How to offer SEO services honestly?

I know a lot about SEO and have been very successful with many of my client's sites, however, I've never offered SEO as a distinct service. I've always done basic SEO when building the site, and then give the clients lots of pointers as to writing their content.

I get inquiries all the time from people with existing sites wanting SEO services, but I always turn them down because I don't want to charge for something I can't guarantee. I'm thinking of changing that, though, since I could obviously get a lot of business doing this.

How do I deal with the fact that SEO services are not a sure thing? I don't want to be like those scam SEO companies that promise a number one ranking on Google, only to disappoint the clients.

Anyone else in my position, offering SEO and wanting to do it honestly and fairly? How do you deal with the fact that none of it is certain? How do you put that into a contract?

Cheers,
TO

Well the main thing from a business prospective is that you have to have the fact that you can't guarantee results written into your contract and terms of conditions.

From an ethics point of view you need to make sure the client is fully aware of the fact.
It helps to point them in the direction of Google's statement that says no company has an affiliation with Google or can guarantee results.

Another ethics point that comes up a lot is when a customer is dead set on a particular keyword. Now all good SEOs should do keyword research up front as a matter of course. When you determine that a customers chosen keyword will be very easy to get a rank for but will generate no business because there are no searches you need to make them aware of that fact.

I grade my keywords in keyword difficulty, based on a KEI analysis and show how many stages of SEO are likely to be required. If I think that basic on page SEO will work for some of the easier keywords I say to clients "lets just do this stage and wait to see the results". I do this because even though I could charge up front for more services I am aware that it might not be neccessary.

Many customers are dead set on keywords even in the face of hard and fast data that proves the keyword isn't worth targeting. Sometimes, you have to do what the customer insists on. Many clients are suprised to see that the terms they thought were good don't get any searches.
Pretty soon the value of keyword research is obvious and this builds up a good level of trust. - ie Charge $500 for keyword research to save them $5,000, thats money well spent!

That mistake #1.

A newspaper guarantees that they send out 1 million paper circulation daily... but that doesn't suggest a guarantee that 1 million people will read the paper that day, and if 50% of those papers are unsold and destroyed... "that's what you paid for to advertise"... whether you want to pay to be recycled or not.

A guarantee of service IS NOT a guarantee of ranks, or a guarantee of traffic, or sales... a guarantee of service is "you did your job"... FULL STOP...

Anyone offering a guarantee for ranks is almost certainly a marketing ploy... [unless there service fees are in the millions]



I got news for you... it will happen... you attempt to help a company that is sadly underclassed against the competitive norm, without the budget to compete, and once you have taken them on... your choices are: leaving them disappointed or yourself bankrupt.

Normally your abilities and your pricing model ensure this doesn't occur very often... but it will occur.



At the end of a day - you're providing an intangible service...

...and because it is intangible you DO NOT WANT to undercut your "average bottom line".

In a nutshell your bottomline is about $12K - if you're offering a goal oriented service... that is: "performance driven" [regardless of driver metrix - ranks, traffic, leads, sales]

You can't claim to be performance driven unless you do 3 things:

1. basic on-page SEO
2. content enhancement to attract better links
3. link enhancement

#2 & #3 tend to have 3rd party costs associated with them and in order to be effective I would guage that to be $10K of the original $12K.

That means you are working for $2K and that "might" seem like good money... but if you consider "good" money is about $50/hour - you only got 40 hours of work... and someone still needs to analysis, arrange & implement content and links, write reports, and a volume of other things in the contract... and that usually eats those 40 hours... so is the on-page optimization 'free'?

Be that as it may - the bottomline for any SEO project today is a minimum of $12,000 and that's without any immediate considerations to actual ranks on actual terms, traffic on terms, leads on terms, or sales on terms.

If you actually wish to be a performance leader - offer top 5 ranks moderate to heavily used terms... the bare minimum is doubling that previous value...

course you also need to be able to do one other thing... sell at that level.

If your client's can't afford that level - you need different clients or you need to forget doing SEO for others -- simply because "unestimating" the strategy and the resources that are needed to do what the client wants is the #1 reason this happens:

Yes it takes many outrside services and great content/tools/linkbait to get and stay in the top positions. think 5-10-20K.


However this is worth it. The money spent on being in those ranks 24 hours a day 7 days a week, is far less then the money the client would be paying to be in the #1-3 spot in adwords.

I consider myself a very honest person and I have often had this issue with SEO. I see a lot of SEO's charging clients thousands and giving little to no results. I also see people getting charged $300/month and still getting little or no results...

So then I step in, offer my services and explain my methods and I hear "well so and so charged me $2000/month for six months and I got squat. How are you different"

Or I get:

habib mongoosh charged me $150 a month and I got squat. then I give them the old you get what you pay for speech and they laugh and say "OK I guess we could afford to give you $300"

The point is that I explain my services, what me and the people who work with me do and I give them a price. That price includes me and my contractors making a good living and covers any direct costs associated with the service.

So how do you become a millionaire? Well you need to take all of the above into account and start raising your prices and charge more on what the service is worth to the client, rather than what you need to do to make your mortgage and play...

Remember quoting 20 contracts at $50,000 and getting one still gets you the same money as quoting 20 at $5,000 and getting half.

There are many many keywords where it is well worth 50,000 over a year top be in the top 5 positions...