Picing for SEO ....ripped off????

[silverlake77]

Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to know if anyone has paid for their site to be optimised and if so how much roughly did it cost?
Ive just been quoted £250 for an initial consultation and optimisation of the site with an aditional £250 spread across the year for reports on how the keywords ect are performing.
Is this about right? I must admit i thought it sounded a bit steep, i dont want to get ripped off!
Many thanks
John

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to know if anyone has paid for their site to be optimised and if so how much roughly did it cost?
Ive just been quoted £250 for an initial consultation and optimisation of the site with an aditional £250 spread across the year for reports on how the keywords ect are performing.
Is this about right? I must admit i thought it sounded a bit steep, i dont want to get ripped off!
Many thanks
John

That is incredibly cheap! What exactly are they doing for you for that price? What industry are you working in? Unless it is a totally non competitive area, £250 isn't going to scratch the surface. £10 a week is what you will be paying. @£50 an hour, that buys you 12 minutes work a week!

Still think it is steep? Personally I think it is poor.

Post the url and we can all take a look.

ADDED:Hi again,

if it is the furniture site in your signature then I would wonder if £250 of work is going to help much at all.

 

[PTHubCoUk]

SEO is hard to price in my opinion

its all down to what you want to rank for

say you want a keyword like ' Hotel '
it would cost you many many thousands (if not much more) and would prove a nightmare of a job to get on page one

but if you wanted something a lot less tricky
like localised keywords e.g. Manchester beauty salon
you'd have far more chance and it would cost a lot less

again it also depends on how good the company are on achieving results

im my opinion thats cheap if they perform well for you and you get business from your rankings

 

[avalore]

A friend of mine works for a fairly well respected SEO and PPC management firm and I seem to remember him telling me that most of the clients on his account are paying roughly £1000 a month.... although I know that they do a very good job so definetly worth the money.

If I was you I'd be more worried about the standard of their work. From talking with quite a few people who have fallen foul of this it seems that a lot of people are quite easily fooled into paying for a service that either isn't worth the money or that any monkey with a computer could do themselves .

 

[silverlake77]

Im not an expert at this type of thing but a list of the things included are;
- Basic on-page SEO
- SEO copywriting
- Link development
- Keyword research
1 Day Consultation and Optimization of current pages- £250

12 Months SEO Reports - provided on a bimonthly basis - £62.50 per Quarter

from what everyone has said this might be a pretty good price?

 

[avalore]

Its a very good price but like everyone has said you run the risk of getting a bad product/service for the money... it seems too cheap!

Why have you picked this company? For their price or the quality of their work?

I'm sure if you posted their url then you'd get a much informed response from most people here.

 

[silverlake77]

The reason is purely because they designed the site and i'm pretty happy with it, the company is called K designs in Derby, www.ourcreativework.com

 

[OldWelshGuy]

What phrases are they optimising for? I see there is no mention of google local in there, that should be your first port of call if you offer a local service.

 

[silverlake77]

it will be for phrases like
contract furniture derby
commercial furniture derby
bar furniture
leather seating
trade furniture derby

quite defined i suppose

 

[fisicx]

The reason is purely because they designed the site and i'm pretty happy with it, the company is called K designs in Derby, www.ourcreativework.com

They designed it and they now want to charge you for SEO work.

The phrases you mention can't just be bolted onto the site, they would need to be part of the design and as such need to be integrated into all sorts of areas. £250 to add some keywords won't make the slightest difference.

 

[AdamJ]

Cheap doesn't automatically mean bad. If they are confident they can do the work for that price, write in a clause that if they don't perform you don't pay. Never dismiss a company just because they look low priced. It could be they simply have lower overheads than a larger company.

 

[silverlake77]

They did some basic SEO for me included in the design, i just wanted to optimise it more for what i'm doing,and maybe drive some traffic to the site by including a few specifics asscociated with my industry

 

[wood1e2]

Pricing is so difficult, people seem to think that £100 buys you a top-line website, and yet your quote for SEO is too cheap!!!

Make sure you find out from them what the improvements they hope to achieve with the money you spend.

