AutoSEO or FullSEO: What an Automated Campaign Costs Across a State Line
Both tiers are priced per domain, which sounds like a footnote until you notice how many firms here run two sites — one for North Carolina, one for the South Carolina side. At that point the pricing page stops being a menu and becomes a decision about whether the smaller market deserves its own budget.
The published figures are simple enough. AutoSEO is $149 per month per domain. FullSEO is $500 per month per domain. Two add-ons sit alongside them, sold in slots. Everything difficult about the decision comes from the words "per domain" and from a state line fifteen minutes south of uptown.
Why the billing unit is the first thing to settle
A campaign is attached to a domain. Not to a company, not to a service area, not to a license. That is a reasonable way to sell the work, because a domain is what gets crawled, ranked and linked to. It also means a firm holding two Carolina licenses and two websites is buying two campaigns, and a firm that consolidated onto one site is buying one.
Neither arrangement is automatically right. A single domain covering both states concentrates every link and every page into one property, which is usually stronger. Two domains let each side carry its own licensing language, its own phone number and its own local proof, which converts better and occasionally is required by how the entities are registered. What matters for this article is that the second arrangement doubles the subscription line before a single keyword is chosen.
The two levels, described plainly
AutoSEO — nobody has to drive it
Suited to a property that currently gets no attention, where steady work beats the present nothing.
- Discovery and ordering happen without you. Candidates are proposed for approval, rejection or parking. Left untouched, the campaign proceeds on its own ranking of them.
- Link placement is continuous. Inventory runs past 230,000 partner sites, and nobody at your end picks the targets.
- Page-level advice is issued, not applied. Expansion candidates and internal links get flagged; putting them live stays with you.
- Full analytics and a live chat are included. Search Console data, rank tracking and an assistant bound to the project sit in the same workspace.
FullSEO — the same engine with the controls exposed
For a domain where somebody knows which counties, licenses and services actually pay.
- You choose the terms, with a safety net. Manual selection is yours; should the queue sit unreviewed, automatic selection carries on, so nothing stalls while you are out on a job.
- Links aimed at a Domain Rating you name. Instead of taking whichever donor surfaces first, placement is directed at a stated authority level.
- On-site edits pass through human review. Approval precedes publication, and a team of specialists, developers and writers stands behind the automated part.
- Everything in the lower tier, unchanged. The analytics, the network and the assistant are identical; what differs is who decides.
The gap is $351 a month per domain, or $4,212 across a year. Framed as a percentage it looks enormous; framed against one commercial job it usually does not. The honest test is whether anybody in the company will actually use the controls, because an unused control is worth nothing and a firm paying for judgment it does not exercise is buying the cheaper tier at a higher price. Both levels of the campaign module sit beside the same analytics, so the decision can be revisited once you have a quarter of evidence.
Two purchases that sit on top of the subscription
Wikipedia slots
Bought in fixed quantities alongside either tier, on whichever domain you attach them to.
- Four quantities, nothing in between. None, one, five or ten. At five slots the line is $50 a month; at ten it is $100.
- Attached to a domain, like everything else. Slots bought for the North Carolina site do not carry across to the South Carolina one.
- Small relative to the subscription. Even the largest quantity is a fifth of the lower tier's monthly price, which is why it rarely decides a budget.
PBN slots
The cheapest line on the invoice and the one most often bought for the wrong reason.
- Four steps at a dollar each. Twenty comes to $20 monthly, a hundred to $100, and five hundred to $500 — matching a whole FullSEO subscription.
- The top step is a budget decision, not a detail. At five hundred slots the add-on has quietly become the largest line for that domain.
- Quantity is the only thing the slider changes. It buys more placements. It does not buy better ones, and the two are not interchangeable.
Where the terms come from and who signs them off
Both tiers work from the same pool, assembled from three places. Your verified Search Console property supplies terms you already appear for, including plenty nobody in the office would have guessed. Live results readings supply terms the market uses whether or not you rank for them. And you supply seed terms — the phrasing you know from quotes, invoices and phone calls.
