HELP! How much should I charge for my SEO services?

Hello everybody!

That would be great if I can get an answer for my question.

The thing is that I am a seo, but as I am not from the US, I was working with the regional clients, and never worked with Google or MSN, etc.

But now as I wanna dive into REAL business and make life more exciting, I wanna start seo for the US clients too.

So, there's one site I can work with, but before I start, I need to decide - how much money to charge???
I know that I don't have experience in Google and etc., but as I have general seo knowledge, I am sure, that won't be too hard for me to study and show results.

So:
1. HOW MUCH TO CHARGE for a site with the medium competence keywords?

2. HOW MUCH TIME does it usually take to provide good results?
(2-3 months??? more?)

3. What is the usual maintenance fee? (a month)

I wanna thank everyone, who can answer my questions.

Best regards,
Jeremy

Everyone goes through this question in the beginning and I can offer two suggestions that may help.

1 - Take a look at what other people are charging for what you are offering. That will give you an idea for the price range. This is also what you clients may see, so I would pick a price that is somewhere near the middle, or on the low end. Don't price yourself too low becuase you may resent all the work you are doing to not much money, and the client may think you do bad work if you are too cheap. Charging too little will work against you most of the time in one way or another.

2 - If you have any experience doing this kind of work, you should have an idea of how much time is needed to do the work. Figure out the total time you will need to get the job done correctly. Then ask yourself how much you want to get paid per hour? $5? $40? $75? There's nothing wrong with starting low, but make enough to pay your bills and stuff.

If you do the scored keyword phrase research, optimize the site, and do the submissions, you can expect to start seeing results in a couple weeks, with the full results in about 3 months.

If you are going to do maintenance, you will have to use the other guidelines I mentioned. The way we optimize sites we don't need to do any maintainance.... so I can't really help you there.

Good Luck,
Chris

If you have a relevant graduate degree, a few years of expirence, run your own business, and do descent work you might charge 150 USD/hour + bonus for good results.

I have never had a SEO client that has ended up with a final bill of under 2000 USD.

It all depends if your doing the changes or just doing analystic SEO. For consulting I would give a flat fee depending on the size of the site. If your making the changes yourself the fee should be a quarter of the consulting fee but hourly. Make sure you get everything on contract because once you sit down to make changes you might end up building a new website for pushy "something-for-nothing" site owners

-PK

Simple answer: as much as you can get away with.

More detailed answer:
Charge a rate that is a bit higher than you think is acceptable. There is logic in this: if you charge peanuts, you'll get monkeys for clients, but if you charge Moet Chandon prices, you'll stoopid rich guys. Dependinmg upon your preference, your personality, either might be better or worse, but it is important to realise that a higher rate will actually lead to not only more money, butbigger clients that can bear the cost.

Good luck!!!

I belive SEO should be a good investment for the site owner, happy clients send christmas presents and not just stupid cards.
Work hard and be worth every cent.

Hey Requiem

What do you class as a relevant degree?

Experience will always be more valuable than a degree. SEO is a niche specialty so a degree should matter. Just because someone has a degree in Computer Science or Marketing doesn't make them an SEO. A degree is more for bragging rights. A track record is proven a degree isn't.

-PK

Hello,

There are several relevant degrees that would be a healty background for working in the field of website consulting.
Since web consultants today comes from a number of background, but I thing that I could be agreed upon that you would need to have a very good knowledge of all core web technologies (e.g. html/xhtml, css, javascripts etc. ) and atleast a fairly good knowledge of many other technologies (e.g. xml, serverside programming and scripting, webservers). Since almost every larger website today is driven by one or more databases you should have understand SQL, and relational databases, normalization etc. Since some projects could become rather large, involve many, people, and are costly both in terms of money and time it would be helpful to have soome formal background in system design and analysis.

A master degree in computer science will give you many of the skills you need, but background knowledge and the ability to quickly adapt to new situations.

However I got my degree at a time where nobody really cared about the internet (atleast I didn't).

Today there are many new educational options available:

- Information science and technology:
- Hypermedia
- Seperate programs in webprogramming
- etc.

I have also worked with consultants with backgrounds in unrelated areas, and it proves that with a good academic background you will have the nesseccary study skills needed later in life.

If you have a talk with your highschool guidance consular or get in touch with a university near you will get help to plan your higher education.

The best of luck to you. I hope your future will be a very bright and good.

Thanks