Guide

How much to spend on SEO in Ireland

SEO pricing is even murkier than website pricing, mostly because the work is invisible. Here is how to think about the spend without needing to understand the technical side.

You are buying time, again

SEO is not a product with a fixed cost. It is somebody working on your visibility every month. So the real question is how many hours you are buying and what those hours go into.

A cheap package usually means very few hours, spent on automated reports rather than on your actual pages.

What the money should go into

For a local trade, the useful work is fairly consistent month to month.

  • Keeping your Google Business Profile accurate and active
  • Building out service pages and area pages properly
  • Fixing technical problems that stop pages being indexed
  • Getting listed accurately on Irish directories
  • Reviewing what people actually searched for and adjusting

Warning signs

Anyone guaranteeing a position on Google is either misunderstanding how it works or hoping you do. Nobody controls the results.

Be wary too of monthly reports full of numbers that never mention enquiries. Impressions are interesting. Phone calls pay wages.

How long before it does anything

Local SEO tends to show movement sooner than national SEO because the competition is smaller. Even so, think in months rather than weeks.

The first signs are usually more map views and more calls from the profile, before the website rankings catch up.

Bundling it with the site

For most small trades it makes sense to have the site and the SEO work in the same hands, because half the work is on the site anyway.

That is how our plan is set up. The €59.99 a month covers the ongoing local SEO work along with hosting, maintenance and edits, so there is no separate SEO invoice.

Common questions

How much should a small Irish business spend on SEO?

It depends on how competitive your area and trade are. What matters more than the figure is whether the hours go into your pages, your profile and your listings rather than into reports.

Can anyone guarantee a number one ranking?

No. Nobody controls Google results, and any guarantee of a position should be treated as a warning sign.

How long does local SEO take to work?

Usually months rather than weeks, with map views and profile calls typically moving before website rankings do.

Where to go next

Want us to sort this for you?

We build the site for free and look after the hosting, the updates and the local SEO for €59.99 a month on a 12 month minimum. Have a chat with us and see if it suits.

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