When they have listed what they intend to do and I don't just mean a list of what they are going to do...get examples from them. Research on Keywords/keyphrases, what are the keywords that pay, that that bring in greater traffic??

Then come back here and ask what people on here think.

Then again if you trust them and happy with what they have achieved so far, then just go for it.

 

[wood1e2]

PS, they could start by changing the titles of your webpages..

 

[OldWelshGuy]

At the end of the day £500 over a year is nothing to a company really. If you are happy with them then so be it. The local derby terms should be easy enough to rank for, 'bar seating' isn't though, nor is 'leather furniture' keep in mind you are up against land of leather, tescos direct, dfs, etc. and i might be wrong, but I think they spend a little more than £500 a year on their SEo

My point here is that you have to be realistic in your expectations. If they say yes yes yes yes to every keyword you are suggesting you want page 1 rankings for, then they are just after tour money. Expectation management is what it is all about.

 

[avalore]

Without being horrible to KDesign, the impression I get is that they are a good creative agency who obviously do some very nice work design as well as basic onsite seo.

The problem is that many traditional web design agencies are finding that it is increasingly difficult to get 'normal' design work as the market is becoming saturated with everyone and their dog setting up as 'web designers' this almost forces them to jump on the seo bandwagon.

SEO isn't a clear cut process and definetly doesn't provide garaunteed results. Even the best sometimes get it wrong so I certainly think its worth spending the extra money and going with a company specialising in SEO.

A company that has experience in SEO should have designed your original site with this in mind so that the SEO work done after would be offsite seo (backlinks, google local, etc) and adding content to your current site.
As it stands at the minute your current site is ok but could do with the addition of more keyword rich content.
It also has a fair bit of inline javascript which could do with being put in external files.

If I was you I would consider a few options:
1) Find a more SEO orientated company, bit the bullet and pay more for it (if you search on google for 'Derby SEO' or 'SEO Derby' do you find kdesign?)
2) Assuming you can add/change content (mainly text) on your own site I would dig up some articles/tutorials on SEO. Articles on generating backlinks, keyword rich content as well as using google local would be a good idea. After onpage (code) SEO much of the work is pretty easy but can just be a bit time consuming. You would benefit a lot from learning the basics and doing it yourself.


Anyway, thats just my thoughts, no offence to KDesigns... I dont know them or their work very well, just my first impressions.

 

[fisicx]

I've had a good look at the KD design website and it looks very pretty but they haven't carried out even the most basic SEO on their own site and they don't advertise SEO as one of their services.

One wonders therefore what they can offer you.

 

Thanks for the comments, some very valid, some less so, but good feedback all the same. Industry *****ing is always there and never very nice, no matter how politely it’s dressed up but hey ho. I’m not sure some of you guys have quite grasped what we’re offering.
We would love to stay and chat longer, unfortunately we’re just to busy to reply to each of you individually. If anyone fancies a chat though I’ll be at the local Business Awards as a guest of a client, we launched their business eight weeks ago, they’ve been nominated for best in international achievement award… But, what do we know hey!!? Ha!

Thanks again for the kind comments and (insert your own raspberry sound) for the *****y ones!

Good luck to everyone, we appreciate it’s a tough old game.

Have a great day!

Rich
K Design Derby

 

[fisicx]

Ah, but nobody said you were bad at design - the only concern was your SEO credentials.

 

[JustOneUK]

Thanks for the comments, some very valid, some less so, but good feedback all the same. Industry *****ing is always there and never very nice, no matter how politely it’s dressed up but hey ho. I’m not sure some of you guys have quite grasped what we’re offering.
We would love to stay and chat longer, unfortunately we’re just to busy to reply to each of you individually. If anyone fancies a chat though I’ll be at the local Business Awards as a guest of a client, we launched their business eight weeks ago, they’ve been nominated for best in international achievement award… But, what do we know hey!!? Ha!

Thanks again for the kind comments and (insert your own raspberry sound) for the *****y ones!

Good luck to everyone, we appreciate it’s a tough old game.

Have a great day!

