work together to craft an inspiring presentation.
Price For SEO Development
Putting up strictly what you give me is one thing but my editing of that content into it’s presentation form is where the SEO takes place. First the article or page is divided into paragraphs and subheadings, as dictated by SEO best practices, along with considering all aspects of great content.
Also included in SEO is keyword research and creation of metadata for each page. Keywords are a key concept. Keyword research is essential because it determines a page’s classification topic/topics in search engine terms. Someone doing a Google search enters a phrase that returns results from Google’s indexes. Knowing what keyword phrases or phrases you want your article or page to be return for allows us to build a page so that Google will index it for our chosen keyword phrase or phrases.
Metadata includes a short description of a page that will appear in search engine result pages, called a snippet. This description should entice your reader to click on your link, very important! That’s the whole point, right?
There is also structured data which has many components. So combining website design, construction and initial-setup SEO tasks for a 10 page website will cost $2,500. This is the initial build, but you won’t stop there, you’ll continue to grow your site with regular postings and/or articles.
Contract Price
The contract price for this development and SEO work together is divided into 2 payments. A deposit to initiate the contract and a final balance once everything is complete before it’s moved from my development arena into your chosen domain name and hosting plan.
Your Own Hosting Account
You’ll need a hosting account. There are website design companies out there that will host your website in their own leased area, making it available for all to see. They like to run your website themselves, giving themselves complete control over your website that you paid for. That’s a bad idea for you, because they’ll never give it back to you should you decide to leave them. They say they’ll give it to you to get you to sign up, but in practice they’ll never let you have it.
I recommend you get your own hosting account, and I recommend Siteground for this. If you have your own hosting account your website is in your control. The annual fee for a Managed WordPress hosting account is less than $200.
When you sign up for a WordPress hosting plan please make sure you get your own unique IP address. Otherwise you’ll be sharing an IP address with other websites and if one of them is flagged you’ll be penalized. Regardless of the reason, everyone on the same IP address could also be harmed in the search engine rankings.
Own Your Own Domain Name
Your website name is another item that some website development companies want to purchase for you. Usually they don’t even tell you that this item is separate from hosting. Again, if they own it, this time your domain name, they have complete AND legal control over this valuable resource.
Don’t let any company own your website name, own it yourself. Many smart people have fallen into this trap, so don’t be one of them. This is a separate distinct fee and doesn’t have to be purchased from your hosting company, but it can be. They’ll in turn lease the name you choose from ICANN which will show you as the registered owner.
Price for Maintenance
The maintenance service I provide consists of editing and posting a, 300 to 500 word, portfolio post/article every 1 – 3 months. Also you get portable website backup files and maintenance of your 2 Google accounts, Search Console and Maps. You write the article and I’ll edit and post it to your website and your Google Maps account. I’ll also send you an excerpt for each post that you will then post to your Facebook business page.
If you don’t already have a Facebook business page I can create one for you.
Both your Google My Business account (Maps) and Facebook business page should contain a link to the new post on your website. I’ll give you the link for you to post with the Facebook blurb. This allows the search engine to register your latest activity. More posts than this could mean lower quality articles, and quality is paramount.
Just like the quality of your initial site needs to be high, so also does every subsequent post. Go beyond merely good content to great content and achieve prominence.
Both your Google My Business account and your website’s Google Search Console require monthly review to deal with any issues that can and do occur. The information gathered from these dashboard reviews may prompt site changes to better your search engine rankings.
Finally, another maintenance item is monthly whole-site backups. I actually lost a website of my own that was hacked, so backups are necessary like the air you breath.
SEO Cycle Services Pricing
My standard maintenance plan prices are for local website search engine results. All these maintenance plans are provide either monthly, bi-monthly or once a quarter.
Choosing one of these plans will give you an effective local SEO solution. National-use SEO utilize the strategies listed and a few more; prices will be given upon request.
Please refer to my Services Pricing Guide PDF below. You can open it or download it. If the download doesn’t open automatically on your device you’ll have to go look for it. For an Android device go to Apps, manufacturer files (e.g. Samsung), then My Files to view the downloaded file.
Get in touch today and let’s get the ball rolling or continue reading at my articles pages.