As the thread title explains I am wondering how you structure your pricing and what it includes.

For example there are alot of things that can be done to help a clients online presence.

On Page SEO and Content
Off Page SEO- Link building (white and black hat) link pyramids, article marketing, blog comments, forum posts, social bookmarks, Vidoes etc...
Social Media- Facebook, Twitter, Linkden etc...

Do you offer a flat fee for all of those service or do you you charge per "unit" for lack of a better term. As an example if you promise to do social media, I feel as it would take significant time to do everyday. You have the fan page creation, the posts to the fan page, getting fans for the fan page all which lead to additional time and cost. Of course you then have the task of trying to work on their rankings...

Let me know if you guys have a "plan" on how you package these services together.

Hi,

I think the best thing is to provide custom-solution to each client.
I mean you can't charge for social bookmarking, forum profiles etc those days because fiverr..

I think you should provide like 2 or 3 packages - like complete video promotion, social media or linkwheel for example (don't use generic name, promote your own tactics - prefer 'LinkPWN 2.0' to 'Linkpyramid' for example)

And encourage your client to ask your opinion regarding their website, based on this you can bring them a custom home-made solution (on page+off page) to boost their rank or w/e and charge much more $$.

Kind regards.

I found these interesting posts in Taktikal thread:

In order to be able to work out a potential ROI for your client you will need some data. I think ROAS (same as ROI but stands for Return on advertising spend) is very important and alot of SEO companies don't realise how important ROAS is for a client.

The only time I calculate ROAS is if the client himself has data for me to use. There's no point calculating an approximate ROI with guess work figures.

Normally, I demonstrate two things to an SEO client.

1) How much he's saving from opting to carry out SEO as opposed to PPC. How do you work this out?

From the nominated keywords, input them into Adword Tools and look at the estimated cost per click and traffic. Export them to CSV and calculate the TOTAL traffic and AVERAGE CPC (use the "=AVERAGE(cell:cell)"). Once you have these figures, multiply TOTAL Traffic by 0.1 (10% Click Through Rate), and then multiply by AVERAGE CPC. This will tell them how much traffic they would gain on average, and what the cost would be. I've used 10% CTR in this instance as a rough figure. CTR will vary depending on where you are positioned, whether you're an e-commerce site or not, how good your ad copy is, and a few other things - if you want more info on this, google it - there's tons of info surrounding how to improve CTR or what average CTR's are)

One I calculated earlier for 10 keywords it would work out to just over 5000 visits per month at a cost of roughly $32,000.
That's alot of money for 5000 visitors to their website, it would seem. The next thing is to work out the lifetime value of a customer in their industry. To save time, let's just say the lifetime value of a customer is $100.

Final thing we need to work out is conversion rate. Again if you don't have data, look at the averages for their industry or make an educated guess. Conversion rates can vary between 1 - 12%. Of course they can be higher but this is the normal bracket.

So, now what we need to do is multiply 5000 x .12 x 100 = 60,000. This would mean that from an investment of 32,000 in PPC the customer would gain :

((60,000 - 32,000)/ 32,000) x 100 = 87.5% ROI

So they know by carrying out PPC they will get an approximate return of 87.5% (providing things are done properly).

Let's do it for SEO...

Same 10 Keywords, Same everything only that SEO Spend will be far lower and it will take more time i.e it is not instantaneous. Lets say for 10 keywords for a moderately competitive market where we need to carry out 1 time onsite optimisation which costs $1000 in month 1, we also need to setup Social Media sites and carry out some Social Media Marketing (since Social Media plays a significant role in SEO and has been included as a ranking signal) - this costs us $1000 to setup, and we also decide to allocate about $3000 (overkill if you're using grayhat methods for linkbuilding) for linkbuilding for 10 keywords. Means they are spending 5000 Month 1, and then 3000 thereafter. We work out the average spend across a 12 month campaign ((5000 + (3000 x 11))/12 = 3167 dollars basically.

So we now assume that it will take roughly 6 Months to rank for those 10 keywords top 3 (providing you know your shit) which means that there will be a gradual increase in traffic throughout (if you're doing your job right) and at month 6 we get a 25% CTR (according to the enquiro heatmap study if you're at the top of the golden triangle) of 50000 visits which is basically 12500 a month(10% CTR of 50,000 visits is 5000 visits a month for the PPC calculation earlier). Fact of the matter is, CTR is higher in Organic results so this should be made clear to them when you are explaining or if they ask. Normally they will ask for a clarification of why it is higher.


12500 visits x $100 x .12% = $150,000 (wait for it)

To make it fair if you now divide month 6 cost by the revenue you will get a ridiculously high ROI, so the best thing to do here is to factor in whatever it cost to get the client there. So the logical thing to do is to multiply the average monthly cost of the SEO by the amount of time you anticipate it will take them to rank. Here you can also tell them that there will be a gradual increase in traffic but you have completely overlooked the revenue they will earn from this gradual monthly increase in traffic.

SO ROI FOR SEO IS: (($150,000 - $19,000) /$19,000) x 100 = 689.5% ROI.

Pretty darn good ROI if you ask me....Where do I sign??

Anyway sorry if some of it doesn't make sense. This is definitely a good way to indicate what kind of ROI the client should be expecting.

The only figures you might have trouble obtaining are the Conversion rate average for the sector or their business, and the customer lifetime value. If it so happens that this data is not available then think about it logically and make an educated guess, and don't over compensate ever. Real ROI's of 2000+ have been achieved by some through SEO depending on their sector but anything lower than 300 and I'd consider re-evaluating how you worked it out.

Anyway hope this helps. Although Taktikal has been most helpful with all the information he's provided (and motivated me to market my online marketing services more) I think his explanation on ROI was a little lacking and felt a more comprehensive one would be useful to all of you who will soon (fingers crossed) be in contact with prospective clients who I believe will ask you shit like what will the ROI be on the Services you are offering them.

Good luck guys.

Ok so been going through that post over the past half hour and condensing into pure math equations. I think these are right. Haven't had a chance to run numbers through them to double check yet.

K= # of Keywords
CTR= Click Through Rate (0.1)
T=Traffic
ACPC= Average Cost Per Click
V= Visits
CR= Conversion Rate (0.12)
R= Revenue
C= Cost
LV= Lifetime Value of Customer


PPC ROI Calculations

V= T x CTR
R= V x CR x LV
C= ACPC x K
PPC ROI = ((R - C)/ C) x 100

SEO ROI Calculations

V= T x CTR
R = V x CR x LV
C = 12months Cost / 12
SEO ROI = ((R - C) / C) x 100

My next step is to create an interactive excel spreadsheet for these calculations so it is a simple task to work these out for a client.

If people would be interested in this spreadsheet let me know and I'll pop it up here on BHW for everyone

Yes, Pazalaza. Thank you for your generosity!

In the beginning of this year i've helped setting up an SEO company. The pricing was the toughest to decide. We went like this: local, national, intentional kw. And each kw had a specific number of hours. If the client wanted more he could buy extra hours. And the catch was that there was a maintenance fee which was 1/3 of the original hours. Hope this helps.

Heh that second quote of equations was my work.

There's another thread in offline marketing with the excel spreadsheet if your interested

Originally Posted by Dr_Scythe

Heh that second quote of equations was my work.

There's another thread in offline marketing with the excel spreadsheet if your interested

Do you happen to remember the name of that thread? That was a very very good open method to really show clients how good their investments may be figuratively!

When charging offline clients for SEO, I built an automated system that calculates what I should be charging based on a number of different variables.