What does the site optimization start with? In some ways it starts with the SEO company search, studying the portfolio of all interesting ones, and comparing prices for the offered services. It is a quite long and tedious process. This article may ease the work for everyone who is looking for information about pricing for site optimization a little bit. The question will be considered in two directions. The first one is the patterns of price building determining the cost of various SEO services. And second one is the payment itself or even the pricing.

 There are seven main patterns of price building at the SEO market.
Let’s consider them in details.

 Hourly Consultations
 The cost per hour is one of the simplest ways of services price building. The price rates are very different, for instance freelancers are ready to charge $40-50 per hour, company of the second rate charge a little bit more - $100-200, the most expensive consultations have leaders of the market - $300-500.

 Project-Consulting
 Many experts accept the payment pattern which is more spread among the site developers, they take a fix payment for the certain stage of project audit. The final cost is summed up from the total time and work done, i.e. efforts and number of participated staff.

 Contract Services
 A large amount of SEO experts offer separate kinds of services, for instance, registration in catalogs, commercial campaigns or building of link structure. Whereas the whole volume of the services offered by one company will have one single price. Though many services are adapted to individual specifications of the customer and the price will depend on factors described further correspondingly.

 Standard Profit Sharing
 A small number of SEO companies are working according to a principle “the percentage from the profit”. This model assumes some fixed payment for the work at the initial stage, and then SEO company receives a certain percentage from the profit of customer’s web site. This version is more suitable for the SEO companies which are self-confident and are ready to take some risk.

 Modified Profit Sharing
 This pattern of payment usually includes the statement according to which SEO company may change priorities of the set problems and approved expenses. Other changes may relate to the PPA models (payment for the action) or PPL (payment for the prior positions). The last version is the best way of risk decreasing. SEO companies as well as customers should be very attentive when choosing the pattern of payment of the modified profit distribution. In case of choosing this pattern it is necessary to realize that this is the real business partnership, the gravity of which one cannot ignore.

 Monthly Payment
 Many SEO companies use monthly payment pattern for the standard package of services with certain additional services. Some companies reorganize this pattern a little bit. As a result, there is a monthly payment for each service: development, marketing and servicing support of the project. This pattern serves as a good example for companies oriented on keeping long-term clients.

 Position Payment
 This is one of the most interesting patterns of price building which is widely used by the SEO companies. The point is that the customer pays one price for the positions on the second page of the search results, another for the 10, 9, 8 positions and so on. Additional bonuses are paid for the positions in the top 1-3 places. The payment for the positions has sense for the companies which are able to optimize sites for the highest positions by the high-frequency enquiries.

 Traffic Payment
 As it was said before about the modified profit distribution, PPC is taken as a basis of price building for the traffic. On the one hand, it is convenient to estimate SEO company work with its help, though on the other hand there is a question about the traffic quality, which is not taken into consideration in this case. Of course, traffic from the search systems is taken into account here but still…

 Let’s leave the description and discuss the prices. In SEO market there are many factors which may lead to the necessity of additional services, and therefore expenses grow which were not mentioned in the contract originally. One should be ready for this.
 Below are factors which may influence the cost of optimization itself and further project support:

• The size and the complexity of the site;
• The name brand of the company;
• The complication of the project, competition in the field;
• Reputation and relevance of the SEO company.

 There is a huge variety of pricing, freelancers offer the minimal pricing, then goes pricing offered by the SEO companies of middle size and of the leaders at the market. The usual   customer’s reaction after acquaintance with cost pool containing round figures is a shock and a strong feeling that SEO companies make profit out of customers’ expenses trying to pull out their money. Although large SEO companies in their turn do not take freelancers’ activity seriously because of the sums they are eager to work as SEO companies simply do not understand how one can optimize the website without a sufficient budget. And the customers of search engine optimization always have plenty of opportunities to choose from.