There are four numbers in the campaign price list and one unit of measurement, and the unit is the one that decides what a year costs. Everything is charged per domain, which turns the perfectly reasonable idea of a website per region into a bill that multiplies long before the demand does.
The temptation arrives in a meeting that has nothing to do with budgets. Somebody observes that the site says the company covers the whole country while the enquiries cluster in three areas that behave nothing alike, and somebody else suggests a separate site for each. It sounds tidy. It also triples a recurring cost, splits whatever link authority the company has three ways, and produces two more properties nobody has time to write for.
What follows is a plain reading of the two campaign tiers, the two add-ons and their unit prices, and a twelve-month worked example with the arithmetic shown line by line. The tiers themselves are described in the campaign automation section of Semalt; the figures below are the published ones.
Four prices, and the word that changes all of them
The price list is short enough to read in one breath. AutoSEO is 149 USD a month. FullSEO is 500 USD a month. Wikipedia placements are 10 USD a slot, offered as none, one, five or ten. Private-network placements are 1 USD a slot, offered as none, twenty, one hundred or five hundred. There is nothing between the tiers and nothing negotiable in the slot counts.
The word attached to both monthly figures is "per domain", and it is doing more work than any of the digits. A campaign is scoped to a website. Two websites are two campaigns whether or not the same three people run them, whether or not they sell the same thing, and whether or not the second one has any traffic yet.
- The tier is a monthly commitment, the slots are not. Placement add-ons are bought in the months you want them, so the annual figure is a sum of months rather than a single multiplication.
- The slot counts are fixed steps. You cannot buy three Wikipedia slots or fifty private-network slots. The steps are the steps, which makes budgeting simpler and fine-tuning impossible.
- Nothing scales by traffic. A domain with four hundred visitors a month costs the same as one with forty thousand, which is generous at the top and unforgiving at the bottom.
Three domains, three bills, one reputation divided by three
The regional argument for separate sites is not stupid. A supplier whose southern operation runs from a depot with its own manager, its own vans and its own customer list genuinely does have three businesses wearing one name, and giving each a site feels like an honest description rather than a trick.
What it actually does is take a single set of links, mentions and accumulated trust and divide it into three smaller sets, each of which then has to compete against operators who never split theirs. Meanwhile the recurring cost went up by a factor of three on the day the campaigns were switched on, months before the second and third sites had anything on them worth reading.
Everything compounds in one place
Links earned by the southern depot's case study also help the northern service page, because they land on the same host.
- One campaign fee
- Regional pages as sections, not sites
Three cold starts at once
Each site begins with nothing, and the two newest spend the first year being outranked by the oldest one.
- Three campaign fees
- Add-ons bought three times over
There are cases where separate domains are correct: genuinely separate brands, an acquisition with its own customer base, a legal entity that must not be presented as part of the group. Regional coverage of the same business under the same name is not one of them, and the cost of finding that out is a year of fees.
AutoSEO: what happens in the weeks nobody logs in
AutoSEO — decisions made without asking
For a company where the person nominally responsible for the website also runs dispatch, and April is not a month in which anybody will open a dashboard.
- Keywords found and ordered automatically. The pool is assembled from Search Console, live results and any seed terms you supply, and candidates are prioritised without waiting for approval.
- Links built without a queue to manage. Placements run across a partner network of more than 230,000 websites, with no shortlist to approve.
- On-site suggestions and the full analytics. Model-written recommendations for pages, plus the whole Search Console and rank-tracking side, plus a live assistant to ask about any of it.
The annual figure is a single multiplication: 149 multiplied by twelve is 1,788 USD for one domain. That is the floor for a campaign that keeps working through a quarter in which nobody has time to look at it, and for a seasonal business the unattended months are the point rather than a compromise.
The limitation is the same fact stated from the other side. A keyword pool assembled automatically will propose terms naming places you cannot reach next week, because nothing in the data distinguishes a county with a depot from a county with a hopeful line on the coverage map.
FullSEO: the same engine with somebody holding the wheel
FullSEO — approval before anything ships
For the company where half the plausible keyword list names regions it would rather not receive enquiries from.
- Keywords chosen by hand, with a fallback. Manual selection with automatic fallback, so a fortnight of nobody reviewing does not stop the campaign — it simply reverts to the automatic behaviour.
