Campaigns are billed per domain. For a company here that decided years ago to put Dutch on one domain and English on another, that single line turns one budget into two before anything has been switched on.
Most pricing questions about automated SEO are asked in the wrong order. People start with what the tiers include, compare feature lists, and only later discover that the unit of billing is not the company, not the project and not the campaign. It is the domain. Everything else in the arithmetic follows from that.
It matters more here than it does in most places. A great many Amsterdam companies serve one bilingual audience across two separate registrations — a Dutch domain that has been there since the beginning and an English one added when the first non-Dutch hires arrived. One business, one buyer, two entries on the invoice.
The domain is the unit, and it is the whole argument
Take a payments company in the Houthavens, fifty-odd people, selling to businesses in the Netherlands and to the international teams sitting in the same buildings. The Dutch site is on the historic domain. The English site went up separately on a second one, because at the time that seemed cleaner than a subfolder and nobody was thinking about a campaign budget four years out.
At checkout that company is two customers. Both domains need their own keyword pool, their own placements, their own on-site suggestions — and both are charged accordingly. There is nothing unfair about it: the work genuinely is twice, because two domains are two link profiles, two histories and two sets of results pages. The mistake was made earlier, at the registration, and it is being paid for monthly.
- Two domains means two campaigns. Not a bigger campaign at a discount. Each domain carries its own subscription at the tier you choose for it.
- The tiers can differ per domain. Nothing requires the same level everywhere. The domain that earns can sit higher while the other runs on the entry tier.
- Add-ons attach to a domain too. Slots are bought against one campaign. Buying them twice is buying them twice.
- One tree on one domain avoids all of it. A single registration with a language folder is one campaign, whatever the two trees contain.
AutoSEO, and what it does while nobody watches
The lower of the two tiers is designed to keep a cycle turning without anyone in the company running it. Terms are found and prioritised automatically, links are built automatically, on-site changes are proposed by the model, and the analytics both tiers include sit behind all of it.
AutoSEO — the campaign on autopilot
For a company that wants the cycle running continuously and has nobody to run it.
- Keyword discovery and prioritisation. Candidates assembled and ordered without a person choosing each one.
- Automatic link building. Placements made against the partner network rather than negotiated one at a time.
- On-site suggestions from the model. Proposed changes to titles, structure and copy, delivered as recommendations.
- The whole analytics side included. Search Console views, results-page tracking and the live chat come with the tier, not on top of it.
The unattended part is the selling point and the thing to be clear-eyed about. Automatic prioritisation is good at volume and blind to context: it cannot know that one of your terms describes a service you stopped offering, or that a phrase which reads naturally in English is not how anyone here asks the question. What it does is keep a queue moving, which is more than most in-house teams manage in a busy quarter.
FullSEO, and the $351 that separates the two
The difference between the tiers is $351 a month for each domain you apply it to. What that buys is not more automation. It is the ability to overrule the automation, plus people who do the overruling.
FullSEO — automation with hands on it
For domains where the wrong term or the wrong donor site costs more than the subscription.
- Manual keyword selection, with a fallback. Terms are chosen by hand; where nobody chooses, the automatic selection continues rather than stalling.
- Directed link placement. Placements aimed at a target domain rating instead of taken as they come.
- Human review before changes go live. On-site proposals wait for approval, which matters on a site where legal or regulated wording is involved.
- Specialists, developers and writers. The tier includes people alongside the tooling — the part that cannot be bought as an add-on.
For a bilingual estate the review step is worth more than it first appears. Automatic on-site suggestions are generated per domain, and a suggestion that is sensible on the Dutch tree can be actively wrong on the English one — a phrasing nobody uses, a heading that reads as a translation, a term that competes with a page you already publish. Someone has to be able to say no. The campaign automation Semalt operates makes that a setting rather than an argument.
Which terms enter the pool
On the entry tier the pool is assembled and ordered by the system. On the higher tier you choose, and the automatic selection carries on wherever you do not.
- Candidates come from Search Console and live results
- Your own seed terms feed in either way
Where the links land
Automatic placement takes what the network offers. Directed placement aims at a domain rating you set, which is the whole difference between volume and choice.
