We all know Shopify SEO is an “investment”... yada… yada…
But how much does it actually cost? How much do you need to invest?
In this guide, you’ll learn about the different parts of Shopify SEO, and how much to expect to pay for each of these.
The main difference though is:
Do you want results or boxes checked?
SEO as a service description is about as detailed as health supplements.
It doesn’t clearly state what you’re buying, the quantity, the hours, the prioritization, the quality or really any factors of what the service actually is.
If you hire a box-checking agency for $1,000 per month, here’s what happens:
Versus a results-focused agency (yes, at a higher “cost”):
The difference is box checking gives you high “SEO scores”, but 12 months later all you’ve got is $12,000 less in your bank account and hundreds of thousands of dollars in missed potential.
That’s because great SEO needs to be focused on outcomes and objectives (aka revenue). For Shopify especially, it needs to be heavily prioritised across many SKUs and collections.
I’d recommend looking at this on a per-page and per solution basis with an ROI potential for each, so you’re not aimlessly paying for SEO “fixes”.
That begins with scalable solutions:
Shopify page redesigns and restructuring cost
The structure and design of your Shopify store pages can have as much as a 30% impact on your SEO revenue potential, that’s not even accounting for conversion improvements.
More importantly, these improvements can be done once and the effect multiplies across all your pages. This is priority number one.
These changes include adding internal linking structures, mega menus, support for additional content without negatively impacting conversions, CRO focused design improvements, etc.
This will be done on a collection page, product page, and homepage level. Though, it may also be applied to blog design if you have a lot of traffic there.
Here are the common ranges for page redesign in 2024:
This is likely many times more expensive than the cost of a pre-made theme, but the impact when multiplied against further SEO efforts, should far exceed the cost.
Without this, you’ll never truly be able to maximise your TAM (total addressable market) with SEO. Therefore, I’d say this is absolutely vital in the process.
Shopify Technical SEO cost
The other impactful change with a multiplier effect is resolving technical SEO issues caused by Shopify.
These include canonicalised internal links, automated page noindexing, breadcrumb structuring, hreflang support, and reducing wasted crawl budget.
The scope of work here depends on the number of products and collections, but here’s some common ranges for this:
Collection page SEO cost
For each collection on your store, an SEO team will need to research keywords, improve SEO title/H1/meta description, write quality content, edit content, analyse competitors, and create internal links.
Therefore, the optimal approach to understanding costs is on a per-page basis.
The level of detail to which this is completed, and the level of quality of the content, both directly impact the costs associated with this.
A strong SEO specialist to analyse and strategize for the page, as well as a great copywriter can add up.
Here are the common ranges for optimising a single collection:
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Product page SEO cost
Similar to collection page SEO, product pages need to be analysed and improved on a per-product basis, therefore costs should be reviewed similarly.
The important thing to understand is that not all products require the same level of SEO work, nor do all products need to be improved at all.
The scope of work here includes keyword research, title/H1/meta description optimisation, and SEO driven copywriting.
For copywriting on a product page level especially, this may overlap with other departments and may not directly be managed by an SEO team.
Depending on the scope needed based on the SEO traffic value potential, here are the common ranges for improving a single product page:
Shopify Blog Post cost
As with other page-level work, this should be analysed on a per blog post basis to better understand the associated costs.
The scope of this work includes researching content ideas, outlining blog posts based on topical research, writing the blog post, copy editing, custom image design (optional), and internal linking from past content to ensure this ranks well in search engines.
Again, the cost of this is heavily influenced by the quality of the work completed.
Custom images require designers and/or photographers, but for the right pieces of content this is absolutely worth it.
Likewise content can be written by cheap offshore writers, though unlikely to perform (at all), or niche experts, but that’s no longer cheap.
With that in mind, here’s some common ranges for a single blog post in 2024:
Link building cost
The final element you’ll need as part of your Shopify SEO strategy is link building.
That means reaching out to other websites to acquire links pointing to your store, collections, products, or blog content. This is a key part of being able to rank these pages in Google Search.
For better understanding this as a cost, I’d recommend looking at this on a per backlink basis.
To acquire a single backlink there’s the process of building a list of outreach targets, crafting an outreach email and offer, emailing and following up with all of the targets, then negotiating the link placement details.
This also may include content writing, in the case of guest posts.
Here’s what you’re looking at on an individual backlink cost basis:
For smaller eCommerce stores doing a few million dollars per year revenue or less, you’ll be in the range of $1,250-$5,000 per month to build 5-10 backlinks per month.
Full Shopify SEO Campaign
Bringing all of this together into a cohesive campaign with reporting, ongoing analysis and strategy adjustments, and project management adds up further.
A great Shopify SEO campaign for an SMB (small and midsize business) should be in the $5,000 to $10,000 per month range.
For enterprise level Shopify SEO, where you’re competing against major household brands, this can be as much as $20,000 to $30,000 or more per month.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll pay an SEO agency or consultant this amount, as there’s likely an overlap with your internal resources and other experts such as copywriters, editors, and designers.
But to recap, the common costs for an overall Shopify SEO campaign are:
This may seem expensive, but if your SEO TAM exceeds a million dollars a year, is it expensive to invest 10-20% of that to get there? I’d argue cheap SEO is a lot more expensive.
The LOGEIX Approach
It’s important to understand that not all agencies work on a fully inclusive retainer model.
At Logeix, we believe that collaboration with your team results in the best SEO campaigns. That means leveraging your internal resources to support development, content writing, and product knowledge where applicable.
This allows us to have a highly specialised offering:
- Store Strategy Plan - Shopify page redesigns, technical SEO, and keyword research for expanding collections
- Page Plans - Collection and product page plans with implementation and SEO content
- Link Building - Backlinks for growing site authority
All without any retainers, fluff deliverables, or excessive reporting that you’ll never read.
The end result is lower costing, more efficient, and more effective campaigns without contracts or retainers.
If you’re interested, please reach out to discuss pricing.
Why is investing this much in SEO worth it?
For some Shopify stores, it’s not.
The key is to understand your ROI potential, which we like to calculate by looking at the traffic value of your largest achievable competitors.
If your competitors have a traffic value (estimated cost of paying for this traffic) of $3,500,000 per year and you’re currently only $200,000 a year, that’s a huge TAM and absolutely worth it.
Then if we look at a specific collection and see it has a value of $20,000/mo, it’s easy to justify investing $600 to make an amazing well optimised page.
For others, it may not be. This is what ROI focused SEO is all about.
If you’d like to know the SEO potential of your store, request a free traffic value potential analysis here.
