How Much Does A Website Cost in Canada?

Here at Rad Websites one of the first questions people always ask us is how much does a Website cost? The truth is, the cost of building a website depends on your personal budget and goals. In this article, we’ll show you the ins and outs of building a website so not only you know the process but the entire process. Depending on the complexity of your website, for example, the number of pages, plugins you are using, the amount of custom coding you have, whether it’s an infomercial website or an ecommerce, your cost will fluctuate.

That isn’t why your here and that is not what you wanna here from the Rad Websites crew. Well here we take a rad stand. I will tell you what it costs. so you can plan and dream and then reach out when your ready.

A Rad developer can cost you anywhere between $150 and $180 USD per hour. While that may seem like a lot of money, is completely worth it because the end product will reflect you and your brand. We have all seen what a cheap website looks like and at Rad affordable and cheap are way different. Rad Websites thinks that anyone can have there dream site and we have a way to affordably get you there. Rad!

Having said that, Now I am going to tell you what you need (the ingredients) to build a website. this is all part and parcel to how much does a website cost in Canada, and at the end of this post, we’ll explain in detail our cost structure and even give you some tips on how you can save money and bring that cost down. (No Skipping To The End) So what do you need to build a website? Here is the ingredient list and the steps you should take.

Domain Name

At a very basic level, your domain name is your website’s address on the internet. It’s what your customers type into their browsers to access your website. Once you register a domain name with a company like CanHost, GoDaddy or Bluehost, you’ll get the right to use that name for your website for
however long your purchased it for. You are required to renew your domain every year that you have it. Domains unless you are purchasing premium are around $25 per year. you have to renew these after the term has expired.

*RadProtip Register your Domain for 10 Years. It the maximum allowed and it shows google you believe you are here to stay!

Web Hosting

Web hosting is like the home of your website. This is where you store the content and images of your website. When a visitor tries to access your website by typing in your web address, they’ll be directed to the website files stored on your web hosting server.
There are a lot of different types of web hosting services such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, cheap hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated server, just to name a few. When you’re starting out, we recommend you choose shared hosting or WordPress hosting because both are the best for most website owners in terms of affordability and needs. When your website becomes more popular, you might want to switch to dedicated hosting.
Cool (Basic) Hosting with Rad Websites is $185/yr
Awesome (Mid) Hosting with Rad Websites is $349/yr
Rad Hosting (Advanced) with Rad Websites is $549/yr

*RadProtip Host your website on Canadian soil. This protects your intellectual property and your clients from prying eyes

Website Builder or CMS

A website builder makes it easy to create a website the way you want it to look. There are many choices fisher price website builders (not made by fisher price)out there including – Shopify, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, read our blog on why to stay away from these companies or talk to AJ he will tell you.
Here at Rad Websites we always use and recommend WordPress. WordPress is the platform of choice for around 49% of all website owners. It gives you endless possibilities to create your website the way you want. It also gives you complete control over your website so you can customize it in both the front and back end. One of the key features of WordPress is it is free and open-source software so there are thousands of different tools to help you. Most Importantly and this is also the RadProTip, you own and control your website. No one else does, period.

*RadProtip Work With Rad Websites and WordPress and you always own and control your website.

Estimating the Cost Based on Your Goals

How to add it all together

Ok Now you know what the main ingredients are, but how do we get from that to a Rad Website,
Before I go on and to recap,

• • Decide on a domain $20 – $200
  • Choose your hosting package $185 – $549
  • Speak to a digital advisor at Rad Websites to determine what you need or decide what you can affordHourly $150 USD/hr
    

5 hour block $140/hr
10 hour block $135/hr
25 hour block $125/hr
50 hour block $100/hr

Don’t worry if your Canadian everything is priced in Canadian dollars

With this info your basic site cost including domain and hosting is about $1500 for 10 hours of dev time, add in the hosting package and choose your domain and you pretty much have the cost of a simple one pager.

*RadProtip it is about 8 – 10 hours of work per page of your website

Alright I digress, you may also want to consider just hiring Rad Websites or someone to do it for you. If that is the case, the first thing you should consider is what is the website going to be used for. If it’s just a placeholder then you probably don’t want to spend a ton of money, but if you’re going to put through hundreds of transactions a month, then it’s worth it to spending the extra money to make sure it can handle what you and your clients throw at you. Anyways,

Do You Need A Custom-Built Website?