- Both tiers draw on the same network
- Only one of them lets you refuse a donor
What reaches the live site
Suggestions arrive on both tiers. The review mode is what stops them being applied before somebody who knows the wording has read them.
- Essential where copy is checked by others
- Optional on a blog nobody argues about
Everything used to measure it
Search Console views, results-page tracking, generative research, the indexing tools and the project feed do not change with the tier.
- Measurement is not the upsell
- The tier governs the doing, not the seeing
Placement slots, and the trap in the biggest package
Two add-ons sit alongside the tiers and are bought in fixed quantities. Wikipedia placements cost $10 for each slot, in packages of nothing, one, five or ten. Network placements cost $1 for each slot, in packages of nothing, twenty, one hundred or five hundred.
| Add-on | Price per slot | Packages offered | Cost of the largest package |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia placements | $10 | 0 · 1 · 5 · 10 slots | $100 |
| Network placements | $1 | 0 · 20 · 100 · 500 slots | $500 |
| Both, at the middle package | — | 5 slots · 100 slots | $150 |
| Both, at the smallest paid package | — | 1 slot · 20 slots | $30 |
The third row is worth checking, since it is the combination most people land on: five Wikipedia slots is $50, one hundred network slots is $100, and the two together come to $150 on top of whatever tier the domain is running.
What a mirrored year actually adds up to
The figures below are constructed to show the shape of the arithmetic. Take the payments company from the opening: both domains on the entry tier, twenty network slots a month against each, and Wikipedia slots bought for the Dutch domain only, because that is where the established brand material sits.
| Line | What it covers | Monthly | Twelve months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry tier, Dutch domain | Campaign automation on the original registration | $149 | $1,788 |
| Entry tier, English domain | The same campaign, second registration | $149 | $1,788 |
| Network slots, Dutch domain | 20 slots each month at $1 | $20 | $240 |
| Network slots, English domain | 20 slots each month at $1 | $20 | $240 |
| Wikipedia slots, Dutch domain | 1 slot each month at $10 | $10 | $120 |
| Total | Both registrations, twelve months | $348 | $4,176 |
Read the column downwards: $1,788 and $1,788 make $3,576, the two lots of network slots add $480 to reach $4,056, and the Wikipedia line brings it to $4,176. The monthly column agrees — $348 a month, twelve times, is $4,176.
The same twelve months if both trees sat on one domain
Now run the identical plan for a company whose English pages live in a folder on the Dutch domain. The content is the same, the audience is the same, the work is largely the same. The billing is not.
| Line | What it covers | Monthly | Twelve months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry tier, one domain | One campaign covering both language trees | $149 | $1,788 |
| Network slots | 20 slots each month at $1 | $20 | $240 |
| Wikipedia slots | 1 slot each month at $10 | $10 | $120 |
| Total | One registration, twelve months | $179 | $2,148 |
Check it the same way: $1,788 plus $240 plus $120 is $2,148, and $179 twelve times is $2,148 as well. Set against the mirrored plan, the gap over the same period is $2,028 — the second subscription at $1,788 plus its own $240 of slots.
Before anyone treats that as a saving waiting to be collected: it is not free money. Consolidating two registrations into one is a migration, with redirects to write, links to reclaim and a period of instability that has to be planned around. Whether it is worth doing depends on how much authority the second domain has accumulated. The honest way to put it is that a company already choosing where to publish its English pages should know the arithmetic, and a company with four established years on both domains should weigh it against the disruption. The crawling cost of keeping both is taken up elsewhere in the rest of this English series.
