Does a keyword’s “SEO Opportunity” relate to pricing? Can you just get my site ranked in Google?

Today, someone posted this question (slightly paraphrased):

I am seriously thinking about signing up for SEO with your company. My web designer recommended you. However, I have some questions… Firstly, for my first keyword I entered, the SEO Opportunity states “poor” however the monthly search volume is 9544 on the keyword and for a “top 3″ ranking the cost is $110/month. However, for my second keyword the SEO Opp is “good” and the keyword has 1393 for the monthly search volume for a price of $79/mnth. I’m wondering why, if we are paying to be in the top three - and paying more for the first option - why the SEO opp is “poor”. Surely the higher the search volume, the better - why is the price is higher??

Second question: What exactly does “top three” mean?? We are looking at Google only. Does that mean for one month each and every time someone does a Google search and enters the key words we pick we will come up on the first page in one of the top three spots?? How do you have control of this - there are many SEO companies out there and what if 10 other companies are all telling their clients the same thing - that means there are only three spots for 10 companies. Please can you explain exactly what the ‘top three” means? Thank you.

Hi Denise -

The answer to your first question is that pricing is actually based upon the existing competition and the existing seo “strength” of your Website. Pricing is not directly related to the keyword’s SEO Opportunity. In other words, if there are a lot of Websites with strong seo strength and your site has a lower strength (often due to being a new site or having a low Google PageRank) than the pricing will be higher. This is because it takes us a lot more work, time and effort to get sites with a lower seo strength ranked high in the search engines.

As for your second set of questions: We can’t only rank your site for Google. We use an optimization practice that targets all of the major search engines. Sometimes you’ll rank in all three and sometimes you won’t. The good thing is, if you don’t rank in a particular search engine, you won’t pay anything. And the pricing for Yahoo and MSN is at a lower price since they tend to drive less traffic. In addition, we can’t guarantee that you’re site will rank for the Ranking Goal that you choose (although most of our customers do end up achieving their ranking goals). That’s another reason we only charge you if you rank, and the amount you pay is predicated upon how high we can get you ranked . . .

I hope this information helps, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions!

Kind Regards,

Shawn B.
RankPay Support