Every candidate is then handled individually. Approve it, reject it, or set it aside for later. That per-term decision is where local knowledge enters a process that is otherwise automatic, and in this metro it is where the state line first appears in the work.
Demand you cannot legally serve
A term naming a South Carolina town, sitting in the pool of a domain licensed only in North Carolina.
- Effort spent on calls you decline
Terms belonging to the other domain
Setting aside is not rejection. It records that the term matters, on a different property.
- Review the parked list quarterly
The metro name, on both sides
Buyers in Fort Mill and Indian Land search the metro name constantly, so the pools overlap more than the licensing does.
- Both domains can hold it
Lists rather than single terms
Keyword and URL lists go to Stream in batches, which suits a portfolio holding one page per town across two states.
- Filter the feed by type
What actually changes when you move up
The upgrade is not a bigger engine. It is the same engine with three manual overrides made available, each of which can be left switched off.
| Decision | AutoSEO | FullSEO | Who this matters to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which keywords are worked | Chosen automatically | Chosen by you, with automatic fallback | Firms whose profitable work is narrow |
| Where links come from | Network chooses | Aimed at a Domain Rating target | Anyone needing authority on a specific page |
| On-site changes | Suggested, you implement | Human review before anything goes live | Regulated trades and licensed professions |
| What happens if nobody reviews | Nothing to review | Automatic selection carries on | Owner-operated firms with no marketing staff |
The last row deserves attention because it removes the usual risk of buying a hands-on tier. In most tools, manual control means the campaign halts when the person responsible is busy. Here the automatic selection stands behind your list, so an unreviewed queue slows the campaign rather than stopping it. That single behavior is what makes the higher tier defensible for a contractor whose review window is Sunday evening.
Does the smaller side of the line justify its own tier?
This is the question that actually gets argued about in Charlotte-area offices, and it has a real answer per firm rather than a general one.
Start with what the second domain is for. If the South Carolina site exists because a separate legal entity holds the South Carolina license, it is not a marketing choice and it stays. If it exists because somebody bought a competitor in Rock Hill in 2019 and never merged the sites, it is a marketing choice, and consolidating would concentrate authority rather than dividing it.
When the entities really differ
Separate licenses, separate insurance, separate phone numbers, and buyers who need to see their own state named before they call.
- Two subscriptions, unavoidably
- Tier can differ between them
When the split is historical
One company, one license covering both, two sites left over from an acquisition or a rebrand nobody finished.
- One subscription instead of two
- Redirect once, never in chains
Different tiers per side
The larger market gets the controls; the smaller one runs automatically until it earns the argument for more.
- $500 plus $149 per month
- Reviewed after two quarters
Neither, for now
A second site with no pages worth ranking is not a campaign problem. Publish something on it first, then subscribe.
- Spend the money on writing
- Revisit in one quarter
Where two domains genuinely stay, the asymmetric option is usually right, and the arithmetic for the smaller side is straightforward. Twelve months of the lower tier on the South Carolina domain is $1,788. Suppose an average job invoices at $1,400 and carries a 35 percent gross margin, which is $490 of contribution per job. Just under four jobs across the year covers the subscription, and a fraction over four covers it once the add-ons are counted. Whether four incremental jobs from that side of the line is plausible is a question the owner can answer in ten seconds, and it is a far better question than arguing about tiers in the abstract.
A constructed twelve-month plan, worked through
Take an electrical contractor based in Pineville, residential and light commercial, licensed in both Carolinas. The main domain covers the North Carolina counties. A second domain, inherited with a small Rock Hill firm, covers York and Lancaster. Both stay, because the licenses and the phone numbers genuinely differ.