Installing a pre-built WordPress theme is the easiest way to roll out a new website. Especially if you are going to do it yourself. It also helps you save on costs and looks amazing. The downside, normally with these is of course, is that your website won’t be super original and might even look similar to your competition. What we like to do is have you choose a theme that you like and then we build that theme from scratch with a builder, like wp Bakery or Elementor you can work with.

However, if you want to give a unique look and feel to your website, then you’ll have to build a custom WordPress theme. With a custom site, the sky is the limit. You can do whatever you want and add any type of element you can dream of. Whether this is worth the extra cost, well…
you’ll have to decide. The answer is yes. Next to consider is?

What Features Will You Need?

When starting out, you won’t need all the extra bells and whistles. Even though it may seem like you do. Start small, it’s essential to write down the list of features that you think you will need now and the ones you’ll need down the line. This helps you streamline the entire development process and focus on features that are of high priority (the stuff that will make your life easier and those that are just nice to have. When you hire a developer, it’s critical that you communicate which features are absolutely must-haves. However, keep in mind that these might just be personal preferences and might not be the same must-haves for the people visiting your website – your customers.

*RadProtip Meet with a digital advisor at Rad Websites is the easiest way to determine what you will need to be successful.

Does Your Website Need To Take Transactions?

If your website needs a portal to take transactions, it will probably increase the cost as it’s harder to develop an ecommerce website than an infomercial website. However, as more people are buying products online, it might be worth it to spend a little extra money and give your
customers the convenience of buying in their underwear. Ecommerce Online Stores, Come with a base set of 10 simple products.
SO if you take a 50 hour block you will have a Rad Website with basic ecommerce if that’s what you need and then adding each additional product is easy, its $15/ simple product and $30/ for variable product. So 10 more variable products, would add $300 and 100 more would be $1500 – $3000 depending again if they are simple products or variable

*RadProtip Variable products are products that have different sizes or colors or Flavors for example. Simple products are just that simple for example brown coffee table.

The Rad Websites Deal

Now I told you that I would show you how to save money on your website, didn’t I? At Rad Websites, we have a unique way of pricing our services. We generally bill our time in blocks of hours. We do this because our clients love the transparency, flexibility and control it allows.

If you live in Medicine Hat here is where you can save a lot of money on your project.
40% to be exact if you are a chamber of commerce member here you already get this discount!!
if you are not sign up now and you will get this discount on your project. that is an unprecedented $85/hr on any block of hours. Tell them you joined for your Rad discount on a website or just tell them AJ sent you.

Most of our pricing is peppered throughout this resource for you. if you don’t live in medicine hat that’s ok you can still get your costs down.
Rad Websites Hourly Rate is $150/hour USD, for both development and marketing.
If you purchase:
a 5-hour block of time that number goes down to 140/hour
a 10-hour block of time, drops the hourly even further to 135/hour. Purchasing a 25-hour block it drops to 120/hour. Purchasing a 50+ hour block gets our best available rate of $100/hour. Rad Websites wants your business to be online and we want it to be affordable we also have a slew of payment plans available so its not something you have to pay for all at once.

Rad Right? Like I said we tell you. now you can do it on your own if you like you know what you need to be successful or you can contact a digital advisor at Rad Websites. One more way we are making the world rad one website at a time. We look forward to bringing your business online.

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As if there wasn’t enough to add to SEO best practices, we want to touch on backlinks.
Okay, no- we really want to dive into backlinks, because they are just that important.
As Kelowna’s leading premier WordPress marketing agency, we work around the clock to boost our clients search engine ranking. Our toolbox is full – website development, content creation, keyword research, social stacking- but backlink building is always directly on our radar.
We’re not going to lie to you; even as SEO professionals, backlink building is hard. Backlinks are a huge part of SEO best practices, but take time and knowledge to build.

What are backlinks?

Referred to as “online citations”, backlinks are simply links to your website, or web resource, from an external website, or web source. Web sources can mean articles, directories, online archives etc. They act as a vouch of confidence for your website and content, both to users and search engines.
Backlinks are typically the hyperlinks you see in articles (you know, the clickable text underlined in blue) but can also be image tags, social stacking or listings.
Rad- we’ve got the textbook definitions out the way.
Now let’s talk about how backlinks are super essential for your website- and why.

