Page 2 - What should an SEO be getting paid per client?

Webby

You are actually far too cheap. I charge for what I call 'pro version' 4200 $ for a one year contract.

To increase your new business conversion rate, offer the client value and give yourself an incentive to perform (and report) here's an option:

Performance Related Remuneration:

Create a spreadsheet with 50 agreed search terms, create columns for say 3 search engines (big players). This gives a potential number of 'results' as 50 x 3 = 150

If you agree a MONTHLY remuneration of, say $2.00 per each result in the top 10, and $1.00 for results in the 11-20 bracket you'll see that there is good scope to achieve monthly revenue in the order of $200 to $300

It's good for a number of reasons - it will keep you on top f the analysis/reporting and it will demonstrate great value for the client (compare this to Adwords for a basic comparison).

You could make a very strong case with the client for this method, but would you get such a positive response if you just named your fee at $3.000?

A while ago I looked at advertising cost per qualified lead.

Using Google Adwords as a baseline of $0.06 per qualified click (lead) and compared this to other mediums which show at $.18 to $25.00 on mass distribution only.

When I compared these to my old pricing strategy I using only SE traffic that I had created, an average of $0.0013 were the cost per qualified lead to clients.

This suggests that at my level on development - my prices are way to low. If we reverse engineer this - this is about 800 qualified leads per US dollar spent.

Call me stupid! I know of zero advertising mediums that can do this.

The greatest issue isn't price - it is how we marketing these services.

Back at my example: should we assume a standard sales conversion of 2% (which is generally universal on most mediums) that's an average that's 16 sales per advertising dollar.

That doesn't make sense.

Conclusion - we forget to market the specific details of the adert medium, in favor of making a quick buck! ;)

Thus I raise my prices - to a more realistic level

Pardon me for pulling out an old post on this thread, but I was curious, do you have a time limit on the money back guarantee? The concern is, you do the SEO, they thank you for the good results, and then for whatever reason some changes are made to the website that undo your good work. You don't want them coming back for a refund after they screwed it up.

So would it be fair to see, money back guarantee as long as client doesn't do something to mess it up?

Thanks,

-Jeff

From my perspective - a "money back guarantee" is a marketing pitch -- nothing more.

Here's the problem:

Terms - you can label your guarantee anyway you want - but the variable are (in a dispute) extremely difficult to be tied to.

what ranks, what traffic, what engine, what competition, what market, what flucuation to name a few.

Here's a good example: large corporate world gets wise (like Amazon) and decides "hey we can do it on the cheap and do SEO.

Amazon with topic breadth and depth, link pop, and parterships can have all your clients screaming "I want my money back". You could try to have a 100 page website with a few thousand backlinks trying to compete against a site with a million pages and millions of backlinks - but in the end you would lose.

Sorry, even the most ethical person with would look for the loop-holes in that guarantee to salvage their business.

Act of God, natural disasters, and economic upheaval can turn a intangible darling into a nightmare.

Sept 11th saw a major shift in search patterns - no one was searching for product/services - normal traffic patterns drop on most websites 75% that day, and it was a long recovery back to normal.

That was a wakeup call for me, I made sure I protected the clients' interest - but not my own until seeing some sites that had dominate results but this didn't matter - traffic was gone to find terrorism stuff.

When I redefined my business strategy I took a lesson from newspapers.

They guarantee circulation -- nothing more, I guarantee the same thing. I guarantee they will be in search engines and I will not cause them to be penalized or banned, as this is really the only thing "I control".

As I originally said - the "guarantee" is a marketing pitch" to entice a client. Going the other route works better if not a marketing pitch and you are confident in your abilities...

No money down, no interest, no payment!

Now this speaks miles, and is precisely what you are getting at with the guarantee -- instilling confidence with less risk! ;)

Even Google contradicts itself in these matters - "only use an SEO that provides an unconditional 100% money back guarantee", but starts the page off with "no one can guarantee anything"!

Don't figure!

I'm interested in doing some freelance SEO work and I was interested in your thread.

I would have thought that it's appropriate to charge a recurring fee since you have to tweak the optimized pages as the rules and competition changes (the degree of work probably has a lot to do with how cometitive the keyphrase is).

If you charge a one-time fee and then your site falls out of the desired rankings, then what? Are you contracted to keep the pages in the desired rankings even though you've collected your one time fee? Do they pay another 'one time fee'? What?

Thanks for your input.

Charge on a month-by-month basis, with a discount for a pre-paid yearly contract. That way, if they are paying monthly, and their month contract expires, you are no longer responsible for their site's rankings. (Hint: job security starts here...)

It's actually a bit of a myth that seos need to "tweak" websites on a monthly basis. Once the site has been optimized properly, ie it reaches top 10 within 6 months (abakus typical contract) you dont need to do anything. We are not talking ppc search engine positioning here. Once a site is top 10, it will generally stay there, barring a major change in the search engine algorithm. What actually happens irl is that an SEO will work for a few months optimizing a website and building the necessary linkpop. An SEO worth his salt should achieve this within 6 months (normally within 3, but it depends on the keywords involved). There is very little work after the initial optimization and 2-3 months tweaking. Therefore for me to charge a fee for a year or ongoing monthly charge to me personally is something I'd feel uncomfortable doing. I charge a one off fee which covers 6 months of optimization (including tweaking and monthly ranking reports). From experience I know that a website being optimized for 6 months will be right up there for the main keywords providing a free reign for optimization has been given. Therefore I dont go the monthly fee route. I've optimized sites from more than two years ago that are STILL top 10 for competivive keywords and havent been touched since the last tweak I gave them two years ago.