The plan starts both domains on the lower tier while the keyword pools are built and reviewed, then moves the main domain up from the fourth month once there is something to exercise the controls on.
| Line | Months 1–3 | Months 4–12 | Twelve-month total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main domain — subscription | AutoSEO, $149 × 3 = $447 | FullSEO, $500 × 9 = $4,500 | $4,947 |
| Main domain — Wikipedia slots | 0 slots, $0 | 5 slots, $50 × 9 = $450 | $450 |
| Main domain — PBN slots | 20 slots, $20 × 3 = $60 | 100 slots, $100 × 9 = $900 | $960 |
| SC domain — subscription | AutoSEO, $149 × 3 = $447 | AutoSEO, $149 × 9 = $1,341 | $1,788 |
| SC domain — PBN slots | 0 slots, $0 | 20 slots, $20 × 9 = $180 | $180 |
| Combined | $954 | $7,371 | $8,325 |
The main domain accounts for $6,357 of that and the South Carolina domain for $1,968. Subscriptions alone come to $6,735; the two add-ons contribute $1,590. Averaged across the year the whole program runs at $693.75 a month, which is less than one domain on the higher tier with a large PBN quantity attached.
Two comparisons put the figure in context. Running both domains on the lower tier for the full year, with no add-ons at all, costs $3,576. Running both on the higher tier for the full year, again before add-ons, costs $12,000. The staged plan lands between them, and the $5,265 saved against the all-in version is the difference between paying for controls from day one and paying for them once there was something to control.
Timing, and who each tier is for
First measurable movement typically arrives between the fourth and eighth week. That is movement, not results: terms shifting position, new pages getting requested, impressions appearing where there were none. Revenue attributable to any of it sits further out, and in trades with long consideration cycles — commercial electrical work, insurance restoration, anything requiring three quotes — considerably further.
- Weeks one to eight. Pools assembled, terms approved or rejected, first placements made, baseline recorded. Judge the setup here, not the outcome.
- Months three to six. Position movement becomes readable and the keyword dynamics view shows terms crossing thresholds rather than drifting.
- Months six to twelve. Enough history to compare like with like, and the first honest opportunity to argue about tiers with evidence instead of opinion.
As for who each tier suits: the lower one fits a domain that currently receives no attention at all, a second property covering the smaller side of the border, or any firm whose profitable work is broad enough that automatic prioritization will not miss it. The higher one fits a domain where the profitable work is narrow and specific, where authority needs to land on particular pages, and where somebody is genuinely willing to review a queue. The workspace holding both keeps every property behind one login, filtered globally by site tag, and one property alone can be handed to an outside address where a consultant looks after just that side of the border.
Questions that come up while budgeting
Can one subscription cover both of our domains?
No. Pricing is per domain at both tiers, and the add-on slots are attached to a domain as well. Two properties mean two subscriptions, though they need not be at the same tier and both appear in one workspace.
Should we buy the largest PBN quantity since it is only a dollar a slot?
No. Five hundred slots is $500 a month, the same as an entire FullSEO subscription, and volume is not the same thing as quality. Start at a lower quantity, watch what the placements are actually worth in your reports, and increase only when the evidence supports it.
What happens if nobody reviews the keyword queue for a month?
On the higher tier the automatic selection continues behind your manual list, so the campaign keeps working rather than stalling. You lose the benefit of your own judgment for that period, which is the real cost, but nothing sits idle.
Can we move between tiers, or add slots, later in the year?
Yes, and the worked example above is built around exactly that. The tier is a setting on the domain and the slot quantities are chosen from fixed steps, so a plan can start conservatively and change once there is a quarter of data behind the argument.
Our South Carolina site has four pages. Is it worth subscribing?
Probably not yet. A campaign amplifies what exists; four thin pages give it almost nothing to work with. Spend a quarter writing the licensing facts, the counties covered and a handful of real project write-ups, then subscribe with something worth ranking.
The arithmetic on this page is not complicated, and that is deliberate. Two subscription prices, two add-ons sold in fixed steps, multiplied by however many domains your licensing arrangement obliges you to run. Everything genuinely difficult is upstream of the pricing: whether the second site should exist, which terms belong to which side of the border, and whether anyone in the building will use the controls the higher tier exposes.
Get those settled and the budget writes itself. Worked examples from other campaigns sit on our blog, and the engagements themselves are described under what we do. When you are ready to see real figures instead of a constructed table, connect the domains and build the keyword pool before choosing a tier. The first approval pass usually settles the argument on its own — either the profitable terms are narrow enough that somebody clearly needs to be choosing them, or they are not, and the cheaper tier was always the right answer.