How Much Does SEO Cost Per Month in Pakistan?

Generally, the monthly cost of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) varies on the type of website and the efforts needed to optimize it. These efforts include regularly updating webpages, improving titles and descriptions of webpages, removing 404 pages, eliminating duplicate pages and content, optimizing images, optimizing page speed,  posting new content, building new links, and much more. Depending on the experience of your SEO expert and the overall time he/she will spend on your website, the cost of a small to medium business website could go around 10000 to 70000 PKRs. However, the Search Engine Optimization cost of an e-commerce website may be a little high as it needs more expertise and time to get rankings. So Per MonthSEO cost of an e-commerce website in Pakistan may vary between  25000 to 150000 depending upon its size. 

If you are looking to improve your website’s SEO ranking by yourself or want to hire an SEO expert and are unsure what to expect from him, this article is for you.

In order to improve the SEO ranking of your website following are the key areas that your SEO expert needs to update you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, depending upon your contract.

1. Keyword research
2.  On-Page SEO
3.  Off-page SEO
4.  Content writing
5.  Link building

Let’s discuss each in more detail to understand better what to expect from your SEO expert.

 Your website should contain all the essential keywords your potential buyers are searching for. Keyword research is a critical step in your business’s success. In the Keyword research phase, SEO experts analyze your website keywords and list all the keywords on your website. Then he performs a gap analysis where he looks at your competitor’s website and lists all the keywords that your website is missing. Now you have a list of all the necessary keywords you can target on your website. Good keyword research is essential for getting high SEO rankings. Performing keyword research and gap analysis usually takes two to 10 days. Your SEO expert should repeat this process after every 6 months. Now that keyword research is completed it’s time to dig deeper into your website to discover your website’s on site issues. SEO experts perform on-site audits, commonly known as on-Page SEO.

Do you know more than 200 SEO factors determine the position on any website on Google?  Page title, description, image optimization, backlinks, content quality, and page speed are some examples of On-page SEO.  Out of these 200 ranking factors, more than half are related to the On-Page optimization of a website. So only performing a good On-page SEO will get your website to a better position than these 80% of websites in Pakistan. Another aspect of On-page optimization is that it is (On-Page-SEO) not that hard to perform. Usually, it takes two to ten days to perform on-page optimization for a small website. However, huge websites with hundreds of pages could take more time. Relevant and optimized page titles, good meta descriptions, good headers (H1, H2), keyword optimization, good URL structure, image optimization, and good internal linking are some of the on-page factors. For a more comprehensive list of on-page factors read this article from Ahref. Another good thing about On-page SEO is measurability. There are many online tools that you can use to find and track on-page issues on your website. This tool includes Moz, Semrush, Ahref, and Screaming Frog. Semrush and Ahref offer a 1st-month free subscription, whereas Screaming Frog provides free on-page SEO for small websites with fewer than 500 URLs. If your website is developed in WordPress, you can use plugins like Yoast and Rank Math SEO plugins for on-page optimization. These tools and plugins allow you to monitor on-page issues on your website. Also, you can monitor which of these issues your SEO team has resolved and which are still pending.

Now let’s discuss some critical On-page SEO factors that you should be aware of before hiring an SEO expert or finalizing monthly SEO costs for your website.

·    Content Quality Improvement: After identifying the keywords, the SEO expert works on improving your website’s existing content by optimizing your website content.

·    Improve URL structure: URLs are links or pages on your website, e.g., www.yourwebsite.com/contact-us is a URL. Website ranking also depends on the structure of your webpage URLs. These URLs should be created to help Google better understand your website structure.

·    Improve Meta title and description:When we search for a product or service on Google. The result page Google displays contains top results that match our search. Here is a snippet of a search result. The text on the top blue section on the Google result page is called the title, and underneath the title is the description. Optimizing the title and description is necessary to get clicks.

·    Improve Heading tags of the website: Optimizing website webpages in a way that the most important heading is tagged as h1 and then the rest of the titles on the same page are marked as h2, h3, etc.; defining this kind of heading is vital for the good ranking of that page as it helps google understand which is most important part of the webpage.

·    Page Speed Optimization: No one like waiting. Your visitors will leave your website if it’s slow and takes time to load.  Google also keeps track of visitors’ behaviors and if too many of your customers are leaving your website due to slow speed. It will de-rank your website and will not display your website to your visitors

·    Image optimization: Each image on your website should be in a proper format. Popular images format includes WebP and gif formats. Also, each image on your website should have a meaningful name and alt-image tags.

·    Website internal linking: Good internal linking is another ranking factor, so it is the responsibility of an SEO expert to interlink pages on your website.

·    Visitor’s ease or User Experience (UX): Providing an excellent visiting experience to visitors is another critical SEO factor. An SEO expert is responsible for organizing websites so visitors can quickly find relevant information on your website.

·    Other important on-page factors include

o  404 Errors

o  Removing Duplicate pages

Cost and on-page SEO:– An SEO expert must check and update the webpage’s meta title and description. Also, he must have analyzed the page heading to see if these align with the overall keyword policy of the webpage., image optimization. Likewise, they work on page speed and other matrices.

Off-page SEO work is activities that an SEO expert performs on other websites, forums, and social media platform. If performed correctly, these activities help increase your website visibility. Off-page SEO includes

1. Backlinks
2. Guest Blogging
3. Influencer Outreach
4. Social Bookmarking
5. Forum Participation
6. Brand Mentions
7. Social Media Engagement
8. Online Directories and Citations
9. Online Reputation Management

Regularly updating your existing content and posting new content on the website is another essential aspect that helps get a top SEO ranking. While discussing monthly SEO costs with your SEO expert or SEO agency, ask them to provide you with the content generation strategy. Ask your SEO expert how much new content he/she will publish for your website. Also, determine the content he/she will produce also inquire about the type of content he will produce. Would the content be in the form of a Blog, Guest posting, infographics, or images? Also, ensure all the blog posts and other material your are posting on the website is of top quality and genuine. Typically, SEO companies or experts deliberately ignore content strategy and its publishing frequency when providing monthly packages.

Link building is a process of getting links from other authoritative websites. Website owners acquire these links through guest posts and, forum submissions, directory listing, and other techniques. Getting these links on relevant websites requires proper planning and careful implementation. A good backlink in Pakistan could cost around 100 to 10000 Pakistani rupees. So when negotiating a monthly SEO package, check how many and of which quality backlinks will your SEO expert will provide.

Note that the above-mentioned backlink acquisition cost is the operation cost, which could involve writing a good guest blog post or infographics or the communication time needed to obtain a backlink. Also, getting paid links is against Google policy and can negatively damage your website ranking.

Other ways of getting backlinks include
• Local Listing or Local SEO:
• Guest Posting:
• Social Bookmarking:
• Content promotion:

Includes posting content related to your brand on Online Forums and Communities

Online marketing and SEO are relatively new concepts in Pakistan, and comparatively fewer businesses hire professional SEO experts. Also, finding a qualified SEO expert takes a lot of work. Affective SEO is hard work and requires a lot of time. The Monthly SEO cost could vary between PKR 10000 to PKR 70000 depending upon the knowledge, expertise, and overall time an SEO expert will spend on your website. The monthly SEO cost of an e-commerce website in Pakistan could vary between 25000 to 150000 PKRs.