How Much To Charge for SEO

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luckyjJ

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Ok So a business owner wants me to get his site ranked for a few keywords. Doing some research it looks like I can get him ranked for these keywords. I've never done any kind of SEO services before, so what should I charge to get him ranked in the top 10?

Should I ask for upfront payment? Hope someone can help me with this! THANKS SO MUCH IM EXCITED!!! Maybe I found a new way to make money!!!! :)
 
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Ask for osme upfront since you can reverse all the hard work you will be putting in to rank him. And cost? Depends on how much work you will be doing, try look at the services on BHW and work out how much backlinking you will be doing and try work a price out for yourself.
 
Just estimate the hours spend on getting him ranked and set a price per hour. Easy.
 
I put my clients on a monthly plan. Usually with a setup fee equal to one month. They pay the month in advance, so I'm always paid for the work being done. Autopay = AMAZING.

I take a lot of factors into pricing. My costs (I outsource 99.9% of the work), time spent talking to the client, how much they are expecting to pay, how much traffic they will receive, how much they make off each of their clients, and a few others.

I usually go for 100-1000% markup on my costs, and they only take a few minutes of mine monthly.

Hope that helps, good luck, and congratulations on your first client.
 
Ok Guys.. first off.. I have no SEO service experience. I never really thought about doing any offline SEO services. My mom works at the company that has hired me to get ranked for a specific keyword. The guy didnt ask for any traffixc stats or anything like that.. All he knows is that he wants to get ranked for this keyword, which has VERY little competition (the site ranked 2 has like 36 backlinks). So im pretty sure I can get him ranked pretty quickly.

So unexpectedly I began speaking to him.. he told me what he wanted.. HE WANTS HIS SITE RANKED FOR THIS KEYWORD! I told him it will be $400.

$200 upfront $200 after hes ranked in the top 10...

I hope this is a fair price because it looks so easy to rank for. I think I got a good deal. Im so excited! Did I just get my first SEO client?
 
I charge a setup fee, plus 450 monthly and that is the basic package, when i first started doing seo, i charged pennies, but now, im able to charge what I do, becasue i have proven results.

find out what the site is going to take to get it where you want it, dont guarantee anything, just do what you know how to do.
 
luckyjJ said:
Ok Guys.. first off.. I have no SEO service experience. I never really thought about doing any offline SEO services. My mom works at the company that has hired me to get ranked for a specific keyword. The guy didnt ask for any traffixc stats or anything like that.. All he knows is that he wants to get ranked for this keyword, which has VERY little competition (the site ranked 2 has like 36 backlinks). So im pretty sure I can get him ranked pretty quickly.

So unexpectedly I began speaking to him.. he told me what he wanted.. HE WANTS HIS SITE RANKED FOR THIS KEYWORD! I told him it will be $400.

$200 upfront $200 after hes ranked in the top 10...

I hope this is a fair price because it looks so easy to rank for. I think I got a good deal. Im so excited! Did I just get my first SEO client?
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Thats ridiculously cheap! You should be atleast be charging him $500.00 a month and no guarantee.
 
Ok maybe I let him off cheap but this will give me experience and maybe lead to greater things! Im so excited.. time to fire up Scrapebox :):)
 
luckyjJ said:
Ok maybe I let him off cheap but this will give me experience and maybe lead to greater things! Im so excited.. time to fire up Scrapebox :):)
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Dude I really think you need A LOT more experience before you start ranking other people's sites, especially people you know (or someone in your family knows)...
 
Man make sure he knows these are blackhat SEO services if you're going to use scrapebox.

I'm a fan of the hourly rate, but you can do a monthly charge as well. The last agency I worked for pretty much brokered my services in a sense and charged about $17k/month.
 
Ha, I remember my first deal. It was $2250 (spread over 6 months), for a high competition keyword, and it was before I knew anything about SEO.

Worst of all, my "partner" took 50%, I had to pay my employees out of my cut, we had to get top 3 rankings for all 4 keywords, OR MONEY BACK.

Worst deal of my life. Granted, I got the job done, but the profit vs. risk was not worth it at all.

If it's low competition, you more than likely can do it for that much; especially if it's just one keyword. Even better you should still make a decent profit.

Unless you know what you are doing, I'd be careful with SB. I would suggest an outsourcer to build some high PR blog comments and maybe send an article or 2 out. If the competition is as low as you say, it shouldn't cost you more than $20-30 and the rest would be profit.

Best of all, once he's ranked, you will have proof your methods work, and a reference to give to other potential "employers."

Great work, and Good Luck.

