James Dooley: So I'm joined with James how you doing?

Guest: Yeah not bad mate, how are you?

James Dooley: Good good good. So the big debate, $50 SEO package versus $55,000 SEO package. There's obviously some SEO agencies that claim they do SEO for $50 or a couple hundred dollars. What's your thoughts on it?

Guest: First and foremost, if someone came with $50, $50 or 5,000, that decline them both. So I'd say that neither one of them's a big budget for SEO. The amount of costs involved in strategically doing a topical map, silo structure, technical content and backlinks, it's going to cost you a lot more than $55,000. If that's a short-term kind of investment and they're going to carry on spending after that, then all right, 5,000 is not a bad start. But at $50, it, it, it's embarrassing if you're being honest with you. Like it is embarrassing because you can't even buy one decent backlink for $50. And for people go, oh build good content and the links will come. It's just go and get yourself a full-time job, work overtime and save some more money up and don't get into digital marketing with $50. And if you don't have more than $50 saved up, just go and work hard, go go and stack some more shells, earn some more money and wait till you've got a minimum, really of $5,000. Is like, it, it becomes frustrating when people keep asking you that question. It's like, what, what kind of car can I buy for $5,000? A brand new car? No, it only starts at 20,000. But I've only got 5,000. Well then save some more money up. I'll go buy a second-hand car. Do you know what I mean? Like you've got to make certain you understand what budgets need to be put in place. And a lot of these SEO agencies that take these clients on, I think they're scammers. I'm being honest with you. Like, not like trying to send them down a route of saying that's okay when they know that it's not. I don't think it's fair, if I'm being honest with you.

James Dooley: So we actually have got some stats here. So the average link cost is probably be about $300. I would say?

Guest: Yeah, just an SEO account alone is about $150 a month. And that's for the bare minimum package. Um, to then be able to go and do a technical SEO audit, screaming frog is about $250 a year. Um, content, what's that about $60, $70 an article? Keyword research, doing the topical map, obviously you've got guys that are charging 10, 15, 20 grand for topical maps.

James Dooley: Yeah, um, so once you start breaking it down, you just can't do anything for $500 or $50 unless you've got a consistent, I don't know, few five, 5K coming in. It's, it's just very very difficult. But um, yeah, what what's your thoughts on some of those stats?

Guest: Yeah, I mean, they just, they are not, none of them kind of stand out like I mean you're saying it's $300, but to be fair, in like the casino market, it's probably more like $600, $700. It can completely depends on the niche. I mean, what is important to know as well is that there is ways to do things cheaper. But long-term, is it going to keep you there? Do you know what I mean? You could go and do a GSA blast or an extra rumor blast and actually when you first do it, because of the Google dance, it might give you a temporary lift until the core update comes along. So, and then you're just going to get hit. So like, long-term, if you're looking for long-term rankings, you've just got to build things like a real business. You wouldn't go and build your house on quicksand, right? So why cut corners now and not having the right foundations set up for your website? Set yourself a realistic kind of goal and target, set yourself a realistic budget and work to that budget. Don't get me wrong, be frugal and try and make certain that you're finding the best company that's going to give you. With SEO, it's hard to give a return on investment because it's a long-term strategy.

James Dooley: Yeah, and there is ways, this, like auto-blogging for AI content can get you content a little bit cheaper. But in general, without knowing what you're doing with that, it's the expertise of knowing how to get that written correctly. So you've got to try to make certain that you're using an agency or an individual that knows exactly. They're frugal and know where to spend the money. And if they have only got a 2,000 a month or a, a month type of budget to start with, they're knowing what's going to get them the best wins. If there's an existing site, maybe technical SEO audits, building out a little bit more content and then moving to the links. But you need to set yourself, expect like budgets that's realistic.

Guest: Yeah.

James Dooley: So you've obviously sold businesses in the past before and you know the multiple that can, or sorry, you know the multiple that is within like a, a traffic source. So if you've, let's say cracked Facebook ads for your company and you're selling your company in a couple years time, obviously that comes with a more higher sell value. What would you say is a good valuation or an an additional valuation to a company that has cracked SEO? If that makes sense?

Guest: So what, what the monthly valuation is? Or so let's say the business is doing 100,000 a month?

James Dooley: Yeah, and you have also been able to crack SEO and out of that 100,000, let's say 40,000 of that is generating your own leads?