That's not an exception, that's the norm. Once a site is optimized, and right up there (top 10), it tends to stay there.
Why? Think about it, what is one of the most influential off page ranking criteria? Answer: Link popularity.
You only get linked to if you can be found. A good site being found will get linked to, thereby without any SEO professional on page changes, the site will automatically gain a ranking boost. Top sites in google get found by similarly related sites webmasters, and in turn get linked to, which in turn strengthens their ranking. The reason why by the way, sites with good content will almost always top spam sites, is because if they are good, webmasters will link to them. That's it in a nutshell really. A good site WILL get links without the need for solicitation.

There are however some good reasons for monthly fees. Ranking reports take time, telephone consultation, email correspondence etc. etc. are time consuming and should legitimately be charged for. I'm soft I guess on this aspect, and do a lot of email correspondance and telephone consultation without sending an invoice.

Perhaps one day I'll change to a monthly model, I'm not keen to do so, as it would be a logistic nightmare (I'm based and bank in Germany). I currently however find a regular mothly fee to be unjust for my client, as in essence, the lions part of optimization is done within literally a matter of days.

I thought what I'd do is take your one-time fee and make that cover a period of say, 1 year. Then break it down into a monthly fee. I'll ask for like, 3 months up front because I take the most risk getting started as that's where most of my time is spent.

Plus, it might make my mind a little easier if for some reason I lose a rank (for instance due to a lack of experience) then I won't charge my client for the period of time they lost their ranking.


Incidentally, I've only optimized 2 domains but one of them, which has only one optimized page, dissapeared in the rankings after about 3 or 4 months, recently. I just ran a page critic mission on this page and, the result looks the same as when I published it. I'll have to research this and that will cost me time.
However, like you said, I have other optimized pages that I haven't touched in close on a year. I think we need to use a competitiveness factor that we all understand and refer to. Obviously that's not all of it but a competitive keyword requires more effort, as you said. Do you use 'keywordtracker'?

I dont use keywordtracker. Although I do use wordtracker and for german sites keywordatenbank. I use them however for the first phase of optimization which is keyword research and not as a means of setting pricing.

The problem with instllmaent payments is that some clients are simply never satisfied and some will try to stall on additional payments. Chasing up payments is something I have little time for. I've been bitten before whereby although the client had top 10 for a competitive term, they wernt prepared to pay a second installment because the keyword wasn't number one. Before the site was nowehere to be found and their search engine traffic rocketed. It got messy and its something I want to avoid hence for myself its 100% upfront.

I am curious, how much leeway and access does a client typically give an SEO in redesigning a site? Many companies have paid big $$$ to a webdesigner for a flashy "wow" site and now an SEO wants to rebuild it. Do you typically make suggestions and thier web-designer re-does it or do you have direct ftp access to redesign the site? Are you typically 'tinkering' or 'overhauling'?

In regards to risk:

I'm hoping to mitigate risk by servicing referred clients, not people I find on the internet that I've had no face to face contact with. I shouldn't assume that you get clients off the internet, however.

The contract should explicitly say what you're being paid to achieve, which I assume yours does. If I think I must protect myself, perhaps I should put in the contract that the client is only leasing the optimized content for as long as they pay their monthly fee. I don't think this is unreasonable considering what people spend on advertising (which has to reoccur to be seen regularly). That can't come close to this kind of precise targeting.

When you do business, do you ever FTP the page yourself? If you can give it, you can take it away (obviously a knowledgable webmaster can get around that contigency).

You know, it depends upon teh client, their expectations, the ammount of work you have and what you are willing to do.

Example: Bigger clients don't want someone to do teh work. They want a consultant to advise on what needs doing. In that case, monthly maintenance ios a great idea.

Other clients want you to do all the work, and in that case an upfront payment is the best bet.

Other clients want the benefits of the work done, but also need hand holding and comforting. In that case, both work well.

I think it is a bit of a myth that there is a one size fits all strategy. You amyu only offer one approach, but if you do, then chances are you will probably miss many chances for additional business.

Also, many companies are happy to pay a retainer in order to access people on demand. There are so many decisions made by businesses that can effect their rankings, and in turn their bottom line. For a company with a 7 figure turnover, a couple of hundred bucks a month is notinh for teh piece of mind having an SEO available to contact engenders.

In the end, it just comes down to cost / reward / enjoyment. Some people only like doing the work. Others like building a relationship. You just need to know what your niche is!

I just charge $100 per hour, and say I require "x" to even make it worth your expense to a client, if client agrees they pay for the initial phase of work once the hours are exhausted I provide a report on where I am and where I think I need to be with their site and a projection on how many hours it will take to get there and then they pay for more hours etc, this way they can work into their budget no matter how small or large (Im happy to work 60 hour weeks at $6000 per week) lol. All the while encouraging them depending on their web savvines to read tutorials and ask me and the members here about doing it themselves as I would much rather get paid to illustrate and teach by example than just take money and say thanks next time you need me pay me again my dependant lil slave.