- Placements aimed at a stated quality. Manual link placement against a domain-rating target rather than whatever the network offers first.
- On-site changes held for review. A human review mode for edits, with a team of SEO specialists, developers and writers behind the tier.
Five hundred multiplied by twelve is 6,000 USD a year for one domain, and the step between the tiers is 500 minus 149, which is 351 USD a month, or 4,212 USD across a year. That difference is the price of a decision being made by somebody who knows the delivery calendar, and whether it is worth paying depends entirely on whether such a person will actually sit down and make it.
Ten dollars a slot, one dollar a slot, and the difference between them
Both add-ons attach to a campaign, which means they attach to a domain, which means the multiplier from the second section applies to them as well. They are otherwise nothing like each other, and the two placement types are bought separately, in the months you choose.
Wikipedia placements
Few, expensive and slow to obtain, which is roughly what makes them worth having. The steps stop at ten for a reason.
- Buy in the month the page is ready
- Nothing to undo later
Private-network placements
Cheap and available in quantity, and the quantity is exactly where the judgement is required rather than the budget.
- The twenty-slot step is the defensible one
- Five hundred is a decision, not a default
| Add-on | Unit price | Slot options | Cost at each step |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia placements | 10 USD | 0 / 1 / 5 / 10 | 0 / 10 / 50 / 100 USD |
| Private-network placements | 1 USD | 0 / 20 / 100 / 500 | 0 / 20 / 100 / 500 USD |
| Both at maximum | — | 10 and 500 | 600 USD in one month |
| Both at maximum, with FullSEO | — | — | 1,100 USD in one month |
| The same, sustained for a year | — | — | 13,200 USD for one domain |
The ceiling row is arithmetic rather than advice: ten Wikipedia slots at 10 USD is 100, five hundred network slots at 1 USD is 500, the two together are 600, and adding the 500 USD tier fee gives 1,100 USD in a single month for a single domain. Sustained across twelve months that is 13,200 USD, and on the three-domain plan from earlier it would be 39,600. Almost nobody should run at that ceiling, and the number is here so that it is visible before somebody discovers it by accident.
A worked year for one domain, with the arithmetic shown
Take a manufacturer with three depots, one website and a busy spring. It starts on the base tier while the reporting is being set up, moves to the steered tier once somebody has been made responsible for approvals, and buys placements only in the months when there is something worth pointing links at.
| Line | Unit price | Quantity | Months | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AutoSEO, one domain | 149 USD / month | 1 domain | 1–3 | 447 USD |
| FullSEO, same domain | 500 USD / month | 1 domain | 4–12 | 4,500 USD |
| Wikipedia placements | 10 USD / slot | 5 slots, then 1 | 6 and 10 | 60 USD |
| Private-network placements | 1 USD / slot | 20 slots a month | 4–12 | 180 USD |
| Total for the year | — | 1 domain | 1–12 | 5,187 USD |
Every line is worth checking rather than trusting. Three months of the base tier: 149 × 3 = 447. Nine months of the steered tier: 500 × 9 = 4,500. Wikipedia slots: five slots in month six and one in month ten is six slots, and 6 × 10 = 60. Network slots: twenty a month for nine months is 180 slots, and at 1 USD each that is 180. Adding them: 447 + 4,500 = 4,947; 4,947 + 60 = 5,007; 5,007 + 180 = 5,187 USD.
Spread evenly that is 5,187 ÷ 12 = 432.25 USD a month, which is a more useful figure for a budget conversation than either tier price on its own, because the year is not spent at either one.
The same year, run across three regional sites
Now take the same manufacturer with the regional idea implemented: three domains, one per depot area, each on the base tier for the full year, each carrying the identical add-on commitment of sixty dollars of Wikipedia slots and a hundred and eighty of network slots.
