The Cost of SEO in Dubai: A Familiar Question and Finally an Answer to How Much you Should be Paying [Updated for 2022]

There's a lot of stigma around Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and this undoubtedly affects whether companies engage in this activity or not. From a business perspective, companies are unlikely to invest in something that they don't fully understand or can control. And this makes complete sense.

So why is it that SEO agencies all over the world, whether on purpose or not, created the perception that SEO involves magical dark art and mysterious powers and that websites will rank at the top of Google if this is applied on a website? It makes no sense. It makes even less sense when you consider that every aspect of SEO is both controllable and predictable.

The goal of this article is to explain more about SEO and how the cost of SEO services is calculated so that you can make an informed decision about your choice of SEO Agency for your company.

How Much is SEO in Dubai? What Should My Business be Paying?

The best way to understand how much you should be paying is to first understand the services that you are obtaining. The list below is a summary of the major service areas related to SEO:

On-Page Technical Optimisation:
- Your website needs to be fully readable and understood by Google. This is one of the most important parts of SEO for your website and without ensuring that your website is free from any issues that could (a) get your website penalised or (b) hold back any future SEO activity, your website will never achieve its true potential both from a traffic perspective nor organic rank perspective on search engines such as Google or Bing.
- This area of SEO tests technical areas of your website such as Headers, Page Titles, Content, Images and Videos, Website Speed, Meta Descriptions and more. The process is repeated for all key pages of your website. Remember, a user can land on ANY page of your website, not just your Home Page, so it's important to make sure all pages on your website are completely optimised from a structural perspective.
Content:
- You've heard of the term "Content is King" and from a SEO perspective, this is 100% accurate. The content on your website needs to be of high quality and optimised for search. Search engines such as Google are getting more and more intelligent and can learn to interpret words and their meanings as well as group similar words together. That said, if your typical customer will search for your business using a certain term, then you should make sure that your website's content contains this.

- Keywords and Key-phrases in website content are important however, quality content should be where you focus your content marketing efforts. Google wants to provide its users with content that is helpful, relevant, and meaningful when it comes to their searches. They want to promote content that solves problems and answers questions so as to make a user's search as streamlined and effective as possible. By delivering high quality and thought-leadership articles, not only will you increase your website ranking, you will keep users on your website for longer periods of time. By providing this kind of value to your audience, you will get repeat visits to your site, build trust, and gain loyal customers.
New Content
- This is very important. Remember that adding new content to your website on a regular basis is just as important (if not even more important) than making sure your existing content is optimised for search.
- Google will rank websites based on how regularly they add new content to their website, especially if the content that is created is of high quality and optimised from an on-page perspective.
- The type of content that you should be adding to your site should ideally, be a combination of text-based articles (like blog articles), images and videos.
- Your SEO Agency should be involved within this process whether it be from a content creation perspective, a content ideation perspective or just from a research point of view to make sure the content that is being created is exactly what your business needs.
- If your SEO agency will be creating content on behalf of your business, it's important that you check the quality of their writing and ideally meet the journalists and copywriters who will create the content.
Link Building
- Not so long ago, the process of link building was SEO. This is no longer the case, so beware of SEO agencies that tell you otherwise. Today, search engines such as Google will understand if unnatural links are created for your website and will have no hesitation in penalising or blacklisting your website until these links are removed.
- It is still important that people see your content, so a good, modern and acceptable Link Building strategy is to use social media platforms to reach influencers, and to get people to read, share and distribute your content on their social media platforms.

So, How is the Price of SEO in Dubai Determined?

Like many things in Dubai, SEO prices have a wide range based on the service provider you choose to work with. But remember, you generally get what you pay for and in SEO this can be the most important sentence to bear in mind when choosing a new SEO partner for your business.

I've seen SEO offered for as little as AED 1,000 per month and if your business is offered these services for that price, you should really ask yourself what you are getting for that. There's a good chance that the areas above are probably going to be ignored and that the agency will be outsourcing your work to a country that's unlikely to have heard of your business or worked in your industry.

The truth is, that SEO should be priced individually for each client based on their personal circumstances or business factors. These business factors can range from industry type, competition, the volume of searches and objectives. While this approach is difficult to implement for most agencies, at the very least, you should make sure that the items above are all taken into consideration. Then reverse engineer how much you are investing for all of these services. For example, if the SEO agency is going to create 5 articles per month for you, there should be a cost attached to this that helps make up the total service cost.

But you also need to know what your return will be...

Price should always be Relative to Value when it comes to SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is simply about optimising a website for the search engine, our Search Engine Ownership strategy allows you to understand how much your traffic is actually worth. And your SEO company should be able to show you how much you will gain from your SEO campaign - in monetary terms. At Nexa, we are dedicated to showing our clients what their ROI is when it comes to an SEO campaign.

Nexa Case Study: Based on data from June 2020

From a set of 400 key phrases and keywords based on Nexa’s service offerings, we have reached a search visibility score of 75.1% for desktop and laptop users, and we are at 75.9% for mobile searches.

This means that for any of those 400 key phrases and keywords, we are likely to convert 75% of these searches into website or blog traffic.

But how does our search visibility score of 75.1% compare to our closest competitors?

Nexa and Search Visibility in Comparison to our Competitors

Using the same data, keywords and key phrases, our closed competitor's search visibility score is at 33.7%.

As per the data from June 2020, our search visibility drove 7,469 visitors to our website through organic search alone. Using the same set of keywords and key phrases, our competitors drove only 2,453 visits at this time. This means that we received 3x more visits due to our high search engine visibility.

Nexa SEO in Monetary Value

As stated above, our organic traffic reached 7,469 and we can calculate what this means for us in monetary value. If a new competitor had to enter the market and their goal was to gain the same amount of traffic as us, we can determine how much investment they would have to make in their marketing efforts to reach the same results.

Based on Google data and analytics for the same set of keywords and key phrases, the average cost per click using the Google AdWords platform would be $7.20.

This means that our competitors would have to pay $7.20 for every click through to their website using Google AdWords, which equates to US$53,086 for that particular month. Over a period of 12 months, this figure equates to US$637,032.

Essentially, our competitors would have to spend this amount every month to reach the same traffic that we reach organically and for FREE. This is a massive asset to our business in its entirety, however, website traffic is not the only determinant of our SEO value.

For even more perspective, this organic traffic converts into a consistent flow of leads and if we convert 1% of that traffic into a new business, the ROI from Nexa’s Search Engine Ownership becomes even more significant.

The key point with this data is how much would your business be willing to pay for SEO if this activity delivered over US$600,000 worth of traffic each year?

What if I select a cheaper SEO company and don't get the results I wanted?

The one thing that a good SEO company can do is predict the success of the activity on your business. The problem with bad SEO companies that use anti-Google strategies is that their activities can get your website in a huge amount of trouble. We have come across many websites that have simply been blacklisted based on the activities of unscrupulous SEO providers. The impact and cost to your business if this happens is unimaginable and something you never want to find out.

Our advice is simple: Don't take any unnecessary risks when it comes to SEO for your business. It's not worth it! If you don't have the budget for SEO but would like to engage in this activity, only work with trusted and reputable SEO providers that clearly outline EVERYTHING they will do for your website. If you're not sure of this and their process isn't clear - don't engage with them.

Nexa and Search Engine Ownership

At Nexa we believe in optimising your website for Search Engine Ownership and will ensure that you receive the greatest return on investment.

This kind of strategy ensures that you receive the best results from your SEO campaign and can see your return on investment in actual monetary figures. Learn more about Search Engine Ownership, here.