Rich
K Design Derby

Welcome to the forum

There's some fair comments in here. You look like pretty decent graphic designers, translating that to the web is a totally different ball game.
Don't know why you'd want to come here blowing your top.. but hey, that's life.

regards
James.

 

[freeflyer]

SEO is a tricky area, and the prices which people charge vary massively. Personally i charge anywhere from £50-150 per month for onsite technical SEO with a good chunk of onsite marketing thrown in. Previous companies i've worked for have charged much more than that , and only done work once every three months ! not mentioning any spidery names of course.

Good organic SEO is a learned skill, and if you find someone who can do it well, then pay them well. The rewards are there for you providing you get the results you want.
The thing that annoys me is that some companies think nothing of spending £500 a month on adwords, yet will grumble at £100 for organic optimising, yet this is the area which they should be putting money into.

I'm now putting up my charges, my results are there plainly to see, so why undersell myself. If i lose two or three customers in the process, so be it. The offset will even it out.

Anyway, thataside, i'd say a good figure for good onsite technical SEO which works is around £100-£150 a month.

PS an SEO's job is not to rank you for one big keyword. It is to drive more targeted traffic to your website by a combination of small and large keywords which drop the visitor onto dedicated landing pages for that term, and keep them there.

 

[Deleted member 27344]

First port of call is the site of the company offering the SEO.
Looking at theirs, they haven't even embedded validation code for MSN, AOL or yahoo and they has 2 sets for google.
Plus they don't even come up first on google search for their 1st keyword.
I'd say they seriously lack the initiative.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Thanks for the comments, some very valid, some less so, but good feedback all the same. Industry *****ing is always there and never very nice, no matter how politely it’s dressed up but hey ho. I’m not sure some of you guys have quite grasped what we’re offering.
We would love to stay and chat longer, unfortunately we’re just to busy to reply to each of you individually. If anyone fancies a chat though I’ll be at the local Business Awards as a guest of a client, we launched their business eight weeks ago, they’ve been nominated for best in international achievement award… But, what do we know hey!!? Ha!

Thanks again for the kind comments and (insert your own raspberry sound) for the *****y ones!

Good luck to everyone, we appreciate it’s a tough old game.

Have a great day!

Rich
K Design Derby

What a smug arrogant post. So your reply to the replies made to a question asked by your client is 'bugger you lot I am off to a lunch.

Rich, with respect, no-one has slated your design skills, it is your SEO skills that were questioned, based on information available on your client and your own sites. Coming ion here with such an arrogant condescending post it not really the way to win friends and influence people.

 

[Big J]

the way to win friends and influence people.

I've read a book about that

 

[who_me]

The trouble with SEO is you can't really 'suck it and see' because it is possible to get great results really quickly even for massively competitive terms… but without a massive budget and the patience of a saint you’ll end up turning up for work one day and see your website has been banned and maybe your entire livelihood down the pan and nothing you can do about it because the company you’re using is using black hat methods.

Lets face it even white hat methods are manipulation of some sort but with larger reputable white hat SEO firms they don’t put your whole livelihood at risk.

If they are charging that little and they are not making actual changes or advising you on your website itself, I’d say that it’s a simple link building campaign and for that you’re paying too much.

 

[360interactive]

http://www.kdesignderby.co.uk/people.htm

Richards response in his post, if it is him, is a real shame. he seems to underestimate the power of these forums, I would have been happy to do business with them as their design work looks fantastic, but not after experiencing their comments from the account manager.

For SEO work, I would stay well clear. In fact, I would steer well clear full stop.

 

[TomUK]

How are people managing to charge £50+ an hour for SEO? If they work 9-5, mon-fri, thats over £2000 a week. It's ****ing ludicrous.

 

[Tom McClelland]

How are people managing to charge £50+ an hour for dentistry/hairdressing/accountancy/legal/PR/etc? If they work 9-5, mon-fri, thats over £2000 a week. It's ****ing ludicrous.

There, fixed it for you.

 

[TomUK]

Your trying to say the majority of hairdressers at your local salon are on £50+ an hour? It's more like minimum wage.