Do Backlinks Improve SEO?

Yes. 100% they do.
Good quality, reputable backlinks boost your SERP pretty aggressively and actively contribute to your overall online marketing.
That’s why prior to Google’s Penguin algorithm update, SEO professionals around the globe were doing anything they could to gain backlinks.
Take a wild guess how Google felt about that. Let’s back up a little.
The obsession with backlinks began in response to Larry Page’s algorithm contribution- PageRank. This particular algorithm basically determined the order of search results- so who would show up or not. PageRank was the first algorithm ever used by Google to index sites and use this index to determine websites rankings.
Guess what PageRank focused super, super heavily on?
Backlinks. Once the cat was out of the bag, the frenzy of every SEO professional around to get as many backlinks as possible to boost their SERP ranking began.
It was seriously like wildfire. Experts starting bypassing the natural requirements of the algorithm- clean, quality backlinks, and creating backlink farms (as we cover later.)

So, how do backlinks help your SEO?

They are a prime example of speaking both to the user and search engines.

Backlinks and Linkjuice

Backlinks indicate trust, relevancy and authority to search engine crawlers. By another reputable site linking to yours, they are vouching for your site and letting Google know that “hey, they’re great.” It accelerates your exposure to Google bots and get your site indexed faster. Good quality backlinks produce “linkjuice” which is credible equity from one site to another. The more juice you have given to you, the stronger your site will perform in search results.
Kind of like, Redbull giving you wings. Popeye and spinach. You get the idea.

Boost Referral Traffic with Backlinks

Backlinks provide you with referral traffic. And who doesn’t want extra traffic to their website? Better yet, the traffic coming from these high quality backlinks is going to be pretty targeted and relevant to you. Free traffic is pretty rad. Search engines think so too- the more quality traffic you drive to your site, the more they notice you and the more likely they are to index you with a little love.

Rank Higher for Keywords with Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks, our little blue text links (or anchor links) even help with your specific keyword ranking. Google crawlers go as far as to see how much “support’ you have for any given keyword on your website’s pages. If they find your keyword relevant to the rest of you, it will boost your exposure on that single key term as well.
Backlinks aren’t all for the search engine though. Remember- there’s a user on the other end of the computer.

Backlinks Help You Get Seen

Backlinks give you great brand recognition and exposure. They act as somewhat of a review- a link to your site from a credible site will not only promote your brand but also – again- vouch to the user that your website is A-Okay. Repeated mention of your website throughout credible sources just adds to brand recognition; people see your brand and begin to recognize it within their online experiences.

Don’t Resort to Backlink Farming

Backlink farming is the very reason Google’s Penguin update ever came into effect.
Like we mentioned earlier, SEO experts were desperate to get hundreds of backlinks for their site once the ball dropped on PageRank- Google’s first algorithm for ranking that focused lots on backlinks.
Of course, deceptions of this algorithm were pretty easy to brew up (likely why Google stays so hush-hush about their algorithms nowadays.) By creating networks of spam websites and directories with the sole purpose of all linking to each other, paying your way into hundreds of unearned backlinks became a widely used tactic in every level of SEO out there.
That’s where the ability for site crawlers to determine the quality of the links, not just the number of them, was born.
And it’s fair. Reputable backlinks are built on trust, relationship building and genuine online presence.
Backlink farming is still a grey area. While giant networks and rings are easy to define as backlink farms, there are operating businesses out there that offer backlinks in return for pay. Crowned “black hat SEO”, buying backlinks poses as “backlink strategy growth” and still remains…..questionable.
Buying backlinks might grab you some short term SERP rankings. You might even get away with it for a while and see a huge change in your website analytics and rankings. But once Google figures you out, you can kiss goodbye to your growth – buying backlinks is a direct violation of Google’s advertising code.
Listen, don’t shoot the messenger, ok? Buying backlinks is so much easier than organically building them and can seem like a great option for those wanting to really boost their site.
We get it, honestly we do. But it’s really not worth it.
Organically growing backlinks takes time and effort, but it will pay off.

