How Much To Charge for SEO

HarYpoS · Mar 9, 2011

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.

Well before I started my web development and seo company, I owned another business, so being face to face, and developing that sales skill, was something i brought over, now given clients that are not in a radius i can meet in person, i just talk to on the phone.

But generally if they are a local customer, I meet with them in person, go over some of the reports we emailed them the day before and present to them what we can do, as well as what we have already done, with other websites.

Face to Face sales close almost always, i push for face to face if i can get it!

freckletone · Mar 9, 2011

AquaClean said:
Well before I started my web development and seo company, I owned another business, so being face to face, and developing that sales skill, was something i brought over, now given clients that are not in a radius i can meet in person, i just talk to on the phone.

But generally if they are a local customer, I meet with them in person, go over some of the reports we emailed them the day before and present to them what we can do, as well as what we have already done, with other websites.

Face to Face sales close almost always, i push for face to face if i can get it!

aaaahhh I hate face to face! I live in a pretty wealthy area with lots of businesses so I'm pretty sure there are tons of businesses willing to spend on good seo here but face to face is a killer. That's worse than phone!

suave · Mar 9, 2011

great way of taking auction
Regards
Suave

chakde · Mar 9, 2011

englandrm said:
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.

Just out of interest what would you consider high competition and low competition, in terms of keyword searches per month?

freckletone · Mar 9, 2011

chakde said:
Just out of interest what would you consider high competition and low competition, in terms of keyword searches per month?

I'm quite curious about this too

englandrm · Mar 9, 2011

chakde said:
Just out of interest what would you consider high competition and low competition, in terms of keyword searches per month?

Again, it's hard to say. Over time, you can definitely see a market and figure about how much work is going to be needed.

Searches per month, are part of it, but not really a big part. Just make sure there are enough searches to make it worth going after.

The current standing of the clients site. PR, Backlinks to the domain, Backlinks to the page, domain age, and on page SEO.

The current top 10. Same thing, PR, Backlinks, age, and On Page SEO.

Compare your client's site to the top 10.

A great tool for this is Market Samurai. A quick 30 seconds for full keyword competition analysis.

> Another way, that I've used before, but don't use much.

If you use the Google Keyword Tool, search "keyword tool" and pick the first result, they also have a competition score. I'm assuming it's based on something that is worth paying attention to. It's on a scale of 0-1.0, with 0 being low comp and .99 being high.

You can also find out searches per month, related keywords, CPC prices, and a few other data points.

>

MS is definitely worth the investment though, if you plan on doing SEO.

cloakndagger · Mar 9, 2011

Don't be fooled by 36 links in low comp.You seem to have little experience.I would go to fiverr and get an SENUKE blast which is a safe social bookmarking style blast with maybe an article thrown in.Buy AMR and do a SMALL(300 pr4 higher) article blast.That should do it if you've guessed right.I've used a guy on fiverr for AMR(it's what made me buy it with the results I saw) pm if you want his name.It's $5 for the article and another $5 to spin so it's 2 gigs,so for potentially $15 you could have the job sewn up.If you're serious though I'd buy AMR as a matter of course.Scrapebox as well.
You do not need to use scrapebox to blast but to find some hight PR blogs to post a manual quality comment.

Oops ,forgive me,congrats on bagging your first deal!

dannyhw · Mar 10, 2011

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.

I'm kind of the same way. But at the same time, when I got my first job with an agency I went from sitting in my house alone all day to regular phone calls with CEOs of banks, insurance companies, investment firms, stuff like that. It honestly wasn't that bad, because you're talking about search engines.

joe0074 · Mar 10, 2011

You should charge $200/month for maintenance fee as well.
This is a recurring income, man.

Be careful, if you can't get his website ranked on page 1, your mom will be fired !
Just kidding ha ha ha

Vectorius · Mar 10, 2011

I would agree with the amount of $200 per month. This is such a benefit to the customer, and believe me, they will know it!

freckletone · Mar 10, 2011

dannyhw said:
I'm kind of the same way. But at the same time, when I got my first job with an agency I went from sitting in my house alone all day to regular phone calls with CEOs of banks, insurance companies, investment firms, stuff like that. It honestly wasn't that bad, because you're talking about search engines.

I also work for an agency but I don't have to talk to people because we have a department that deals with that. So I get to just do SEO and SEO only.

damzrox · Mar 10, 2011

Does anybody know how to handle refund requests with SEO services? lets say I did the SEO work and next month customer request a refund.. or opening a paypal despute.. how to handle these as SEO is a service?

englandrm · Mar 10, 2011

damzrox said:
Does anybody know how to handle refund requests with SEO services? lets say I did the SEO work and next month customer request a refund.. or opening a paypal despute.. how to handle these as SEO is a service?

You gotta have it in the contracts. My clients pay on a month to month basis.

They are on auto-pay, but it specifically says if they want to cancel, they need to contact me, in writing, by the 22nd of the previous month.

I send out the Ranking Reports on the 18th, and the invoice the 24th.

It's worked for me so far.

TNphoneman · Mar 10, 2011

CYAWP

Cover Your Ass With Paperwork

No refunds after the work has started.

rocket · Mar 10, 2011

I typically charge a setup fee, then offer two packages:

1. get them into the top 5 in 8 wks. or less (large one time fee)
2. monthly package and slower results.

After each, I provide them with a lower monthly maintenance fee to maintain their ranking.

I already have enough work and high rankings for tough keywords to show clients. Once you get an seo portfolio built up, it will sell itself as you can't fake seo.

You'll have to get a feel for your own market and base your prices according to your research of the search volume and competition.

HOWEVER, don't price too low just to get the job because you will have to outsource some of it to make money since seo sucks and is super time consuming. You can quickly kill yourself if you price it wrong, so get it right.

crosscheck · Mar 10, 2011

TNphoneman said:
CYAWP

Cover Your Ass With Paperwork

No refunds after the work has started.

Yes for sure cover your ass! Try not to use PP for offline local clients too. No harm in picking up a company cheque....If your going to do SEO as a business mind as well play the roll and be professional.

Here is a link for a great business kit with all the contracts and other goodys you may need to get started.

PHP:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/member-downloads/34020-get-proposal-kit-professional-bundle-12-0-a.html#post319125

cpyou · Mar 10, 2011

Cloak, I can't PM you yet due to my new account, but I would love the info for your Fiverr guy.

danastos · Mar 10, 2011

$200/ a month is too damn cheap to charge. I would go for at least $500. You dont want to spoil him with low prices

yogi31286 · Mar 10, 2011

you should charge them $300 as maintenance and $500 to $700 as per keyword competition

0_inspiration · Mar 10, 2011

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