Guest: Oh ABS, I mean that massively increases the valuation. So there's certain businesses that uh start from zero. Businesses that a lot to be fair, a lot to be fair, a lot of investors turn away from it because because they're like, what have you got? Like you, you once the lead generation company you're buying from or the word of mouth, if that's slowed down, you've no business. Yeah, so if you can generate your own business via your SEO, that could be the difference between like, some might only pay 12 months, right? If you're not generating your own leads, there might be 12 months. If you're generating your own leads, could be up to eight years. So it's eight times bigger multiplier. So if you're talking there about 100,000 a month, right, that's 1.2 million a year, right? So instead of being 1.2 million, if you're getting eight years, you're getting 9.6 million. That's 8.4 million more in valuation. With that, that was 100,000 a month profit, not revenue. But it's a huge difference. So a lot of people don't understand that the exponential growth is when you first spending money on SEO, it's like this and then it's like a hockey stick. You don't really get the return on investment to start with. But long-term, that e-commerce store that you have or that website now that you you own the brand or you own the company of it's now generating your own leads. Well, actually, other things is you don't need to keep growing revenue. You can to start upping your prices slightly. If you're getting that consistent flow of inquiries or you're consistently selling products on your e-commerce store, SEO a huge beneficial factor for when you're selling.

James Dooley: Yeah definitely. Like that's, that's one one thing that I always recommend to people like as soon as you start getting the traffic, then start worrying about CRO, like fix it, fixing CRO tweaks on your website. Then what you should probably be looking at is upping average order value because if you can up your average order value from let's say 1,000 to 1,500 by selling a a product or potentially if if you are a plumbing business, maybe you can do expedited um customer support for an additional 500, it's started stacking up very quickly.

Guest: Yeah, I mean, obviously yourself, who's growing quite a lot now in the e-commerce market, there's so many other factors to having you on their books, not just from an SEO standpoint of more impressions and more clicks, but you're a business mentor to them. So you could be looking at certain products and saying I don't really think you should be stocking that, right? But there's other bits where Amazon is an amazing e-commerce platform. But why? Because you go to the store before you know it, he was already buying a camera and next, when you now bought a memory card, which is an extra 30, you've now bought a tripod, which a tripod, which is an extra 50 pound. You know you got these, these lenses, which an extra, pound. Next, before you know, you can't, values gone from 500 to 2,000 because they're brilliant at upsells and cross-sells. But when you get someone like yourself that can help e-commerce brands, you're understanding that if you're not leveraging the thank you page to try and sell more products, you're knowing that the followup on the emails, you can be checking not just from an SEO standpoint, but you can be checking their clients to say, did you, why are you not sending an email going in, by the way, did you know that 64% of people that bought this also like to buy this, this and this, which gets them back to the store? And I've seen some of the like stuff they've been working with and it's been incredible. And that's not even SEO. That's business mentorship. And what some people don't understand is it's not just about hiring an SEO, right? Somebody like yourself, who's a business like business mentor and entrepreneurial in the way that you think, you're helping them in so many other ways than just, how do I generate more revenue and more traffic through to my e-commerce store? It's not just about that. How can they build up them social media following so that when they have got new products, it might be 6 months later that you built up that following for? But 6 months later, you've got a new product from, look at it and now buys it. That's, you can't put a value on that building up that is incredible for these e-commerce brands.

James Dooley: Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest part. Um, when you're hiring an SEO expert, they need to understand your product. They need to understand more about your business. And that's ultimately when you're going to get the biggest ROI. It might not be in a couple days time or in a month's time. It might be in let's say three or four months time. But I think that's, that's the biggest thing. And you wouldn't get that with a $50 SEO package.

Guest: I think we can both absolutely definitely not, no. But like, you're not, you're not, you're not cheap. But it doesn't matter what's cheap, it's about what's best value.

James Dooley: Yeah, and when you start looking at best value, es especially for e-commerce, then why choose somebody else? Like, because you're giving them so much more value. It's like, and I don't mean in an arrogant way, we are the best at lead generation because we make certain we deliver return on investment. But that comes at a cost. And at $50 a month, like I can't do anything at that rate. But when it comes to 5,000, you can start working on certain things. Hopefully you're doing a technical audit and you're doing certain things. You start to give them that little bit more revenue, bit more profit. They might then start reinvesting that profit back into you and then something to grow with.

Guest: Yeah definitely. So that has been the video on $50 versus 5,000. I think we can both agree that we would go with the the 5,000 a month higher.

James Dooley: Yeah, higher. But if you guys did enjoy that video, make certain to leave a like down below. Thanks!

Guest: Cheers.