How to Build Backlinks- Naturally

Now, we can’t let our own cat out of the bag and give away all the secrets.
But, here’s some practices you can undertake to start building an army of reputable backlinks:
Add links on all your social media profiles – (hey, social stacking!)
Monitor your best performing posts and pages, and expand them routinely.
Create content that is useful and exciting to a reader- content that helps them solve a problem and share it among their networks for the same reason
Off page, build relationships with influencers, industry leaders and bloggers to trade valuable backlinks. Believe it or not, you can also strategically work with your competitors to do the same thing!
Monitor your competitors backlinks, and look to see if you can also be placed within those sources as well.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly changing and improving. Gone are the days where you could rank a website in a couple of weeks just by stuffing your content full of keywords and using spamy backlink practices. Google’s algorithm has gotten smarter and the nature of Google searches have begun to change, resulting in the need for SEO technicians to change with it. So we decided to highlight the top 5 Biggest SEO Changes in 2019 so far

Why SEO is constantly changing?

We need to think about SEO from Google’s perspective – not from business owners who want to rank on page one. At the end of the day, Google is a business and it’s in the business of connecting its users to information and products. Right now Google is dominating the market with more than 90% of all search engine traffic. The remaining ten percent is reserved for Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
Google has been able to dominate because it has been relentless in innovating to give the best possible search results for any given query. In laymen’s terms, they give the people what they want. In order to sustain Google’s dominance, it needs to continue to innovate. If it doesn’t, users will look to alternative search engines. While this may seem crazy – think about how Google seamlessly integrates with our lives – Google can lose market share.

Here are some of the important SEO areas to consider:

1. Voice search

This trend is going to be far the most disruptive. As more and more users switch from desktop to mobile, and the use of smart home devices such as Google Home, Alexa, and Apple Home Pod are increasing, more people are turning to voice search because it’s quicker and easier, especially for multitaskers.
Back in 2016, Google said about 20% of searches on mobile were carried out by voice. By 2020, Google forecasts around 50% of all over searches will be voice-based. This will give rise to a higher number of long-tail keywords and hyperlocal searches.
Typed searches and voice searches are different – you speak differently than you type – and so optimization strategies will also differ. for Voice search, you need to think about more conversational natural language and local searches as well as ensuring that websites are mobile-friendly.

2. User experience

Google’s algorithm has become more sophisticated in order to provide better, more relevant results to its users. Google now counts user experience and user engagement among its key metrics for SEO rankings. This is because user experience is a great indicator of the quality of a website or a piece of content.
While we don’t know exactly how Google measures user experience, one of the key metrics is a high bounce rate which indicates to Google that the result was not useful, or what the user was looking for. There are many other user experience metrics that signal poor or low quality such as dwell time, average session duration, page views, etc. All of these combined communicate to Google a picture of the quality of your website as a whole. Google’s aim is to provide better and quick, and more relevant results to users. As you build your website, keep this in mind. How can you provide serve your audience? It is a question you should be asking anyway, but I suggest putting it on a sticky note on your computer to always keep it top of mind.

3. Quality content

“Content is king” is a much-used phrase and nothing new, it is still relevant today as it ever was. You simply cannot let your content fall by the wayside. You need to create your content in line with how it will affect your user metrics, in other words, providing useful content that people will want to read. Moreover, you don’t need everybody to read it – just your ideal target market.
Ask yourself questions such as:

• Does it add something useful and new to other content on this topic?
• Does it answer important questions in your industry?
• Can you link this article to other pages or other websites to increase overall pageviews?
• Answering questions or adding incites in a way that provides most value to your readers?

If you can answer most or all of these questions, Google is happy because their users are happy.

4. Local SEO Content

If you’ve followed SEO practices, you know the importance of local SEO will increase in importance over the next few years. The importance of local search will continue to grow with 46% of searches on Google already having local intent – searches like restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores will become more competitive as more local businesses become SEO-savvy. Moreover, almost every local search converts into a sale, making it extremely important for small businesses.