TIP: Get a huge leg up, and do the on page optimization. One h1 tag, meta tags, and title tags. That's all you need to worry about in low comp.
 
joaquin112 said:
Dude I really think you need A LOT more experience before you start ranking other people's sites, especially people you know (or someone in your family knows)...
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It will be a piece of cake to rank for the keyword he wants. His domain is 10 years old his site is PR2 and the none of the competition is even optmized for the specific keyword he wants. Anyone with ANY sort of SEO knowledge can rank here.
 
Do you guys that do SEO have to talk to your clients on the phone? This is what's holding me back, I can't talk to people! I like to hide from people! lol The phone gives me anxiety and face to face is worse. Do you guys all have to talk to your clients on the phone at one time or another?? I prefer only ICQ or email. I am afraid if I get local clients they'll want to talk to me.
 
You have to get over that man. I prefer instant messaging as well, but I spend a lot of time on the phone. Just have faith that your knowledge will allow you to talk intelligently....you don't need to be Mr. Cool or come up with any social bullshit...you just need to speak about the task at hand.

Warn them beforehand that you are not a phone guy...make a little joke about it...and then get it over with. If you are that shitty on the phone...they will "get it" and not continue to demand it. All they really care about is that you can get them results. Can you?
 
freckletone said:
Do you guys that do SEO have to talk to your clients on the phone? This is what's holding me back, I can't talk to people! I like to hide from people! lol The phone gives me anxiety and face to face is worse. Do you guys all have to talk to your clients on the phone at one time or another?? I prefer only ICQ or email. I am afraid if I get local clients they'll want to talk to me.
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It's definitely tough at first, but once you get past one or two, its easy. Email is good, but usually people want to put a voice or a face to the person they are giving money to.

Whether it's phone or Skype, you will notice an huge increase in your closing rate. In person, my closing rates are even higher. Don't worry about what to say, just prepare questions before hand.

Think about how much money they will be giving you. Is it worth a 5-10 min phone call? More often than not, its worth it.


If you absolutely can't talk to clients on the phone, let's partner up. You find them, I'll talk, and do the SEO, and split it with you 50/50. You can even listen in on the phone calls to learn what to say. Training wheels.

Good luck though, finding the people is a lot harder than closing them.
 
englandrm said:
It's definitely tough at first, but once you get past one or two, its easy. Email is good, but usually people want to put a voice or a face to the person they are giving money to.

Whether it's phone or Skype, you will notice an huge increase in your closing rate. In person, my closing rates are even higher. Don't worry about what to say, just prepare questions before hand.

Think about how much money they will be giving you. Is it worth a 5-10 min phone call? More often than not, its worth it.


If you absolutely can't talk to clients on the phone, let's partner up. You find them, I'll talk, and do the SEO, and split it with you 50/50. You can even listen in on the phone calls to learn what to say. Training wheels.

Good luck though, finding the people is a lot harder than closing them.
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Nah, I think I would prefer to muster up the courage than split 50/50. I think overall I am good at what I do but mainly whitehat. I think I can get clients on my own if I set up site and then get ranked for my area and seo, for example "Los Angeles SEO" or "Orange County Seo", if I can get on the first page I think I can get local clients by myself so I'll try that first.

I think a lot of webmasters probably hate talking to people on the phone and that's probably why we choose to work on-line. At least, that's the case for me.
 
eyerish said:
You have to get over that man. I prefer instant messaging as well, but I spend a lot of time on the phone. Just have faith that your knowledge will allow you to talk intelligently....you don't need to be Mr. Cool or come up with any social bullshit...you just need to speak about the task at hand.

Warn them beforehand that you are not a phone guy...make a little joke about it...and then get it over with. If you are that shitty on the phone...they will "get it" and not continue to demand it. All they really care about is that you can get them results. Can you?
Click to expand...

I'm still in "practice", dunno if I would call myself an expert but I work f/t seo as a day job (it's all white hat and manual) and I think I do get good results. However most of our clients are in one niche so I'm used to that niche but I think I can get the same results with others.
 
luckyjJ said:
Ok maybe I let him off cheap but this will give me experience and maybe lead to greater things! Im so excited.. time to fire up Scrapebox :):)
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Say's the guy who's about to get his mom's bosses site removed from the google index... Lol.

If it's so easy to rank for, why would you use scrapebox? I have a feeling this is going to end badly.

But... You get what you pay for... and your mom's boss is about to learn this the hard way.
 
For clients' sites, whitehat is the way to go. That is unless you know what you're doing with blackhat.

For some of my clients that have 5+ year old sites, I don't even give a second thought to a link blast. Definitely gets them moving, and results are seen quick.

New sites are tough. I read about people blasting them and not having a problem. But you gotta worry about the sandbox, and IMO its better to work on the safe side.

Also be sure to check out place pages. Those can be ranked extremely easily in highly competitive markets. Check out the posts on here involving those.
 
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