 

[fisicx]

But you might be getting a whole team working on the site. Some of the major sites will have people link building, researching, writing content, submitting articles, generating leads, social networking, writing code and running PPC campaigns. That's why they charge so much.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

How are people managing to charge £50+ an hour for SEO? If they work 9-5, mon-fri, thats over £2000 a week. It's ****ing ludicrous.

How can you say that Tom? The average GP earns £120,000 a year for less hours than an SEO works.

Do you have any idea how much dead time there is to be a really good SEO/ it takes HOURS AND HOURS to read search engine patents to work out where they are taking the search engines. There are hours and hours of testing of sites to improve understanding of the affects of various elements.

And champagne isn't as cheap as it used to be (joke)

I could spend a day with a client and totally revolutionaise their online business, as could many others on here.

I year or two back, I worked with a website in a competitive industry. I worked with them for just under 12 months, it cost them in total about £8,000. When we started they were selling £4,000 a month of product, when we finished, they were selling £10,000 a WEEK. How can you say £50 an hour is ludicrous?

A window cleaner charges £7.50, it takes him 12 minutes, he can do 4 an hour allowing for time between jobs. That puts him on £30 an hour.

here is a thought, employ the window cleaner to do your SEO, he is CHEAPER

 

[UKSBD]

Do you pay the person cutting your hair or the salon owner?

 

[TomUK]

I was thinking along the lines of individual SEO people, rather then a team of 5 getting Paid £50 or a £100 an hour which works out 10-20£ each. I'm thinking of sole traders making £50+ an hour by themselves.

 

[UKSBD]

If an employee is earning £20 an hour the company should be charging at
least £50 an hour for him.

 

[TomUK]

If an employee is earning £20 an hour the company should be charging at
least £50 an hour for him.

I can tell you aren't on the same wave-length of me.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I was thinking along the lines of individual SEO people, rather then a team of 5 getting Paid £50 or a £100 an hour which works out 10-20£ each. I'm thinking of sole traders making £50+ an hour by themselves.

I really don't get where you are coming from though. an SEO has the ENTIRE FUTURE of an online business in his/her hands, and you expect someone to do it for £10 an hour??

Here is a tale . A guy's car wont start, the starter is clicking. he calls a garage, the mechanic listens for a second or two, then tells him to stop, he takes a small hammer out of his tool box, he taps the solenoid gently, and says 'try it now'. It starts.

the guy gets out of the car and the mechanic asks hi for £40. "£40 to hit my car with a hammer?" Says the guy. "NO!" says the mechanic "£40 for the knowledge of knowing where to hit it and how hard so as not to damage it"

 

[TomUK]

I really don't get where you are coming from though. an SEO has the ENTIRE FUTURE of an online business in his/her hands, and you expect someone to do it for £10 an hour??

Here is a tale . A guy's car wont start, the starter is clicking. he calls a garage, the mechanic listens for a second or two, then tells him to stop, he takes a small hammer out of his tool box, he taps the solenoid gently, and says 'try it now'. It starts.

the guy gets out of the car and the mechanic asks hi for £40. "£40 to hit my car with a hammer?" Says the guy. "NO!" says the mechanic "£40 for the knowledge of knowing where to hit it and how hard so as not to damage it"

Thats the thing though.

A sole trader of SEO charges £50, and gets paid £50 an hour.

A SEO company charges £50 an hour, and pays their designating SEO guys £15 an hour.

The pricing just isn't in synch/competitive yet.

There are so many SEO people out there thesedays that the sole traders charging £50 an hour are going to have to lower there charges to compete, and vice versa

 

[estwig]

If an employee is earning £20 an hour the company should be charging at
least £50 an hour for him.

Haven't read any of this thread, but this post caught my eye;

Ha ha ha!!!

Get in the real world son!!!

 

[JoyDivision]

I don't get Tom's comments. I charge £30 an hour, but I am not doing chargable jobs all day, in fact on a 10 hour work day only two hours on average would be paid. The rest is research/accounts/leaflets/buying parts/phone calls/bank trips etc so of course my hourly charge has to cover that.

 

[Tom McClelland]

Your trying to say the majority of hairdressers at your local salon are on £50+ an hour? It's more like minimum wage.

No, I'm not saying that. Think about it.