Here are some things to consider:

Basic factors like the ‘RDP’ will remain the same.
(R) Relevance means how well your business listing matches with the user’s intent
(D) Distance measures how far the searcher is from the business when the search is made. Businesses nearest to the searcher will be ranked higher.
(P) Prominence measures the popularity of the business both in the offline and online world

5) Artificial intelligence (AI)

AI will give Google the power to improve their algorithms exponentially, customizing searches for the individual. The need to collect and analyze user data in order to obtain intelligent proposals for searches is and will remain extremely important for Google.
Since 2015, Google has been working on a self-learning algorithm called “Rankbrain”. Which takes care of search queries that have never been made before. Which allegedly accounts for 15 percent of all queries. In addition, Google also has come out with a feature called “Google Duplex” which actually makes calls for you and sets up appointments. This feature is not only great for consumers, but likely collects data on the user which will then customize searches for them.
It is important to familiarize yourself with AI as soon as possible. And to experiment with it in terms of SEO. In the near future, AI will help Google get even better at reading text, understanding testimonials and taking them into account when evaluating websites. So, AI is also included in the list of Biggest SEO Changes of 2019.

Takeaways

The nature of SEO is that it is constantly evolving. In order to stay on top of your search engine rankings and ensure you are driving as much traffic to your website as possible, you need to be aware of the trends. The key takeaway should always keep serving your customers or audience better than your competition. And you’ll always increase your ranking since Google will take notice. So, these are the Biggest SEO Changes of 2019, If you want our SEO expert services, feel free to Contact us.

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SEO Changes in 2018 So Far

1. Relevance 2.0

Increasingly, it’s getting harder to convince Google you have great content. There are a number of ways Google assesses content quality, one of them being Latent Semantic Indexing. By looking at millions of websites and keywords used in them, Google learns which terms are related and builds expectations as to the terms that are likely to appear in a given context. This helps Google decide whether a piece of content is “comprehensive.”

What Can You Do About It?

How do you make sure your content is actually useful to readers? By researching the top-ranking pages in your niche and looking for the features they share. You should also spend some serious time and money on creating amazing content.

2. The Rise Of Snippet Features

Are you assuming organic ranking is the way to get as much traffic as possible? Increasingly featured snippets are stealing searchers’ attention and clicks from organic listings.

What Can You Do About It?

With the evolution of snippet features, it’s critical that you track your rankings within these features, and monitor the features that show up for your keywords and are potentially stealing traffic from you. You can do this with a few different SEO tracking tools that will enhance your organic results.

3. Website Speed

How fast your website loads is increasingly important. But how fast is fast, exactly? Google expects pages to load in under three seconds. Yes, three seconds! That means you should always be testing and ensuring your website isn’t slowed down by heavy videos or bad hosting.

What Can You Do About It?

The first step you should take is Google’s page speed test. The test is integrated into Website Auditor and available in its free version. Just launch Website Auditor and create a project. Jump to Content Analysis and specify the page you’d like to test. In a moment, you’ll see a selection of on-page factors calculated for you.

4. Voice Search Is The Real Deal

Although in terms of SEO, Voice search is relatively new, it is gaining a lot of traction and will continue to be a big deal in the next couple of years, if not longer. Google reports that 55 percent of teens and 40 percent of adults use voice search daily; and. Voice search calls for a whole new keyword research routine: Voice searchers use normal, conversational sentences instead of the odd-sounding query lingo.

What can you do about it?

Again there are a couple of great tools to help you research which questions people are searching using voice. You should be doing your keyword research and make sure your website is in all your local directories. Location is going to be key. Talk to your SEO expert to find out what they are doing to get ready for voice search.

5. Mobile First

With the rise of voice search, over half of Google searches coming from mobile devices, the impending mobile-first index, and mobile-friendliness being a ranking factor, you simply can’t afford to ignore mobile SEO anymore.

What Can You Do About It?

It should be given by now that all your pages are mobile-friendly. Google’s mobile test is available in Website Auditor, under Content Analysis. Enter the URL of the page you’d like to test, switch to Technical factors, and scroll down to Page usability (Mobile).

6. Useless Backlinks

For years, links have been the trust signal for search engines — one that SEOs spent the most time on optimizing. But times are changing, and websites that have useless or are stuffing backlinks into their content won’t be ranked as highly on search engines.

What Can You Do About It?

In addition to a backlink checker, use a web monitoring tool to find mentions of your brand and products. You should be taking any useless links down as Google will penalize you for this.

Conclusion

If you have any questions about SEO changes or the upcoming trends give us a call at PLUR. We are happy to help you achieve Google greatness!

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