One domain on the base tier for twelve months is 149 × 12 = 1,788. Add-ons per domain are 60 + 180 = 240. Per domain that is 1,788 + 240 = 2,028, and three of them is 2,028 × 3 = 6,084 USD.
| Shape of the year | Domains | Tier | Twelve-month total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum viable campaign | 1 | AutoSEO throughout | 1,788 USD |
| The worked example above | 1 | AutoSEO 3 months, FullSEO 9 | 5,187 USD |
| Regional split, base tier | 3 | AutoSEO throughout | 6,084 USD |
| Regional split, steered tier | 3 | FullSEO throughout | 18,000 USD |
| Difference, worked example to regional split | — | — | 897 USD |
Check the last two rows as well. Three domains on the steered tier is 500 × 12 = 6,000 each, and 6,000 × 3 = 18,000 USD. The difference between the worked example and the regional split at the base tier is 6,084 − 5,187 = 897 USD, which is the awkward part of the comparison: the split costs only a little more, and buys a materially worse year.
For that 897 USD the company gives up manual keyword selection, placements aimed at a quality target and human review of on-site changes, and receives in exchange two additional websites with no history, no links and nobody rostered to write for them. The extra domains are not expensive. They are cheap in the way that a third van is cheap when there is no third driver.
- Compare shapes, not tier prices. Nobody spends a year at exactly one price. Write the twelve rows out and total them before comparing anything.
- Count the add-ons per domain. An add-on commitment that looks trivial at 240 USD becomes 720 across three campaigns without anyone deciding to spend it.
- Price the writing you have not budgeted. The fee is the visible cost of a second domain. The pages somebody has to produce for it are the real one, and they do not appear on any invoice.
- Decide the tier by who will approve things. If the answer is nobody, the steered tier is 351 USD a month for a fallback you already had.
The mechanics behind the keyword side are worth understanding before choosing a tier, since they are what the extra 351 buys. The pool draws on Search Console, live results and your own seed terms, and every candidate is approved, rejected or deferred individually — the way candidates are proposed and reviewed is the same at both tiers, and only the question of who decides changes. Stream, the project assistant, accepts keyword and URL lists in batches, which matters when the review backlog is a spreadsheet rather than a handful of terms, and reports export to CSV or JSON up to 10,000 rows and to PDF up to 250. The structural work that has to happen alongside any campaign is covered under our services.
Questions that come up while the budget is being written
We already own three regional domains. Do we have to run campaigns on all of them?
No, and in most cases you should not. Run the campaign on the domain with the most history, and decide separately whether the other two should redirect to it or simply stop being maintained. Owning a domain costs almost nothing; running a campaign on it costs 1,788 USD a year at the base tier.
Can we start on the base tier and move up later, as in the example?
That is what the example describes, and it is a common shape: the first months go into reporting, keyword review and fixing whatever the on-site suggestions surface, none of which needs the steered tier. The sensible trigger for moving is a named person with approval time in their week, not a date.
Are the private-network slots worth taking at all?
Twenty a month at a dollar each is a modest, defensible commitment alongside real placements. Five hundred is a different proposition, and the warning above is meant literally: cheap bulk is the part of a link profile most likely to need cleaning up later. Buy the small step or none.
What does 5,187 USD come to in kronor?
It depends on the rate on the day you are invoiced, so treat any conversion as approximate and keep the budget line in dollars. Companies that convert once at the start of the year and then treat the figure as fixed spend the following autumn explaining a variance that was never a spending decision.
How soon should we expect the spend to show up in results?
First measurable movement typically appears after four to eight weeks, which means the first invoice or two arrive before any evidence does. Budget for that gap explicitly; campaigns are most often cancelled in month two, which is the month with the highest ratio of cost to visible outcome.
Decide the number of domains before you decide the tier
The two questions in front of a company reading this look like the same question and are not. Which tier to buy is a staffing question with a clear test: is there somebody who will approve keywords and review changes, or is there not. How many domains to buy is a structural question, and it is the one with the larger number attached, because it multiplies everything else on the invoice including the add-ons.
Answered in the right order, the arithmetic becomes straightforward. One domain, the tier that matches who is actually available, placements in the months when there is something to point them at, and a total that can be written down and checked — 5,187 USD in the worked example, or 1,788 if the year stays on the base tier. Answered in the wrong order it becomes 6,084 USD for a worse year, or 18,000 for three cold starts run properly. Earlier pieces on regional structure and measurement sit in the English blog, and the way to test any of these figures against your own site is to connect it and read the first keyword pool before committing to a tier: open the panel and price your own year.
