AutoSEO or FullSEO: What Automated Campaigns Really Cost

Two subscriptions and two packs of placements: four amounts in all. The sum that follows is easy enough, but the sum that decides the case is not on the invoice — it sits in the diary of whoever keeps the campaign moving.

Anyone preparing a campaign budget puts two prices side by side and draws a conclusion. With automated SEO that is the shortest route to the wrong decision: the difference is not in what gets delivered, but in who makes the calls — which shifts part of the cost onto your own organisation.

The campaign side of the rebuilt Semalt panel works with two subscription tiers. Alongside them you can order two kinds of placement, each in fixed tiers. Beyond these four there are no prices.

All rates are in dollars. The euro figures appearing here and there are converted at an assumed rate: an approximation, not a fixed number.

Four prices and one stubborn misunderstanding

The misunderstanding runs: pricier subscription, more data. Not here. Both tiers run in the same environment, draw figures from the same connected Search Console and the same live SERP data, and produce the same AI suggestions for the site.

• Reporting in full, entry tier included. Position history, keyword dynamics, the competitive picture and export are complete on both.
• The same review process. Candidate search terms are put to you one by one on either tier before anything happens.
• One and the same assistant. Stream draws on the real project data and takes lists of search terms or URLs in a single batch.
• Only the steering wheel is missing below. Choosing terms, directing where links land and signing off changes in advance exist on the higher tier only.

AutoSEO: the tier that keeps going without you

The entry tier is designed around one assumption: weeks may pass in which nobody logs in, and the campaign has to carry on regardless. That suits companies where SEO is on nobody's job description — in the Dutch SME sector the rule rather than the exception.

At an assumed 0.93 euro to the dollar, that annual figure lands near 1,663 euro, excluding VAT and currency movement: a marker for a budget, not a quotation. Against Amsterdam hourly rates for outside advice it is some seventeen hours — enough to think about, too little for three meetings.

FullSEO: what that extra 351 dollars stands for

On the higher tier everything from the entry tier stays and three points are added where a person can steer. Behind the campaign there is also a team: specialists, developers and writers. That part of the price is labour, not software.

What you buy on top is not more work but the right to decide. That right returns something only when somebody exercises it: leave the approval list unopened for months and you have an entry-tier campaign with a five-hundred-dollar invoice.

The switch between modes is regularly overlooked, though it allows a rhythm instead of a fixed choice. Early on nobody knows which terms move, so everything runs automatically; once data exists, choosing by hand becomes worthwhile; just before a busy period you tune finely. A canal-side hotel does that in February, a tax adviser in autumn. The notes accompanying both subscriptions describe how it looks.

Where the campaign gets its search terms

Underneath both tiers lies the same keyword pool, filled from three directions, each covering a blind spot of the other two.

That third outcome deserves attention. Where only yes and no exist, every round kills everything in doubt — often exactly the terms that make the difference two quarters later.

• Accept. The term belongs to your field, a suitable page exists, and you can genuinely deliver the service.
• Reject. The term falls outside your offering, service area or client base. An Amsterdam firm serving business clients only has no use for consumer volume.
• Defer. The term is sound, but the page, the budget or the capacity is missing. What you park in March is ready in September.

Here lies the real value of the automation. Your search terms are not chosen for you; the collecting, de-duplicating and pre-sorting is taken off your hands, leaving human attention for the step where judgement counts. What the accepted terms do next you follow in the analytics section with the position history.

Two kinds of placement, two kinds of risk

On top of the subscription sit two packs of placements, both in fixed tiers and both optional. Tier zero is a full choice and, in doubt, the sensible one. The unit price already gives the difference away.

For an organisation building a name the calculation comes out badly: the same money in editorial pages carries no risk. If you still want to test it, keep it fenced in — a separate domain, the smallest tier, an end date fixed in advance. The current tiers are listed in the price overview for the optional packs.

Line by line, side by side

On paper the differences are strikingly small, and the line that decides describes not a feature but a way of working.

The second-to-last line weighs heaviest: the lines above say what the product can do, that one says what you will do with it. The bottom line merely adds up the invoice.

Twelve months set down on paper

Two things stand out. In both options only about a third of the real outlay reaches an invoice; the rest sits in hours and writing never booked as SEO costs. And the second option is deliberately uneven: the higher tier only on the domain the revenue comes from, the entry tier on the other. Choosing the same everywhere is the most expensive way of not choosing.

What is missing on purpose is the revenue side. It depends on your starting position, the crowding in your field and the share of visitors who become clients; nobody can predict that honestly. Only the cost side can be planned. Taking the higher tier without scheduling the hours means paying for something you never collect.

The pace at which things happen, and who fits where

A campaign that runs by itself tempts you into looking every day. That wastes time, because the quantities you follow react at very different speeds.

• The first four weeks — is it running? Are terms going into treatment, placements appearing, suggestions being processed? A check on activity.
• Months two and three — early signals. More impressions on the treated terms, movement up out of the back ranks, slight change in the click-through rate.
• Months four to six — visible effect. Organic clicks picking up, and commercially relevant queries reaching the first page.
• The second half-year — the hard figures. Quote requests, signed work and revenue from organic traffic. This is where the spend gets judged.

If nothing is moving after six months, the cause is rarely the subscription. Usually it is the content of the pages, a field where this budget is too small, or a technical floor holding the work back. Have that last one examined in advance; see what we do.

Whatever the situation, three questions decide it. Is somebody demonstrably freed up for four to six hours of review a month? Do the highest-volume terms diverge from the terms that bring revenue? Must a change pass a lawyer or a subject-matter check before going online? Two yeses point to the higher tier, two noes to the entry tier.

Frequently asked questions

In the end this is not a price comparison but an assessment of your own capacity. The entry tier buys a process that keeps running; the higher tier adds the possibility and the obligation to intervene. With the placements, restraint is in order, and a budget is finished only once your own hours sit in the same table as the subscription.

To weigh the two options on your own domain, you can set the campaign up in the Semalt panel and read off your Search Console figures how many proposed terms you would genuinely release. That number identifies the right tier more precisely than any list of features.