A year that starts on one tier and finishes on the other
Neither tier has to run for the whole period, and for a domain being taken seriously for the first time there is a sensible sequence: let the automation establish a baseline, then take manual control once there is something to steer. The example below puts six months on each side and buys more placement volume in the second half.
| Period | What runs | Rate | Cost of the period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Months 1–6 | Entry tier, one domain | $149 a month | $894 |
| Months 7–12 | Higher tier, same domain | $500 a month | $3,000 |
| Months 1–6 | Network slots, 20 each month | $20 a month | $120 |
| Months 7–12 | Network slots, 100 each month | $100 a month | $600 |
| Months 7–12 | Wikipedia slots, 5 each month | $50 a month | $300 |
| Total | One domain, twelve months | — | $4,914 |
The column adds up as follows: $894 and $3,000 give $3,894, the two network lines add $120 and $600 to make $4,614, and the Wikipedia line closes at $4,914. Notice that this single domain, handled properly for half the period, costs more over twelve months than both mirrored domains left on the entry tier throughout — $4,914 against $4,176. That comparison is the useful one. The question was never whether to spend less. It was whether the spending is split across two registrations or concentrated on one.
Matching the tier to what the domain is for
Because the tier is set per domain, the interesting decisions are usually not company-wide. Different registrations in the same portfolio deserve different answers, and the pattern below covers most of what turns up in this city.
The second-language domain
An English registration that supports the sale without closing it. Keep the cycle running; spend the attention elsewhere.
- Automatic selection is adequate here
- Review the term list once a quarter
The domain that takes the enquiries
Whichever registration actually produces contact. Manual term choice and directed placements pay for themselves fastest here.
- Set a target rating for donors
- Keep the review step switched on
Client domains at an agency
A studio carrying eleven client registrations cannot staff eleven manual campaigns. Automation holds the baseline for all of them.
- Price it into the retainer per domain
- Upgrade the two that justify it
Regulated or reviewed copy
A practice whose pages carry advice cannot let a model publish edits. The approval step is the reason to be on this tier.
- Nothing goes live unapproved
- Suggestions still arrive automatically
A regional marketing team covering five country registrations from an office here faces the same question five times, and the honest answer is rarely the same twice. Two of those domains carry the demand; the others exist because the group decided every market should have one. Paying the higher rate across all five to keep the reporting tidy is the most common way this budget gets wasted. The placement side of the platform is where the difference shows first, since directed placements are the part the automation cannot do on its own.
Whatever the tier, the campaign feed reports what happened: new links appear in it with the donor's rating and traffic attached, alongside automatic reports and to-dos. That is also where the case for an upgrade gets made or lost — six months of visible donor quality is a better argument than any projection. Our own view of the placement question sits in the link building service page, and the assistant that files those updates keeps the history searchable rather than scattered across emails.
Frequently asked questions
If our Dutch and English sites are on one domain, do we pay once?
Yes. Billing follows the registration, not the number of language trees on it. A site with a Dutch section and an English section on the same domain is one campaign at one price, and both trees benefit from the same link profile.
Can we run different tiers on our two domains?
Yes, and it is usually the right answer. Put the higher tier on the registration that produces enquiries and leave the other on the entry tier. Nothing requires symmetry, and symmetry is an expensive habit when one domain does most of the work.
Are the placement slots a monthly commitment?
They are bought against a campaign in fixed packages — nothing, one, five or ten Wikipedia slots; nothing, twenty, one hundred or five hundred network slots. Treat them as a variable line rather than part of the base rate, and change the package when the campaign's needs change.
How soon can we tell whether it is working?
First measurable movement typically appears after four to eight weeks, and that means the data becomes readable, not that a target has been reached. Judge a campaign on a quarter at minimum. On a bilingual estate, judge each tree separately — they move at different speeds because they compete in different fields.
Is the higher tier worth it for a small site?
Often not at first. The step costs $351 a month for each domain, and what it buys is judgement — manual term selection, directed placements, an approval step. On a small site with little history there is not yet much to judge. Start on the entry tier and upgrade when the automation starts making choices you want to overrule.
The conclusion is a sentence about registrations rather than about software. Because the domain is the unit of billing, the decision that determines a campaign budget was usually taken years earlier by whoever registered the second address — and it is still being charged for every month. That is worth knowing before the next language, the next country site or the next brand gets its own domain out of habit.
The arithmetic above is checkable in a few minutes against your own portfolio: count the registrations you would actually put a campaign on, pick a tier for each, and add the slots you would buy. To set the first one up and see what the feed reports in the opening weeks, start a campaign from the Semalt dashboard. Whether the second domain deserves one is the more interesting question, and only your own figures can answer it.
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