How much should I be paying for an SEO consultant?

I'm looking to hire an SEO consultant to help me out with off page optimization. I'm looking for links to search engine friendly directories.

My question is, I'm benchmarking my link building campaign and have about 1,000 to 1,500 links to go before I'm on par with them.

My question is, what is considered industry standard as far as what I should be paying for someone to build me links. Is hourly fair? Per Link? What are the going rates for each one?

Please from now on don't post in every board with the SAME thread. It gets annoying and is unneeded. We will find your thread and reply if we can help.

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What would you pay someone who will get you 50 guestbook or blog spam links?

What would you pay for someone who can get you five PR6 links on different .edu domains on pages that are relevant to the theme of your site?

Big difference?

Where do I sign up?

According to me, SEO jobs should be given for 1 full year term where the work should involve site analysis, competition analysis, keyword research and placement, tag analysis and tag coding, broken link check, content check and correction to suit keyword, submission in SE and directories and ABOVE ALL link building throughout the contract period.

Take a total cost of all these and set targets and break payments according to milestones.

I cannot quote a worldwide rate as they are very much different according to regions. In Asia, the rates for off page optimisation may $100 , per successful link $1 ( less if links are in bulk ).

Hi guest54321

As been explained by Egol. Not all links are equal. To pay per backlink or success by backlinks is not a wise move. Despite the emphasis on offpage factors backlinks cannot be separated from onpage and other offpage factors. I believe you should rather think again on a different strategy.

In case you consider rather outsourcing all seo services, The quality of the SEO services rendered are of great importance here. But I feel the real question is what industry you are in and what ROI you are looking at. For good quality seo you will pay for the services of at least a Link builder, Copy writer and a SEO manager (Responsible person overseeing your site's seo as explained by BigBrother. You will probably pay an hourly rate and the contract will probably be valid for at least 12 months. For example you will pay for 20 hours a month @ $150/hour. If you need more success you will need to pay for more hours. But at least you can manage your ROI. If you have a site that is already indexed by Google and is older than 18 months, you can probably do this on a 3 months contract although that makes it difficult to properly evaluate the quality of your SEO service.